Latin America: Proposed legislation in favor of homosexual “marriage”

Argentina legalized last July the “marriage” between two persons of the same sex, even authorizing the adoption of children by homosexual couples (See DICI no. 219).  From the very first days following that vote, the debate rebounded into Chile, a neighboring country with a population, however, that is officially 70% Catholic.  

Taking advantage of the fact that one of the first couples to be “married” in Argentina was Chilean, the Socialist Party drafted legislation in favor of same-sex unions in early August.  The text proposed modifying the Civil Code, which defines marriage as “a solemn contract between a woman and a man” by replacing “a woman and a man” with “two persons” and omitting the reference to procreation among the obligations of the spouses. 

The Socialist Senator Rossi, who claims to be a faithful Catholic, explained that he had moved to present the draft legislation following suggestions by the Archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz.  The latter, on the day after the first unions celebrated in Argentina, had admitted that it is possible that “two persons, two men or two women, might want to live together and share their lives”. 

After celebrating a Mass on the campus of the Catholic University in Santiago, he had explained, according to the news agency Apic, that “calling that a marriage is an aberration into which some countries are falling.  I regret that Argentina has fallen into it.”

“Correcting” homosexuality like alcoholism

Several days earlier another Chilean prelate, Cardinal Jorge Medina, former ordinary of the second-largest city in the country, Valparaiso, had already launched a polemic by describing homosexuality as a “defect”, “like when someone is missing an eye, a leg or a foot”.  Distinguishing the tendency from the practice, the cardinal had invited homosexuals to “correct” the former by means of a cure, comparing them to alcoholics.

The reactions show that there is deep division in the Chilean political class, among those on the Left as well. 

Although the proposed bill was finally rejected by the right-wing government, the initiative of the Senator from the Socialist Party had critics in his own camp.  Socialist Senator Osvaldo Andrade thinks that Chilean society is “not yet ready”, and deems it too “conservative”, since divorce, for example, was not legalized until 2004.

But that was likewise the case in Argentina, a country where the Catholic faith still remains deep-rooted and widespread (90% of the population).  More than 120,000 had even demonstrated on the eve of the vote in front of the Chamber of Senators.  It seems at any rate that defenders of the traditional family had been somewhat short-winded.  And the bishops of Argentina had lacked a fighting spirit, as was the case in France in 1975 at the time of the vote on the law allowing abortion. 

As Fr. Christian Bouchacourt, District Superior for South America of the Society of Saint Pius X, noted (see DICI no. 219), “the episcopate reacted with some firmness, but late….  At large gatherings the bishops issued messages that were terribly sugar-coated.” 

At the conclusion of their general assembly last August 19, the bishops, it seemed, did not reach the same conclusion;  they even regretted having compared “gay marriage” to a “satanic work”.  According to their spokesman, Bishop Jorge Oesterheld, this sort of remark, instead of convincing anyone, contributed to the negative reaction of a good part of the population.  According to him, “The attitude of churchmen brought about a lack of understanding among the population and led the political authorities to settle in favor of same-sex marriage.”

An aberration that obeys international interests 

This “lukewarm approach”, as Fr. Bouchacourt put it, has not yet become the fashion in Mexico, where Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez accused the head of the government of the federal district of Mexico as well as international organizations of having “bought” the judges on the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN). 

The prelate claims that they had received money to encourage them to declare constitutional the law on homosexual marriage that had been adopted last December by the leftist municipal government in power in the capital, Mexico City. The Mexican news agency Notimex reports that the Archbishop of Guadalajara (the second-largest city of Mexico, in western Mexico) leveled these accusations in Aguascalientes (in the center of the country) last August 15 during a press conference. 

He stated that there was “no longer any doubt” about the fact that soon the Supreme Court would approve the adoption of children by gay couples.  The magistrates, he claims, received “presents” to this end. 

For the cardinal, both the “marriage” of homosexual couples and adoption by them are “an aberration that obeys international interests with enormous economic power at their disposal”. The Mexican prelate is convinced that hidden behind these laws (as also behind the decriminalization of abortion) is the project of reducing world population.  He states that “these organizations are trying to introduce these measures in various countries, and now they are arriving in Mexico, thanks again to the Supreme Court.” 

He accused the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the leftist parties throughout the world of being at the source of a set of laws along these lines, “with the support of major capitalists”….  He singled out in particular the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as well as “those in Italy who want to propose all these measures that go against the family”.