El Salvador: Church Supports Constitutional Ban of Homosexual Marriage

Fuente: FSSPX News

The Catholic Church in El Salvador has backed the constitutional ban on homosexual marriage. It delivered to the government of the small Central American country a petition signed by more than 200,000 people opposing the legalization of homosexual unions, in advance of the Salvadorian parliament giving its decision on this amendment to the Constitution at the end of April. The proposal was to be ratified before May 1st.

“With this collection of signatures, we hope to protect the institution of marriage and the family,” said Mgr. José Luis Escobar Alas, archbishop of San Salvador and president of the Salvadorian Bishops Conference. For months, in the country’s places of worship petitions have been made available for the faithful to sign. “A union between persons of the same sex, cannot be a marriage. If in fact it exists, it is something else, we cannot prevent it and people may be united de facto, but these unions cannot be called marriages,” said the archbishop of the capital. It is not a matter of opinion, or strategy or ideology, nor is it a question of partisan bias, but rather “it is a question of the common good.”

The Church thus asked parliament to ratify a constitutional bill forbidding legal union between two persons of the same sex. The Salvadorian Constitution up to the present time guarantees the protection of marriage between a man and a woman. This amendment would simply permit the ban on homosexual marriage. This project was launched three years ago by the Christian Democrats. Archbishop José Luis Escobar had asked the faithful to pray that the legislative assembly would ratify the constitutional reform. “Our concern is of an ethical nature. This is not a denominational question but concerns the very nature of the human person; this is why it must affect everyone, whatever his creed. The defense of the institution of marriage as a union between a man and a woman born as such is a defense of the family, which is the basic unit of society,” he declared.

On May 3, Archbishop Escobar Alas gave thanks to God for the government’s decision to commit themselves to the ratification of the amendment banning homosexual marriage and especially thanked members of all parties for having approved this bill.

(Sources: apic / kna / Archdiocese of San Salvador)