Monday July 26, 2010
Scottish Bishop to Prime Minister: No Gay ‘Marriage’ in Church, Now or Ever
By Kathleen Gilbert
PAISLEY, Scotland, July 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Despite a political climate pushing acceptance of homosexuality in religious communities, the Catholic Church will “not ever” marry same-sex couples, said the bishop of Paisley in Scotland.
Bishop Philip Tartaglia was taking issue with a statement by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who praised the House of Lords’ February ruling that religious premises should be opened to homosexual civil partnership ceremonies. Although Britain has allowed civil partnerships between homosexuals since 2005, the country has disallowed such ceremonies in churches and other such premises, a policy homosexualists decried as discriminatory.
“If religious organisations, if churches, if mosques, if temples want to have civil partnerships celebrated at religious places of worship, that should be able to happen and we should make that happen,” said Cameron. He made the remarks at a reception for homosexualist leaders at Downing Street last month, the first ever to be hosted by a Tory prime minister.
In a letter to Cameron, Targaglia called the statement “vague enough to have more than one outcome in practice.”
“But you and your Government need to be aware from the outset that the Catholic Church will not register civil partnerships nor celebrate same-sex unions: not now, not in the future, not ever, no matter what legislation or regulations your Government enacts or endorses,” wrote Tartaglia, as reported by The Herald of Scotland.
The Scottish Government is being pressured by homosexualist leaders to introduce a law to make same-sex “marriage” equal to true marriage.
Polls cited by the Herald suggest that the majority of Scots would approve: a poll conducted by Scotland’s Green Party in April found 58% of Scottish adults polled agreeing that “gay or lesbian couples should have the right to marry one another if they wanted to,” while 19% disagreed.