Monday June 21, 2010
Argentine Bishop States Gays Can Overcome Same-Sex Attraction, Leads Pro-Family March
Calls homosexual “marriage” a “contradiction in terms”
By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent
SAN LUIS, Argentina, June 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – On the eve of a pro-family march that he was scheduled to lead last week, Bishop Jorge Lona of San Luis defended the institution of marriage, and stated that psychiatric treatment can help homosexuals overcome unwanted same-sex attraction.
“The Church can illuminate that person, so that one should never believe that they lack freedom in that [homosexual] tendency,” Bishop Lona said in an interview. “It is demonstrated by psychiatric science.”
“The most important psychiatric text of the North American University of Medicine [says] that people with a homosexual tendency, if they seek to receive psychotherapeutic help and everything that can help them for their attraction, can modify their orientation and have a happy marriage and eliminate their suffering,” he added.
Regarding the idea of homosexual “marriage,” which is currently under consideration by the Argentinian Senate, Bishop Lona stated: “any bill that proposes it, simply shows a lack of respect for the reality of human nature, and especially for the human being, the child, in his right to have a father and a mother.”
Homosexuals, he added, “deserve the respect that is owed to the dignity of every human person, but they can never be the origin of a true human family, never can they be constituted in a true marriage, with the same rights and obligations of the matrimonial union between a man and a woman.”
“We may say that there are now seven countries that have accepted this contradiction in terms, and also six jurisdictions of the 50 that comprise the United States, but that is not a reason for Argentineans to do the same,” said Lona, who decried the fact that the Senate had taken up the issue rather than allowing the people to vote on it in a plebiscite.
Lona also expressed concern about the decline of marriage in Argentina, a trend that is reflected in much of the “developed” world.
“In Argentina, matrimonial unions have declined by at least half; but for those that remain, they sustain the country and we therefore need to defend them more than ever,” he said.