{"id":1132,"date":"2008-12-19T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-19T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit.php"},"modified":"2008-12-19T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-19T17:00:00","slug":"vatican-calls-for-homosexualit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit","title":{"rendered":"Vatican Calls for Homosexuality to be Decriminalized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican on Friday (Dec. 19) called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, but said a proposed United Nations declaration on gay rights is vague and excessively far-reaching.<br \/>\nThe statement by the Holy See&#8217;s UN delegation was a response to the &#8220;Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,&#8221;<br \/>\npresented to the UN General Assembly on Thursday.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Holy See appreciates the attempts made in [the declaration] to condemn all forms of violence against homosexual persons as well as urge states to take necessary measures to put an end to all criminal penalties against them,&#8221; the statement said.<br \/>\nBut the Vatican said that the UN declaration &#8220;goes beyond this goal and instead gives rise to uncertainty in the law and challenges existing human rights norms.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe Vatican specifically objected to the declaration&#8217;s use of the terms &#8220;sexual orientation&#8221; and &#8220;gender identity,&#8221; which it said had no established meaning in international law.<br \/>\nAccording to an editorial in the official Vatican newspaper L&#8217;Osservatore Romano, these terms &#8220;imply that sexual identity is defined only by culture,&#8221; and their use in the declaration are part of an attempt to &#8220;equate same-sex unions with marriage and to give homosexual couples the chance to adopt or `procreate&#8217; children.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe paper argued the declaration would endanger &#8220;other human rights,&#8221; such as &#8220;liberty of expression &#8230; thought, conscience and religion,&#8221; since it might limit religions in their freedom to teach that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.<br \/>\nThe non-binding declaration, which was sponsored by France and backed by the 27-member European Union, received 66 votes in the 192-member UN General Assembly on Thursday. Aside from the Holy See, opponents included China, Russia, the United States, and the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.<br \/>\nHomosexual behavior is against the law in dozens of countries, and punishable by death in several.<br \/>\nAccording to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, homosexual acts are sinful and &#8220;contrary to the natural law,&#8221; but persons with &#8220;deep-seated homosexual tendencies &#8230; must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity&#8221; and &#8220;every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should avoided.&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>By Francis X. Rocca<br \/>\nCopyright 2008 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican on Friday (Dec. 19) called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, but said a proposed United Nations declaration on gay rights is vague and excessively far-reaching. The statement by the Holy See&#8217;s UN delegation was a response to the &#8220;Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,&#8221; presented to the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vatican Calls for Homosexuality to be Decriminalized<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vatican Calls for Homosexuality to be Decriminalized\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican on Friday (Dec. 19) called for the decriminalization of homosexuality, but said a proposed United Nations declaration on gay rights is vague and excessively far-reaching. 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The statement by the Holy See&#8217;s UN delegation was a response to the &#8220;Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,&#8221; presented to the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-12-19T17:00:00+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit","name":"Vatican Calls for Homosexuality to be Decriminalized","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-12-19T17:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2008-12-19T17:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/12\/vatican-calls-for-homosexualit#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Vatican Calls for Homosexuality to be Decriminalized"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}