Spain's New Gay Marraige Law

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2 hours, 40 minutes ago

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican's top family affairs official on Monday blasted Spain's law allowing gays to wed as a destruction of the marriage institution and urged Christians around the world to oppose such unions. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, also said adoption of children by same sex couples was "moral violence" against children and jeopardised their personality and stability.

In an interview with Fides, the news agency of the Vatican's missionary arm, Lopez Trujillo said the Spanish law allowing gay couples to marry had "changed and falsified the very definition of marriage."

The law, passed by parliament last month in the once staunchly Catholic country, allows same sex couples to wed in civil ceremonies and gave them the same inheritance and adoption rights as heterosexuals.

Lopez Trujillo said the law, along with the growth of couples living together outside marriage, was " destroying, bit by bit, the institution of marriage" which the Catholic Church teaches should be a partnership for life.

"Christians, even if they are state employees, are asked to become conscientious objectors because the laws we are speaking of are deeply offensive to morality," Lopez Trujillo said.

The Colombian cardinal said homosexuals deserved respect but allowing gay couples to adopt children "destroys the future of children, (and) they suffer moral violence."

"People say these children adopted by same sex couples are very happy. Maybe, when they are one or two years old. But when they are able to think for themselves, when they grow up, what a tragedy when they have to say 'my parents are two men, or two women'. Their personality, their stability is put at risk," he said the Vatican condemns Spain's gay marriage law