Catholic diocese rededicates to teaching "authentic" marriage {Ecumenical thread}

North Country Public radio ^ | 6/28/2011 | NCPR

[Cronos]

The Catholic Church leads opposition to New York's new law legalizing same sex marriage. In a statement over the weekend, Bishop Terry LaValley of the Diocese of Ogdensburg called the law "deeply disappointing and troubling."

The statement calls marriage between a man and a woman the only "authentic" marriage.

David Sommerstein spoke yesterday with Bishop LaValley about the new law and about his parishioners reaction to his statement.

"The statement was not issued in any way to hurt, to alienate or in any way anger any of our sisters and brothers," LaValley said. "It was merely a reaffirmation of the constant teaching of the church when it comes to marriage and our disappointment in the recent legislation."

Parishioner reaction to the statement was divided, but LaValley said overall they were affirming.

In the statement, LaValley said the Catholic Church teaches to "always treat our homosexual sisters and brothers with respect, dignity and love," but marriage is for the purpose of raising a child between one man and one woman.

"We certainly believe that from the moment we are conceived in our mother's womb, we are all equal. I'm no better than anybody else, heterosexual or homosexual. But there are differences," LaValley said. "And with the differences come different expectations, different things that society expects a person can do or can't do.

"I'm just concerned that saying that we are opposed to redefining marriage is somehow saying they are not equal, and that's not true. That's the reason why we say it's fundamental, what marriage is. That's not something the church defined, that's something even the culture has defined for us through the ages."

LaValley said culture evolves, but that this evolution - if that's what you want to call it - is not healthy. "I think even your social scientist agrees with the church; marriage has an essential role in the stability of society because it's about adults and children as the natural way to bring a man and a woman together," he said.

LaValley also said the family of a homosexual couple cannot be stable because "that dynamic of a mother and a father is lacking... To define marriage based on their sexual preference is wrong."

[Cronos]

To define marriage based on their sexual preference is wrong.

[johngrace]

THIS IS A FARCE
The famous study, The Male Couple, conducted by two homosexuals, one a psychologist and the other a psychiatrist, found that of the 156 couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity.8 Those couples that had maintained a relationship for more then five years were unable to maintain sexual fidelity. Although the study found that close to a third of the sample lived together longer than ten years, they also found that “The majority of couples...and all the couples together longer then five years, were not continuously sexually exclusive with each other.” On one hand, they bragged that they, “dispelled the myth that gay male relationships do not last” (p. 285), but when gay couples lived together for longer periods of time, their relationship eventually became “open.” An earlier study conducted during the 1970s found that 75% of gay men over age 40 experienced no relationship that lasted more than one year. Only 8% of the gay men studied ever had relationships that lasted more than three years.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6902

[Cronos]

i think its related to society’s acceptance of “living together before marriage” for heterosexual couples. A general moral decay