ABC News reports:
"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," [Pope Benedict] said.
Actually, there is nothing about gay marriage that is claimed to be "true liberation." Instead, it's simply a matter of equal treatment under the law. Gays should be allowed to marry because civil marriage is a fundamental right in modern liberal democracies. Gays should be allowed to marry because they shouldn't be treated as second-class citizens.
The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Vatican's doctrinal department for more than two decades, said "pseudo freedoms" such as gay marriages were based on what he called the "banalisation of the human body" and of man himself.
Actually, gay marriage is no less a "pseudo-freedom" than any other marriage. Gay marriage may not be a coherent category within the context of Catholic doctrine, but the fact of the matter is that liberal democracies are no limited by the boundaries of Catholic doctrine.
Everything that Pope Benedict XVI says about gay marriage can also be said about divorce — he himself even makes the connection in the first quoted paragraph above, though it's unlikely that any media reporting on this will notice and bring people's attention to this. Catholic condemnation of divorce is no reason to make divorce illegal, harder to get , or even just limited to those situations allowed by the Vatican. So why should gay marriage be any different?
"Matrimony and the family are not, in reality, a casual sociological construction or the fruit of specific historic and economic situations," he said.
Indeed, that's actually true — and it's why limiting marriage in the way he wants is so wrong. Marriage and family are products of many different historic and economic situations, leading to the creation of many different forms of marriage and family. There is no single, "natural" form of marriage and family.
In a clear reference to contraception, the Pope said couples went against the nature of love itself when they "systematically shut off" the possibility of "the gift of life."
I guess this means that couples unable to produce children are also going against the "nature of love?" Nonsense. What does he know about what constitutes the proper way to organize a marriage?
"The greatest expression of freedom is not the search for pleasure," he said, adding that society seemed to want to tear down the moral goalposts he said were needed for its future.
Pope Benedict XVI may be implying that childless marriages and gay marriages are only about a search for pleasures; if so, then he has effectively demonstrated that he really doesn't know what he is talking about and really doesn't understand the people entering into such unions. He has, to put it simply, eliminated himself as someone with an informed and educated opinion on the subject.
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