Hate Group Leader Attends Gathering at the Vatican
Tony Perkins, director of the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council (FRC), will be attending an interreligious conference on “traditional marriage” (Nov. 17-19) hosted by the Vatican, about a month after a Synod of Bishops on the family issued an initial draft report that included calls for greater openness to LGBT people and divorced Roman Catholics who had remarried. The paragraphs were removed after conservative backlash.
This latest event is being co-hosted by the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.
The gathering, titled “On the Complementarity of Man and Woman,” will feature more than 30 speakers who represent 23 countries and 14 religious faith traditions and hammers home the notion that marriage is a strictly heterosexual affair and thus, by extension, only families that have one man and one woman are valid.
Anti-LGBT groups have been pushing this idea for years for years, whether through claims they only want to uphold “traditional marriage” or by demonizing LGBT people, as the FRC has done for years, referring to them as promiscuous and prone to disease and falsely claiming that LGBT people are sexual predators interested in children.
Tony Perkins is also well-known for his anti-LGBT statements, including falsely linking homosexuality to pedophilia, claiming that gay parents are bad for children, and calling homosexuality “destructive” and promoting discredited reparative therapy to make gay people heterosexual.
Others attending the colloquium include Nicholas Okoh, the Anglican archbishop of Nigeria, who has called homosexuality a manifestation of the devil and Pastor Rick Warren, who said in 2008 that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. Warren has since backpedaled, and claimed that he can be “tolerant” and “accepting” without being “approving” of homosexuality, though in 2012 he likened homosexuality to arsenic.
Since Pope Francis I was elected to the high office, he has been at least moderate on some hardline doctrines and has replaced conservative church officials (see here, here) with moderates as well as demoted some.
The Pope also has been seemingly conciliatory about so-called “nontraditional” relationships. Last year, he famously said, “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord? You can’t marginalize these people.” But when asked about civil unions in March, he stated that, “We have to look at the different cases and evaluate them in their variety.”
Perhaps to clarify confusion about Catholic doctrine that came out of the recent Synod, the Pope’s comments this morning to the conference certainly appear to ensure that LGBT people are, indeed, marginalized from marriage.
“It is fitting,” he said, “that you have gathered here in this international colloquium to explore the complementarity of man and woman. This complementarity is a root of marriage and family.”
The Pope added his hopes that the “colloquium will be an inspiration to all who seek to support and strengthen the union of man and woman in marriage as a unique, natural, fundamental and beautiful good for persons, communities, and whole societies.”
