Canção News: The Best Way to be Informed

Kelen Galvan
Canção Nova News with agencies

More than 50 thousand people from all over Brazil, the majority Catholics and Evangelicals, met in Brasilia this past Wednesday, June 1st to participate in the Walk for the Family in front of the National Congress. The mobilization wanted to protest against the Law Project (PL) 122/06 which criminalizes homophobia in the country.

“This project can transform into a criminal whatever person or institution that has a position against the homosexual incentive and practice” explained the Episcopal Vicar of the Archdiocese of Brasília, Fr. Paulo Sérgio Casteliano.

The priest explains that if the law was approved, the person does not have “the right to think different” and can be imprisoned unjustly, with a false accusation of homophobia.

He gave the example: “If you contract a worker that has this sexual orientation and after a time of service, he demonstrated that he is sloppy or irresponsible and was fired for a just cause, it is enough that he says that he is being persecuted because of his sexual orientation and this law will go to criminalize immediately the employer,who can be put in prison without right to bail.”

According to the organizers of the march and the leader of the Assembly of God, Pastor Silas Malafaia, the law is unconstitutional and against the family. “It is a shameful law that pretends to protect homosexual practice, therefore, its real intention is to put a gag in society and to criminalize those that are against homosexual behavior. With this law they want to touch the families, religious questions and freedom of expression.”

The position of the Church does not change

Recently, with the approval of homosexual unions by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the Auxiliary Bishop of Rio De Janeiro, Dom Antonio Augusto, explained that the Church does not discriminate against homosexuals, but wants that [the Church’s opinion] on this issue be respected in this position of which marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman.

“Each institution has their own rights and procedures. It is not considered discrimination [on the part of the Church]”, stressed the Bishop upon recording that the Church already pronounced on this theme through the documents of the Holy See, as the “Letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons“, distributed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
In an excerpt from this letter, the Holy See affirmed that the act of denouncing injustices against homosexual persons cannot drive the affirmation of that homosexual condition, and pointed to the consequences of re-enforcing such an attitude: “When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.”

The document stressed also that the “The Church can never be so callous. It is true that her clear position cannot be revised by pressure from civil legislation or the trend of the moment.”

translated from Portuguese