By Marty Logan
MONTREAL, Aug 8 2003 (IPS)

Gay rights activists and some of the world’s most entrenched institutions appear poised for more clashes following recent decisions that signal a growing liberal attitude towards gays and lesbians in many regions.

Some Anglican Church officials continue to condemn this week’s decision by the Episcopalian Church in the United States to elect a gay bishop for the state of New Hampshire.

"We cannot be in fellowship with them when they violate the explicit scripture that the Anglican Church subscribes to. We’d counsel they reconsider the decision. It’s outrageous and uncalled for," said the Very Rev. Peter Karanja, provost of All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Episcopalian Church is one of 38 self-governing national churches within the Anglican Communion, which claims 77 million members.

Earlier, Bishop Lim Cheng Ean, head of the Anglican Church of West Malaysia, said bishops from the Communion’s nine-nation Southeast Asian province may discuss severing ties with the U.S. church at a meeting next week, according to media reports.

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman," U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters at a press conference 10 days ago, one month after the U.S. Supreme Court in Texas struck down the state’s sodomy law, calling it "demeaning" to homosexuals.

Even in Canada, which has become a beacon for gay rights advocates after courts in two of its provinces recognised the right to same-sex marriage in May and June, Prime Minister Jean Chretien reportedly faces a revolt from his backbenchers after announcing the national Parliament will adopt a law granting same-sex marriage.

Leading opposition to same-sex unions, which are now also legal in Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands, has been the Catholic Church, which, on the same day that Bush announced his position, reaffirmed its opposition to the marriages, terming them "deviant behaviour".

The Vatican’s complete rejection of homosexuality is spelled out in a document released earlier this year – the ‘Lexicon on Ambiguous and Colloquial Terms About Family Life and Ethical Questions’.

The Lexicon describes homosexuality as a pathology or illness that ”runs counter to the social link based on the masculine and feminine identities”.

The 867-page book was written on the recommendation of Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

The Lexicon says that a powerful lobby group has successfully pushed for recognition of gay rights.

”The argument most widely used in this lobbying” for legal recognition of unions between people of the same sex and their right to adopt children, is that of ‘homophobia’, ”a term created by homosexual associations to stigmatise anyone who questions and does not accept the simplification and ‘normalisation’ of homosexuality”.

Thus, says the Lexicon, ”an entire system has been created to give society – and heterosexuals in particular – a guilt complex” and ”any criticism or reflection on homosexuality virtually becomes blasphemy, comparable to a crime: the crime of homophobia”.

Those who hold that ”some people are born heterosexual and others homosexual” are at the best naïve, adds the Lexicon. ”It has never been demonstrated that this tendency has a genetic origin", it says, adding, ”there are only two sexual identities: male and female; there is no homosexual identity".

"Homosexuality belongs to the group of sexual tendencies, which are numerous and varied in the human psyche,” such as, ”voyeurism, exhibitionism, sadomasochism, transsexualism, pederasty" . which means that ”homosexuality cannot be anything but a private problem”.

But not all churches are so vehemently opposed to making room for gays. For example, the House of Bishops of the Church of England has just approved a report, ‘Being Human’, reports the ‘Economist’ magazine.

The document ”encourages what it calls ‘covenanted relationships’ – a phrase which both liberals and conservatives are seeing as a step towards church approval of committed homosexual relationships".

Yet, pressure from the Roman Catholic Church prevented the Mexico City Legislative Assembly earlier this year from enacting a statute creating ”Sociedades de Convivencia" or domestic partnerships, which, among other things, would have given legal status to homosexual couples.

Catholic Church authorities in the rest of Latin America are also opposed to initiatives that would provide legal status to same-sex couples.

But in a few countries in the region, initiatives have begun to emerge that would grant marriage-like legal status to homosexual couples.

Civil unions are already legally recognised in the city of Buenos Aires and the southern province of Río Negro in Argentina, while bills have been introduced in the Brazilian and Chilean parliaments.

The Argentine Homosexual Community, promoter of the Buenos Aires initiative, called the move a big step forward. But the group’s president, César Cigliutti, noted in a conversation with IPS earlier this year that it is only "a small recognition of our rights."

"For us – gays and lesbians – the goal is total equality of civil rights with respect to those of heterosexuals, which means progress must be made towards civil matrimony, adoption, and inheritance rights," stated Cigliutti, who has been an activist for the last 18 years.

Gay rights activists say a recent decision by the Supreme Court in the U.S. state of Texas could have a wide impact.

The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court nullified state anti-sodomy laws, which had been used to ”brand gay and lesbian people as criminals, as second-class citizens in this country; and now that sodomy laws have been declared unconstitutional, that can no longer happen," said Ken Choe, staff attorney for the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Anti-gay forces had even used such laws to prevent gay parents from getting custody of their children, Choe told IPS. But the court’s decision ”has really taken away a pretext that opponents of gay and lesbian equality had been hanging their hats on for so many years.”

Choe believes that right-wing forces led by Bush have reacted to the Texas decision by making opposition to same-sex marriage their ”last stand” to prevent recognition of gay rights.

Sean Cahill of the American Civil Liberties Union says the president is also using the issue to deflect attention from questions about his conduct of the Iraq war, and over a faltering economy.

Though Congress has blocked progress on gay rights over the past decade, ”They’re behind the times, and on the issue of non-discrimination they’re not only out of touch with the American people, they’re actually out of touch with Republican voters because a majority of Republican voters (56 percent) supports non-discrimination laws that cover gay people," added Cahill in an interview.

Choe sees the same tendency among the general public. "I do think that it’s not an accident that a number of these issues are being actively debated in public discourse now. I think that there really has been over the past several years a real shift culturally in our country."

"I think 10 years ago if you looked at the polls on same-sex marriage it wasn’t even close, it was 70-30 or something like that,” he adds.

”Nowadays what we’re finding is that it’s sort of 50-50 . there is no clear sentiment anymore I don’t think on this issue in this country, and it’s changing every day, and I think changing in one direction – the direction favourable to gay and lesbian couples."

*With reporting by Ricardo Grassi in Rome, Gustavo Gonzalez in Santiago and Marcela Valente in Buenos Aires.

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