Dutch foreign minister criticises Pope’s anti-gay rhetoric
The Dutch foreign minister has criticised Pope Benedict XVI for his opposition to equal marriage and warns the Catholic leader that everyone “is unique”.
Irish Times reports Frans Timmermans, a former diplomat, responded in unusually strong terms to the Pope’s Christmas speech in which he denounced equal marriage as destroying the very “essence of the human creature”.
The Pope also quoted the chief rabbi of France in saying the global campaign for marriage equality was an “attack” on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.
In response, Mr Timmermans said: “If every person is unique… then why should that unique person not have the right to stand up for his or her own sexual orientation?”
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise equal marriage.
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