In UK RC Church rejects gay parents claims

The Roman Catholic Church has reacted angrily to comments endorsing gay parenthood from a charity with strong links to the Church.

Terry Prendergast of Marriage Care, which is partly funded by the Church, said there was no evidence children were harmed by having same-sex parents.

But the organisation representing Catholic bishops said children need parental role models of both genders.

It said Mr Prendergast, a former priest who has since married, was wrong.

Mr Prendergast made his comments to a gathering of gay Roman Catholics in Leicester.

He told the audience at the Quest conference that same-sex families, along with single and cohabiting parents, suffered discrimination and denigration because they fell short of the Vatican’s definition of what constituted a real family.

The views expressed by Terry Prendergast about the definition of family and marriage are clearly not a reflection of the Church’s teaching, nor those of the Bishops’ Conference

Catholic Bishops’ Conference

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Instead, he said, they should be held up as role models and an advert for Catholicism.

Mr Prendergast also claimed that there was no evidence to show that children of same-sex parents suffered in any way, and that the elements that made for successful child-rearing were stable relationships.

But the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales has insisted that Mr Prendergast is wrong.

Pastoral response

In a statement, the organisation acknowledged that although it was difficult to define what a family was, the Church still believed that stability for children came from having parents of opposite genders who could provide different role models.

See Church rejects gay parents claims

BBC News

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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-uk-rc-chur…

Concerns mount over Ohio adoption rules

(Cincinnati, Ohio) Butler County commissioners have asked the county prosecutor to review a new rule by the Children Services Agency that could be used to discriminate against gay and unmarried couples. Butler County is in suburban Cincinnati.

The county run adoption service allows caseworkers to give preference to legally married opposite-sex …