Bishops Bring Concerns about Same-Sex Unions to YouTube

WASHINGTON—The U.S. bishops have taken their concerns about same-sex unions to YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site. Both videos are available on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_81zsW6U8 http://www.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. bishops have taken their concerns about same-sex unions to YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site.

Both videos are available on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_81zsW6U8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwCAXQhqd-Q
https://www.usccb.org/bishops/marriagedefense.shtml

The English-language video features Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage. Archbishop José Gomez of San Antonio, chair of the bishops' Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, speaks on the Spanish-language video.

The USCCB seeks "to promote and protect marriage for the gift that it is and for the blessings that only it can bring to the world. For this reason," the bishops state, "we come forward in defense of marriage."

"Certain groups and individuals are trying to make same-sex unions the equivalent of marriage," they state also. "This is a false idea being proposed and, in some cases, imposed by a minority. This is nothing less than the radical redefinition marriage -- denying the truth that it is exclusively the union of a man and a woman."

The bishops warn that if successful, "this effort of redefining marriage to include same-sex unions will bring confusion to what marriage actually means. This confusion could spread and have enormous legal consequences for the rearing of children, public education, employment, and religious freedom. Children would be forced to learn that marriage is merely one kind of loving relationship among many. Churches would be prevented from witnessing to and teaching about the necessary and singular role of love between a man and a woman."

"Same-sex unions and marriage are completely different realities," they state also. "Reaffirming the traditional understanding of marriage is neither discrimination nor the denial of rights. Like all people, homosexual persons have the right to be treated with respect and to live in peace with the support of their loved ones. But it is to the benefit of all members of society that the institution of marriage be preserved as the relationship of a man and a woman that serves the common good in a distinct way. Society needs marriage in order to establish and sustain that basic unit of society in which men and women love each other and transmit life to their children who are the fruit of that love."

The video is the latest in a series of activities to emerge from the Defense of Marriage Ad Hoc Committee. The Committee assists the bishops and State Catholic Conferences in education, catechesis, public policy advocacy and communications strategies and their implications for society and the culture.