Gay Critics Are Victims, Too: Vatican

Tells UN stigmatization is violation of 'fundamental human rights'
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 24, 2011 6:36 AM CDT
Gay Critics Are Victims, Too: Vatican
Pope Benedict XVI waves to pilgrims as he arrives for his weekly general audience on March 23, 2011 at St Peter's square at The Vatican.   (Getty Images/AFP PHOTO / CHRISTOPHE SIMON)

It’s not just gays who suffer discrimination, the Vatican says: Those who decry homosexual behavior are stigmatized for their beliefs, and it amounts to a violation of their "fundamental human rights," a Vatican official told the UN Human Rights Council Tuesday. "People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behavior between people of the same sex," said the archbishop. "When they express their moral beliefs ... they are stigmatized, and worse— they are vilified, and prosecuted."

The Vatican condemns legal discrimination and violence "that is targeted against people because of their sexual feelings and thoughts, or sexual behaviors," he said in a statement reported by the Religion News Service via Huffington Post. But there’s a “consensus between societies that certain kinds of sexual behaviors must be forbidden by law,” such as pedophilia and incest, he said. (More United Nations stories.)

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