Last week's historic LGBT wins made clear that the United States has turned a corner in terms of marriage equality, finally coming out victorious against conservative religious powers that want to maintain institutionalized discrimination.
But some American anti-gay activists still think they can turn back time — and so too does the Vatican, which used its semi-official newspaper to claim it's going to come out on top.
…According to an article in L'Osservatore Romano by historian Lucetta
Scaraffia, the church has emerged in recent years as the only
institution on the global stage that's capable of resisting the forces
that threaten to "break up … human society."…
"You could say that the church, on this level, is bound to lose,” writes Scaraffia. “But this is not the case.”
According
to the historian, the church's fight on moral issues such as gay
marriage and abortion has drawn support and “admiration” from many
non-Catholics.
Scaraffia went on to argue that political battles over gay adoption, abortion and other policies the Vatican deems sinful aren't about "progress," but about "the loss of one of the founding freedoms of the
modern State, religious liberty."
Today that same paper ran another piece that "sought to frame itself as the lone voice of courage in opposing initiatives to give same-sex couples legal recognition," says the Washington Post.
And the Vatican's editors even worked their quixotic belief into a report on President Obama's re-election: "If Obama wants to be the president of all
American people, he must eventually acknowledge the requests that are rising
with strength from the religious communities — the Catholic Church being the
first in line — in favour of the family, life and religious liberty."
Meanwhile, the aforementioned article on America's waning religious right noted, "Solid majorities of Catholics supported same-sex marriage, said Dr. Jones, the pollster."
