The Pope’s Tone Softens — But The Vatican Is Still Fighting LGBT Rights Around The World

[DonViejo]

The battleground is the United Nations. “Today, the nature of the family is confused by so many … It is scandalous,” said the Holy See’s representative to the U.N. amid negotiations last month in New York.

posted on April 2, 2014 at 11:38am EDT

J. Lester Feder
BuzzFeed Staff

NEW YORK — Pope Francis’ softening tone on LGBT issues does not appear to have been matched by a meaningful shift in policy in the realm of international diplomacy.

In two recent confrontations at United Nations headquarters in New York, the Vatican — a “permanent observer” with the almost all the same right that states have to participate in debates and closed negotiations — has held a hard line in fighting to preserve a narrow definition of the word “family” in international law. (It is one of only two entities with this status; the other is Palestine.)
“I cannot see a change [in Holy See diplomacy] that has trickled down” since Francis became pope, said one diplomat from a country that supports LGBT rights who asked to speak anonymously to discuss closed negotiations.
LGBT activists and supportive diplomats have been squaring off against Vatican diplomats at the U.N. as long as LGBT rights under international law have been at issue. And under Francis, the Holy See continues to play its longstanding role: inspiring opposition to LGBT rights proposals, crafting strategy, and articulating principles of international law to justify their exclusion.

On March 19, the Holy See co-sponsored a public event at the U.N. headquarters in New York with Belarus, Qatar, Indonesia, and the Arizona-based group Family Watch International, which describes its mission as promoting “the family based on marriage between a man and a woman as the societal unit that provides the best outcome for men, women and children.” It was focused on making the case that the family should be prioritized in economic development strategy, but the head of the Holy See’s U.N. mission, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, was explicit that concerns about the definition of “the family” were also very much on his mind.


more
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/despite-popes-softening-tone-the-vatican-remains-a-key-oppon

[Bluenorthwest]

1. This Pope and his Church are defined by the actions of that Church's followers in Uganda

along with the silence of Francis and the complicit nature of his gay baiting teachings over the years and those of his clerical subordinates. There is nothing that mitigates the evil they are engaged in. Nothing.