Mr. Anthony Gomes on Redefining moral values

The US capital, Washington DC, is the latest jurisdiction to liberalise the national moral code by permitting same-sex marriages along with five other states in the Union. Similarly with the marijuana issue, same sex-marriages are not recognised by the federal government and are prohibited by the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act that defines marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Paradoxically, however, same sex-marriage is legal in three states - the result of court rulings - and in two other states through legislative vote. Conversely, 30 other states have passed constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriages. The issue remains highly divisive in the US.

President Obama is reported to be personally against same-sex marriage, but says that individual states should be left to decide as they think fit, in accordance with the Defence of Marriage Act. Internationally contracted same-sex marriages are recognised in five states. It is not yet clear if Washington DC would eventually grant similar recognition. So far, same-sex marriages are recognised in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain and Sweden. Twenty other countries recognise civil unions and registered partnerships that usually provide the same legal consequences of marriage. Same-sex marriages are declared illegal in the UK by the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act that states a marriage is void if the parties are not respectively men and women. However, civil partnerships that provide the same consequences of marriage are legal under the 2005 Civil Partnerships Act.

Redefining matrimonial characteristics, especially mental and moral which distinguish marriage as a union of one man and one woman, has deeply disturbed Christians universally. Redefinition by legislatures also raises the related controversial issue of homosexuality that is also the subject of worldwide debate. In 2000, the Netherlands legalised homosexual marriage, allowing same-sex couples to adopt children that incurred the condemnation of the Catholic Church, the world's largest Christian religion, which called the law "a serious affront on human dignity and the family". Pope John Paul II criticised any law "which would do harm to the family, striking at its unity and its indissolubility, or which would give legal validity to a union between persons, including those of the same sex who demand the same rights as the family founded upon marriage between a man and a woman".

It was also reported by the Vatican newspaper that "the Catholic Church contests these revolutionary innovations, which in the name of freedom, seek to legitimise a union regarded by the universal consciousness as going against nature". The Catholic Church definitively states: "Since homosexual relations cannot reflect the complementarity of the sexes intended by God and openness to the transmission of life; they are contrary to the creative designs of God. A person who engages in homosexual behaviour acts immorally. The Catholic tradition teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disorder. Under no circumstances can they be approved".

Generally, female same-sex relationships do not attract the same degree of opposition as compared with male interactions. First, lesbianism is not illegal as Queen Victoria declined to accept the inclusion of females in the act prohibiting homosexuality. Further, lesbianism is widely considered to be among the safest sexual experiences due to the absence of penetrative intercourse, and reduced risk of STD transmission. The elimination of a pregnancy risk is also a supporting factor. Morally, however, lesbian relationships still carry the stigma of homosexuality.

In Jamaica same-sex marriages and other forms of same-sex relationships are prohibited. Male homosexual relationships specifically identified in Section 76 of the Offences against the Person Act, reflects the contents of the original Buggery Act of 1533 which is reported to be the first ever legislation against sodomy, that was defined as an unnatural sexual act against the will of God and man, which included anal penetration and bestiality.

Prime Minister Golding has forcibly denounced same-sex marriages thus: "I make no apology in saying decisively and emphatically that the Government of Jamaica remains irrevocably opposed to the recognition, legitimisation or acceptance of same-sex marriages or same-sex unions." Also in 2008 Attorney at law Shirley Richards reported that the Declaration on Human Rights and Sexual Orientation, tabled in the United Nations, sought to expand the existing human rights concept to include "sexual orientation". The Declaration was not supported by Jamaica. Simultaneously, a contrary proposal stated that the Declaration was an "attempt to introduce to the UN, notions that have no legal foundation in any human rights instrument". There appears to be no UN consensus on including sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights. "Obviously, the power brokers at the UN are hell-bent on imposing a new version of human rights on the rest of the unwilling world. It is an attempt to assert the moral equivalence of all forms of sexual preferences and to harm moral and sound discernment, all in the name of 'human rights'."

Pope Benedict XVI has issued a caution to deviants that the gender theory blurred the distinction between men and women and could thus lead to "self-destruction" of the human race. "Saving humanity from homosexual and transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rain forest from destruction. Rain forests deserve, yes, our protection, but the human being does not deserve less". Sound advice in a rapidly changing world, which appears focused on the dissolution of all forms of Christian morality and traditional values.