Catholic teaching on gay marriage centers around its understanding of what marriage is in the affirmative, along with its understanding of homosexuality.
Marriage is unique and exclusive.
The debate whether the state should recognize gay marriage is a peculiar one, mostly on the grounds that no society has ever officially experimented with this basic building block of civilization; but also because many states have civil union laws that already provide gay couples with all the rights that traditional married couples now enjoy.
As a result, many observers have correctly noted that the push for gay marriage is no longer about “rights,” but more about legitimizing a sexual lifestyle that Judeo-Christian societies have always considered, if not immoral, at least something that could never be sanctioned.
Here is part of what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches on marriage:
1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”
And on the Catechisms on homosexuality:
2357 “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
