Italian Gays Protest
Pope's Stance on Marriage
By REUTERS, from the
NYTimes on the Web, January 13, 2007
VATICAN CITY -- About 150
Italian gays demonstrated in the Vatican on Saturday against Pope Benedict's
opposition to gay marriage, on the anniversary of the protest suicide of a gay
man in St Peter's Square nine years ago.
Men and women from the Italian gay association Arcigay and other groups waved
rainbow flags and banners saying "No to the Taliban! No to the Vatican!,"
according to a Reuters witness.
Other banners urged Italy to offer legal recognition to gay and unmarried
couples, an issue dividing the current centre-left government and stoking
tension between leftists and the Vatican.
Pope Benedict has said in recent addresses that such changes would support
"those ruinous theories that strip all relevance from the masculinity and
femininity of the human being."
Some Arcigay members laid flowers at the spot in St Peter's Square where writer
Alfredo Ormando doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in 1998, in
protest at the Vatican's stance against gays. He died of his burns nine
days later.
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