Same-sex marriage and the Catholic church’s views on it are likely to change, says US Democratic Vice-presidential candidate and devout Catholic, Tim Kaine.
His comments were made on Saturday at the US annual national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign.
“My support for marriage equality now — my full, complete, unconditional support for marriage equality — is at odds with the current doctrine of the church that I still attend.
“But I think that’s going to change, too … And I think it’s going to change because my church also teaches me about a creator in the first chapter of Genesis who surveys the entire world including mankind and said it is very good, it is very good,” he said.
“Pope Francis famously said, ‘who am I to judge?’ And to that I want to add: Who am I to challenge God for the beautiful diversity of the human family?” Kaine said. “I think we’re supposed to celebrate it, not challenge it.”
Kaine’s deep Catholic faith has remained a tremendous part of his life, and when he ran for Virginia’s governor in 2005, he campaigned on opposing same-sex marriage.
Since then, he danced around the issue for several years and then ultimately publicly supported equal marriage rights for same-sex couples as Virginia’s senator in 2013.
Kaine said that while he signed an executive order soon after taking office as governor that barred discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation, as a devout Catholic “I believed that marriage was something different.
“I knew gay couples as friends, in my neighborhood. I knew them to be great neighbors. I knew them to be great parents to beautiful kids. And I saw them struggle with antiquated and even hostile adoption laws.
“But I had a difficult time reconciling that reality with what I knew to be true from the evidence of my own life, with the teachings of the faith that I had been raised in for my entire life,” he said.
Source
- NBC News
- Images:heatst.com
