Catholic Church

The UK's Daily Mail says the Roman Catholic Church is pulling out of three of its top adoption agencies because it cannot comply with new gay equality laws.

In 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a statement titled, “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination”.

It said:

“The discovery that a family member has homosexual tendencies can pose a serious concern for parents, siblings, and spouses. The Church reaches out to them, seeking to help ensure that the bonds of love among the family members are intact.”

A married lesbian couple was turned away from a Cape Town hospital and told, "we don't help people like you", when they visited the facility for fertility treatment.

Vincent Pallotti Hospital is a member of Life Healthcare - one of the largest private hospital groups in South Africa.

After Congress ordered states in 1997 to move faster to find more families willing to adopt, child-welfare organizations joined together to get legislatures to allow any qualified parent to adopt, irrespective of sexual orientation.

Costa Rican lawmakers proposed legalizing same-sex civil unions in a bill introduced on Tuesday, but said it may be difficult to pass the plan in the strongly Roman Catholic country.

Under the proposal, same-sex couples would be granted marital-type rights like bereavement leave, inheritance and power over medical decisions. It stops short of recognizing same-sex marriage or allowing adoption by same-sex couples.

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A landmark gay rights bill passed by Colombia's Congress last week was thrown out when a group of senators used a procedural vote to change their minds.

The bill, backed by President Alvaro Uribe but opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, would grant gay couples living together for more than two years the same social security and estate inheritance guarantees as heterosexuals in common-law marriages.

It would have been the first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.

Effective immediately, the Vatican demands senior members of the Catholic Church "may not admit to the seminary and Holy Orders those who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture. The above persons find themselves, in fact, in a situation that gravely obstructs a right way of relating with men and women."

Futhermore, a would-be priest must be turned away if he "practices homosexuality or presents profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies."