Anthony Apuron, the Archbishop of Guam, has finally broken his silence and expressed his views on Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson’s recent assertion that Guam’s public servants cannot reject marriage applications submitted by same-sex couples. Apuron laid out his official stance in Umantuna Si Yu’os, the newsletter of a local archdiocese insisting that an acceptance of homosexuality was fundamentally antithetical to his Catholic beliefs. Apuron describes the very concept of being gay as an “intrinsically moral evil” and insists that the only way to deal with homosexuality on a wide scale is to think of it as a disorder to be treated.
At the core of Apuron’s beliefs is the contention that marriage and family, instead of the law, exist as the focal point of modern society. Allowing gays to marry, he argues, would fundamentally alter the definition of marriage and subsequently pose a significant threat to people on a large scale.
“[LGBT-supporters] are trying to shift the problem only to the religious sphere but that is not the case here,” Apuron said in an interview he gave to the AP that he republished in the newsletter. “Same-sex marriage is not only against the faith, but goes against Right Reason that pursues the common good of society, and is an anthropological reduction.”
“Scripture is very clear when it says: God created male and female. There are anthropological, physical, and psychological differences that allows a complimentary unity. The sexual differences have a meaning; sexuality is not only biological but personal; it carries a language.
The body has a language, has grammar, has a synthesis, a truth. Man and woman are called to communion to complement each other, what St. John Paul II called: Communion of Persons. Same-sex unions, completely and totally breaks these meanings, destroys the language, and only generates anthropological, juridical and ethical confusion.”
In other Guam news, Gov. Eddie Calvo is continuing to hedge on the issue of same-sex marriage despite the attorney general's legal memorandum. This has led Lambda Legal to issue a press release stating “Let us be clear: Every same–sex couple in the states that form part of the Ninth Circuit can marry and have been able to do so for months."
