The Vatican has released the document “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender in education” to address issues surrounding sexuality and gender identity, PBS reported.
“Male and Female”—released during LGBT Pride Month—rejects the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisting on the sexual “complementarity” of men and women to make babies.
Not surprisingly, LGBT Catholics have denounced the document. In a press release, New Ways Ministry called the Vatican’s work “a harmful tool that will be used to oppress and harm not only transgender people, but lesbian, gay, bisexual people, too. The document associates sexual and gender minorities with libertine sexuality, a gross misrepresentation of the lives of LGBT people which perpetuates and encourages hatred, bigotry, and violence against them.
“The document, from the Congregation for Catholic Education, will confuse those who sincerely struggle with questions of gender identity and sexual orientation. Such confusion leads to self-harm, addiction, and even suicide. The misinformation the document contains will cause families to reject their children, and it will increase alienation of LGBT people from the Church.”
The PBS article is at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/lgbtq-catholics-denounce-vaticans-document-on-gender-identity.