Rome, Italy, Jul 1, 2013 / 14:42 pm
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, an Italian cardinal said that recognizing gay unions as "marriages" ignores nature and may yield effects that cannot be entirely anticipated.
"The fundamental structures of our existence would be overturned, with the destructive effects that we can imagine, but not entirely foresee," Cardinal Camillo Ruini, vicar general emeritus of the Diocese of Rome, said in a June 28 interview with Italian daily Il Foglio.
"We think, in concrete terms, of what can be a family in which there is no longer a father, a mother, and children who have a father and a mother," he added in the interview, which was noted by Vatican analyst Sandro Magister of L'Espresso July 1.
Two days before the interview, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, and that the federal government must recognize same-sex "marriages" if they are accepted by individual states. This means that "married" gay couples are entitled to the same federal benefits as married straight couples.