CNA Staff, Sep 11, 2020 / 13:20 pm
A South Korean bill banning discrimination across 26 different categories has hesitant support from the Catholic bishops of the country, who caution that it could also lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage as well as "reverse discrimination" against traditional understandings of marriage, family and gender.
"[W]e agree on [the bill's] primary purpose to ban any types of discrimination and hope that it can prevent the abuses of human rights," the Catholic Bishop's Conference of Korea (CBCK) said in a statement this week, reported on in The Korea Times.
The bishops, quoting Pope Francis' encyclical Amoris Laetitia, added that "every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while 'every sign of unjust discrimination' is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence."
But while the bishops said they are against discrimination, they also cautioned that the new bill could be interpreted and applied broadly, effectively legalizing same-sex marriage and promoting transgender ideology, as well as "the destruction of human life, artificial conception, selection of life or death based on genetics and the allowance of sexual minorities to adopt children."