Fridae

Gay activists appealed to Manila Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin to stop raising antigay sentiments that is against the policy of the Catholic Church to promote equality and condemn discrimination after pronouncements made at the World Meeting of Families conference in Manila last Sunday.

At the conference, which gay rights activists have been barred from attending, Cardinal Sin said that Christian family values were being "put into question by proponents of same-sex marriages," the BBC reports.

But Oscar Atadero, spokesman for gay rights group Progay Philippines, said that the attack by Cardinal Sin was unwarranted. He told the BBC that family life was central to most Asians, gay or not. The church, he said, should be uniting families, not dividing them.

"We do not agree with Cardinal Sin's allegations that we are calling into question the existence of the family or staging a rebellion, since we are merely asserting that we deserve the same love and legal rights that other children of God have. We never advocated the abolition of any kind of family except if some are founded on hate, abuse and domestic violence."

He added that the Church should stop blaming homosexuality for the decline of families worldwide but instead attack the real scourge of global capitalism that demands even smaller units of family or none at all.

"Hungry for superprofits, monopolies now require single young men and women who can be smuggled to any region that needs sex workers, caregivers and computer programmers without them having to bring along their old parents and children," Atadero told ABS-CBN news.

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The Cardinal's condemnation of the gay community have angered gay rights proponents who highlighted that some 83 percent of Filipinos call themselves devout Catholics, and the Church plays a paramount role in most people's daily lives.

Speaking from the Vatican on Sunday, Pope John Paul II delivered his strongest condemnation yet on same-sex relationships, coinciding with the ending of the church's world conference on families held in the Philippines - a meeting dominated by exhortations from church officials against divorce, abortion and same-sex marriages.

The Pope warned against "egotistical," "inauthentic" and "caricatured" versions of the family. He stressed that marriage "between a man and woman is the only true one in God's eyes."

In defining what he meant by family, he said: "It's certainly not that inauthentic one based on individual egoism. Experience has shown that such a 'caricature' has no future and cannot give future to any society."

Although homosexuality is generally well tolerated in larger cities in the Philippines, there are still widespread cases of discrimination. Laws in Philippines do not specifically prohibit ceremonial unions of same-sex couples but they are not granted any legal recognition.