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Argentina, Uganda and the Future of Conservative Christianity

Argentina, Uganda and the Future of Conservative Christianity

by Paul Wachter, Contributor
AOL News Surge Desk
http://www.aolnews.com/
July 15, 2010

Argentina, a predominately Catholic nation, became on Thursday the first Latin American country to grant homosexuals the full legal rights enjoyed by other citizens. The bill was opposed by Catholic and evangelical authorities. One of its opponents, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, said that "children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother."

Increasingly, Catholic Latin America is granting legal rights to gays and lesbians that the church opposes. "Same-sex civil unions have been legalized in Uruguay and some states in Mexico and Brazil," The New York Times reports. "Colombia's Constitutional Court granted same-sex couples inheritance rights and allowed them to add their partners to health insurance plans. Mexico City went further, legalizing gay marriage and launching tourism campaigns to encourage foreigners to come and wed."

On some of these measures, these countries can be considered more progressive than the more economically advanced United States, where the push for gay rights is a state-by-state battle, opposed both by the Catholic Church and much of the Protestant community.

But if the religious opponents of gay rights are losing battles in Latin America, they still hold sway on the less-developed continent of Africa. Recently, American evangelicals supported a bill in Uganda that in many instances would have homosexuals eligible for the death penalty. While that measure has since been withdrawn, homosexuality remains a crime in much of sub-Saharan Africa, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

The official position of the Vatican and Western Anglican churches is to oppose the Ugandan bill, though Pope Benedict XVI made no mention of it when he received the Ugandan ambassador last year, and some African Anglican Church leaders have expressed support for it.

The latest victory for gay rights in Argentina is a victory for cosmopolitanism. One critic lamented to the Times that gay rights supporters want to make Buenos Aires "the gay capital of the world."

As countries modernize and secularize, established churches that rigidly oppose such rights will be forced to seek out -- as they already are -- allies and acolytes in the less-modern world. By doing so, to crib from the title of a popular apocalyptic fiction series, they risk being left behind.

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