A Weakened Catholic Church in Mexico Poses Less Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage Merrit Kennedy and Laura Wagner - NPR.org
go to original May 20, 2016

Listen: Mexico's president says he wants to change the Mexican constitution to make same-sex marriage legal. He even decorated his Twitter account with the rainbow flag. Who knew he was such a big proponent of gay rights? (NPR)

A day after Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed enshrining same-sex marriage in the traditionally conservative country's constitution, Mexico's Catholic Church said it opposes the move.

NPR's Carrie Kahn reports on All Things Considered that the Church said same-sex marriage "cannot be equated with the marriage of a man and a woman." The country's bishops are calling for lawmakers to "study carefully the effects of same-sex unions on society."

But as Carrie reports, the Church's opposition may not present much of an obstacle for Nieto to pass the legislation, which would solidify a 2015 Supreme Court decision that said it was unconstitutional for states to bar same-sex couples from getting married.

Anthropologist and religious scholar Elio Masferrer Kan tells Carrie that the church is "much weaker now," and has "lost a lot of its credibility to several financial debacles and the global priest child abuse scandals."

Furthermore, as Carrie reports, "recent studies show that while 80 percent of Mexicans say they are Catholic, only about 15 to 20 percent attend church regularly."

Read the rest at NPR.org

Related: In Latin America, LGBT Legal Rights Grow, But Attitudes Shift More Slowly (The Christian Science Monitor)

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