Nigerian Bishops: Media Lie About Our View on Homosexuality

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PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, September 30, 2015 (ChurchMilitant.com) - Nigeria's bishops are reaffirming their opposition to sodomy and the gay agenda and also blasting the media for distorting their views on the subject.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Nigeria (CBCN) held its second plenary meeting earlier this month, where they continued to uphold the traditional family. In so doing, they rejected the notion that sodomy or same-sex "marriage" ought to be normalized in any way. These things, they maintain, are sinful.

The bishops say international groups and media have been lying in claiming that the CBCN supports extreme punishments for homosexuality. Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos, president of the CBCN, charges that the media have "mischievously reduced the CBCN position to advocating severe punishment of gays or lesbians with long prison terms!"

"This is a deliberate distraction and a wicked deviation from what is our primary concern," says Abp. Kaigama.

While the Nigerian bishops refused to embrace the homosexual disorder at their recent assembly, they nevertheless also stressed the need for pastoral care for homosexuals in a way that recognizes their human dignity.

Father Chris Anyanwu, a spokesman for the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, in an article for the Nigerian bishops' news service, quoted the bishops' real position.

We reiterate our unreserved condemnation of all acts of homosexuality as sinful and opposed to the natural law of creation. We call on our government to continue to resist the attempt by some external governments and agencies to impose an acceptance of same-sex unions. Nevertheless, we maintain that persons with these orientations should be assisted pastorally, spiritually and psychologically, with respect for their dignity as human persons created in the image and likeness of God.

As Fr. Anyanwu sees it, ever since the LGBT agenda's culmination in the West with same-sex unions, "there has been also a deliberate attempt by some lobbyists and gay movements to denigrate and malign those countries, groups and individuals, especially in Africa, who hold a contrary view."

Because of this, he asserts, "It is therefore important to place on record that no amount of calumny, intimidation, lies and name-calling will make the bishops ... change their stand on marriage and family life or abdicate their moral responsibility in speaking out clearly against the same-sex issue."

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