Swiss voters back same-sex marriage

CNA Staff   By CNA Staff

Same-sex wedding cake. / Sara Valenti/Shutterstock

Bern, Switzerland, Sep 27, 2021 / 05:00 am (CNA).

Switzerland voted Sunday to legalize same-sex marriage.

Around 64% of voters backed the measure in a referendum on Sept. 26, making Switzerland the world’s 30th country to approve gay marriage.

The country bordering Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and Liechtenstein has recognized civil unions for same-sex couples since 2007, following a 2005 referendum.

In December 2020, the Swiss parliament approved a bill, called “Marriage for All,” legalizing same-sex marriage and introduced it into the Swiss Civil Code.

In April this year, Campaigners gathered enough signatures to secure a referendum. More than 61,000 valid signatures were submitted in favor of giving the country’s 8.5 million population a final say on the law.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that the referendum result was tight in some areas of Switzerland, a federal republic officially known as the Swiss Confederation.

In the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, which is traditionally Catholic, 50.8% of voters backed the proposal, which will come into effect from July 2022.

CNA Deutsch said that Simone Curau-Aepli, president of the Swiss Catholic Women’s Federation (SKF), welcomed the referendum result.

“I am really happy that everyone has said yes to marriage for all. For us this is a highly emotional moment,” she commented.

“We at the Swiss Catholic Women’s Association have been fighting for this for 20 years and stand for equal dignity and equal rights.”

Switzerland’s Catholic bishops said in December that legalizing same-sex marriage was “fraught with numerous administrative, legal and ethical difficulties.”

“[T]he Catholic Church is primarily entrusted with the sacrament of marriage. She celebrates before God the union of man and woman as a common, stable, and reproductive life laid out in love,” the Swiss bishops’ conference said in a Dec. 4 statement.

“This is why [we are] convinced, also with regard to civil marriage, that the use of the term ‘marriage’ should not be extended to any connection between two people regardless of their gender. Such a use of the term would bring about an equality that, in [our] opinion, cannot exist.”


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11 Comments

  1. It is ever more apparent that two people of the same sex can fall in love in a deeply spiritual way that honors humanity. I truly thank God that more nations now respect this truth. I thank God even more for the wisdom that is the Separation of Church and State. I am no longer Catholic, so my view does not contradict my religion.

    • If you are no longer Catholic then what are you doing commenting on a Catholic forum? If you feel happy about your faith decision then obviously you would see no need to turn back and pontificate about it.

      • I am just a person. I may no longer be Catholic, but I will always be Catholic, I think. Just sharing my views, because I was silent and hiding for so long. I don’t mean to insult anyone. When I discovered the comment section, here, I felt strongly about sharing my opinion. A recent opinion on here (by Reilly about LGBT politics) really angered me.

    • You appear to be one of those people who tailor their religious views to coincide with the sins they want to commit, rather than struggling against temptations to do evil.

      “It is ever more apparent that two people of the same sex can fall in love in a deeply spiritual way that honors humanity.”

      Balderdash. Vile perversion doesn’t honor humanity.

    • What, exactly, is “spiritual” about the added homosexual version of tunnel vision, or that contradicts not only Catholic morality, but also nature?

      Then there’s the question your raise about the nature of your new religion…Not exclusively Catholic (which you are “no longer”) are such biblical references as these: Noah and Ham (Genesis 9:20–27), Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1–11), Levitical laws condemning same-sex relationships (Lev 18:22, 20:13), two Second Testament vice lists (1 Corinthians 6:9–10; 1 Timothy 1:10), and Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 1:26–27).

      About the separation of Church and state, is the coercive power of the state your new religion? Just askin’…

  2. This vote was decided 2016 at the opening of the Gotthard Tunnel ceremony. “A topless woman decked as a bird hovered above actors representing the nine construction workers who died during the building of the tunnel” is cursory theatre of a radical distancing from moral good. Celebrated was the sensual, the perverse, and the theatrical though spiritually real abandonment of Christ. Some showy displays purposely satanic. As suggested in my comment on tiny San Marino gone abortion ‘crazy’, the only word that comes to mind there are consequences in rejecting Christ. We lose his divinely ordained suzerainty for the macabre devilish. Where there’s a moral vacuum, a house all tidied up the filthy denizens from Hades take residence. And how! The moral rotation is epochal, since the only gift for our salvation Christ has been rejected worldwide. Nothing historical comes close to comparison. A price to be paid is impending absent of a miraculous conversion of hearts.

  3. Maybe they know something that we don’t. Maybe there was a mistake in the recording of God’s plan, when it come to gay relationships. Maybe we are all wrong.

    But, even if God means us to avoid homosexuality completely, his followers can continue to strive to see gay people as human beings who struggle like everyone else.

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