ROME, Italy – The Vatican issued an official document Monday rejecting the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisting on the sexual “complementarity” of men and women to make babies.
The document, published during LGBT Pride Month, was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people.
Advocacy groups said it would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.
The text, “Male and Female He Created Them,” was intended to help Catholic teachers, parents, students and clergy address what the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education called an “educational crisis” in the field of sex education. It’s called for a “path of dialogue” and listening on the issue of “gender theory” in education.
But even priestly advocates for LGBT Catholics noted that the text appeared to have relied entirely on previous papal pronouncements, Vatican documents and philosophers and theologians.
Pope Francis has repeatedly argued the position that people cannot choose their genders.
But the document represents the first attempt to put the Vatican’s position, first articulated fully by Pope Benedict the 16th in a 2012 speech, into a comprehensive, official text.
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