Scottish Catholic Observer

“In my experience in the US, this notion of civil unions has always been a kind of half way house to so called ‘gay marriages,’” George Weigel said.

Mr Weigel (right) added that while a ‘humane state is going to make appropriate provisions for human relationships, particularly in moments of distress, … those issues can be dealt with without going down this road of saying there is something in the nature of a stable or unstable homosexual union that the state should honour and lift up.’

Mr Weigel made the comments after Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said last month that civil partnerships ‘provide a structure in which people of the same sex who want a lifelong relationship, a lifelong partnership can find their place and protection in legal provision.’

Archbishop Nichols expanded upon his thinking by explaining that while a civil union ‘gives a same-sex couple the same rights that a married couple have,’ the key distinction between it and marriage is that same-sex unions do not ‘in law contain a required element of sexual relationships.’

“Same-sex partnerships are not marriage because they have no root in a sexual relationship which marriage does,” Archbishop Nichols said. “And that’s the distinction that I think it’s important for us to understand, that marriage is built on the sexual partnership between a man and a woman which is open to children, to their nurture and education.”

The archbishop had received criticism from some Catholic commentators over his earlier comments but he was publicly backed for his stance by Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, the Vatican’s former prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, who said that Archbishop Nichols was being ‘forced to publicly defend himself against claims that have been made against him by Catholic groups in the UK, for his ‘excessive alignment with Rome’ when it comes to family ethics.’