Greek priests speak out against legalisation of same-sex marriage

A group of priests from the Greek Orthodox Church have appealed to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to prevent the LGBT community's initiative regarding "equal access to marriage", reports Εκκλησια Online.

In a letter to the country's Prime Minister published by the resource, Greek priests said their position is "a testimony of the Church" and the LGBT community's initiative to legalise the same-sex marriage is an "old story".

"A small minority with wide access to the media, both print and online, has pressured governments and parties for years to legally recognise their sexual deviance," the document says.

Priests believe that even those Christians who "maintain a loose relationship with the Church" know that God created two sexes, male and female, and "there is no third sex".

The mutual attraction of man to woman and woman to man "opens the way to marriage, which in the Christian Church is considered the 'great mystery', the secret of love, the source and cradle of human life and the path that leads to the Christian perfection of spouses and children," the Greek clerics highlighted.

"The Church blesses these intimate relationships and considers the family that a Christian marriage creates to be a small 'domestic' church. Therefore, it is only natural that apart from blessed Christian marriage, the Church does not accept any other kind of marriage for its members, Christians," the priests said in their appeal.

Regarding the phenomenon of homosexuality, the Church's position, the clerics write, "has been more than clear from its inception until today: homosexuality is not a legitimate sexual choice but a deviation and perversion of nature".

Moreover, according to the Apostle Paul, it is "a heavy, deadly carnal sin which, if the person who commits it does not repent, excludes him from the kingdom of God".

The Church in no way accepts or reconciles with the sin, the priests reminded us, and "In no case does it deviate from the laws of nature which God has decreed" and "in no case does it agree to place Christian marriage between a man and a woman and 'free cohabitation', whether heterosexual or homosexual, on more or less equal footing with the blessed Christian family," reads the letter.

As earlier reported, participants in the Greek Gay Pride parade were thrown into the sea.

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