The Gay is Thunderdome

Via the BBC, some excerpts from Pope B's 2008 Message for Peace:

...in a healthy family life we experience some of the fundamental elements of peace: justice and love between brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness or old age, mutual help in the necessities of life, readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them. For this reason, the family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace.

Well, sure, that sounds marvy. So, what's the punchline?

Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace. This point merits special reflection: everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

Well, there's something mighty queer about those conclusions.

Perhaps relevant is the context supplied by the BBC, that this "message followed a pro-family rally by hundreds of thousands of Spanish Catholics on Sunday, which he had addressed via a video link." A rally, that is, in response to, among other things, the legalization of gay marriage in Spain.

So. Pope B is thus claiming to take a firm stance against gay marriage on the basis of his concern for peace. If you allow for gay marriage, you weaken heterosexual marriage, and thus undermine peace. Oh, and let's not forget "openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life": this has to do with contraception, of course. So if you use condoms or the pill or have an abortion, you are likewise undermining peace.

Seriously. I'm pretty sure that's the argument.

In drawing the connection between family life and peace, Pope B notes that, "violence, if perpetrated in the family, is seen as particularly intolerable," because then children will grow up learning violence rather than peace. Well, fair enough, sir. But could you maybe explain WTF that has to do with gays and condoms?