They continue, “Dear compatriots and leaders of our country, to avoid the establishment of homosexuality in our customs, the duty to respect the cultural values of our people becomes more and more constraining, because from now on it is based first on natural law and then on the Divine Word and Law.”
CEB members go on to laud the government of Benin for announcing that homosexuality is against “cultural values and that it is not introduced into the Beninese educational system.”
“We are capable of an energetic, cultural, ethical and spiritual national awakening that our nation needs to safeguard its dignity in the face of demographic growth, economic development and the problem of homosexuality,” Catholic Bishops in Benin say.
They invite the people of God in the West African nation to “welcome the Word of God and the Church's magisterial teaching on” the highlighted challenges in the country.
CEB members also weigh in on sexuality and family planning issues in Benin. They say, “The focus should be on moral and sexual education rather than sexual and reproductive health; on responsible fatherhood and motherhood rather than responsible parenthood; and on natural methods of birth control rather than artificial means that promote sexual permissiveness.”
They call on the people of God in the country to “multiply initiatives to welcome, listen to and accompany LGBTQ brothers and sisters as human persons with the love of God's heart, which invites us all to love one another.”
CEB members explain, “The Church distinguishes between the homosexual act, which it rejects, and the homosexual person, whose dignity as a creature of God it recognizes, and which it calls to conversion, like every other person, with a view to eternal salvation.”
“May the nation's educators, decision-makers and leaders resist pressure from international bodies whose conditionalities subject peoples to authoritarian demographic policies and young people to LGBTQ practices,” Catholic Bishops in Benin say in their collective statement shared with ACI Africa on December 19.
On the reported member of parliament’s demand for inclusion of the topic on homosexuality in the school curricula, Benin’s Minister of Secondary Education, Chabi Kouaro, is quoted to have termed the repots “disinformation” and “misinformation”.
He denied there being any discussions about teaching about homosexuality schools. Instead, the government has introduced sexual health, which aims at ensuring that “students receive accurate, comprehensive and non-stigmatizing information about their bodies, relationships and rights”.
