The Church refuses to embrace same-sex marriage and adoption of children by same-sex couples: LGBT community
The Church refuses to embrace same-sex marriage and adoption of children by same-sex couples: LGBT community
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Panama City: On Friday, a long and loving kiss between two women in downtown Panama was a quiet but symbolic message from the LGBT community to the visiting  Pope Francis: "We exist!" Samirah Armengol and her friend Basch Beitia were staging a "kiss-in" with friends in front of landmark Catholic church to draw attention to gay rights during the pope's visit.

Armengol, 39 said that "They say it's disrespectful that we kiss in front of a church, but I ask them a question: Why is it not disrespectful when heterosexuals do it? Is it that I am an aberration? We exist!" While Around 20 protesters around her shouted "Love is love. Love is love!" many of them kissing outside the huge Del Carmen church, symbolic for Panamanians as a gathering point for protests against 1980s dictator Manuel Noriega.

 

Wrapped in the multicolored flag of the LGBT movement, Levis Calderon said that the protesters were seeking "visibility" because "the eyes of the world are on Panama" during the World Youth Day celebrations. Calderon, 21 said that "Together as a community, we are saying: We are here,"

Wearing a multicolored wig, Hilka Zapata had come to support her friends. Zapata, a heterosexual, married mother of a teenage girl said that "Our call to him (Pope Francis) is that something very different is happening here to what he preaches," further added that "The church has to try to unify their criteria so that all the members of their congregation behave in the same way as he says they should behave."

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Francis has also sparked controversy with his comments. Last year, he briefly dismissed homosexuality as a "fashion" before the offending document was amended.

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