SALZBURG, Jul 27, 2001 -- (dpa) A Salzburg bishop's assertion that homosexuals have a 20 to 30 year lower life expectancy caused a row in Austria on Thursday.
Andreas Laun, number two bishop in the Salzburg Catholic church hierarchy, said in the magazine News that the shorter life span was due to hepatitis, AIDS, and other gay diseases.
A sexual relationship between a man and woman was different than one between men. Problems as a consequence are unavoidable, said Suffragan Bishop Laun.
The Salzburg Social Democrats (SP) charged that Laun was a millennium behind the times. Spokesman David Brenner said: Laun's statements are the height of intolerance.
His regular defamation and exclusion of ten percent of our population has almost racist overtones. Sexuality is a private matter, and not one of the church whose sexual morals are stuck in the Middle Ages.
Laun was not aware of the fact that more heterosexuals than homosexuals infected themselves with AIDS, added the SP spokesman.
Innsbruck theologian Hans Rotter, a Jesuit priest, told the Catholic church it should hold back from condemning legal recognition of homosexual partnerships.
Homosexuals had suffered many injustices in history. Unfortunately the Christian churches often made a very negative contribution, he said, according to the Catholic press agency Kathpress.
For instance, the churches had mostly been silent about the persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis, he said.
Greens M.P. Ulrike Lunacek referred to the Austrian church's biggest scandal when Vienna archbishop Hans Hermann Groer resigned in 1995 following allegations of homosexual abuse.
If Laun's statements are right, Cardinal Groer should have been dead a long time ago,, she said. After all, he's nearly 82 years old.
Recently there was widespread anger about another remark by an influential Austrian bishop, Kurt Krenn of St. Poelten Diocese.
Rejecting church blessings for homosexual couples, he declared that homosexuality is forbidden by God.
He quoted the New Testament as saying indecency between men and men is really a deep sign of sin, reprehensible behavior and unbelief.