Pope stresses family values as gay marriage gains

VATICAN CITY (AP) - The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage on Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices - and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.

Pope Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the US and Europe and efforts to legalise gay marriage in places like France and Britain.

In his remarks, Pope Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an "attack" on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being," he said.