The Vatican has reiterated its opposition to same-sex marriage, insisting that children should have a right to say they have a father and a mother.

Speaking on Vatican Radio, the press secretary for Pope Benedict, Fr Federico Lombardi noted “a widespread tendency” in the West “to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union”.

He was responding to a number of defeats for pro-marriage campaigners in the US in last week’s election and to moves in France to legalise same-sex marriage.

However, traditional marriage supporters have still carried 32 out of 36 referenda in the US including in North Carolina earlier this year. A referendum in favour of same-sex marriage was also defeated in Slovenia earlier this year.

Fr Lombardi said that “preserving a vision of the human person and of human relationships where there is a public acknowledgment of monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilization”.

“If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry? It is not expected, then, the Church will give up proposing that society recognize a specific place for marriage between a man and a woman,” he said.

An editorial in the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano said that the Church’s stance on the issue was part of its fight against “politically correct ideologies invading every culture of the world”.

“The Church is called to present itself as the lone critic of modernity, the only check … to the breakup of the anthropological structures on which human society was founded,” it said.

“One might say the Church, at least on this front, has been defeated. But that’s not the case,” it added.