I've had occasion to blog about Joseph Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict XVI before, when I was discussing his absurd claims that the incidence of pedophilia amongst Catholic priests in America was more the fault of American society than of the priests themselves.
Now he is at it again, this time making an even more nonsensical claim that transexuality is as a big a threat to the human race as destruction of the rain forests. Before he became Pope, Ratzinger attacked homosexuality in 1986 as - " a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil".
But if anything is morally evil it is the views of the Pope himself. For too long Christians, Muslims, and oher religious groups have been able to get away with fomenting hatred against all those who don't fit into their repressive sexual straitjackets - a group which includes unmarried heterosexuals - but particularly homosexuals. Homophobia is no better than racism and religious belief can never be an excuse for this kind of bigotry.
Franco Grillini, of the Italian association Gaynet summed it up beautifully when he said - "What keeps the Pope awake at night is the idea that human beings might be able to seek out their own sexual identity to have a happy life".
Happy new year!
ReplyDeleteAs a gay person myself i'd just like to say how offended I was as the suggestion that my actions (which don't harm anyone) are considered to the pope to be a bigger threat to human survival than hunger and greed.
If there was a lack of people on Earth (which there isn't - the world population certainly isn't declining), surely the pope could just ask his hetrosexual followers to have more kids. Problem solved.
Even better, he could endorse condom use so they could be better distributed in many African countries where some 'christian' missionaries (despite all their good work) still refuse to hand them out, worsening the AIDS epidemic. That would save millions of lives.
Stu