The Vatican has made clear its opposition to the United Nations endorsing a universal declaration to decriminalize homosexuality.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, and Vatican spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said unjust forms of discrimination against homosexuals must be avoided.
However, the Vatican does not approve of a formal declaration with political weight that might be used to put pressure on or discriminate against countries that do not recognize same-sex marriage, they said.
So the Vatican is saying that there are just forms of discrimination which are perfectly fine to inflict on LGBT people.
Gotta love how the Vatican can speak out of both sides of its mouth and still expect to be taken seriously. “We don’t want any harm done to you, we just want you to remain criminals in 80 countries.”
But never say that the prelates aren’t generous! After all, Father Lombardi said “obviously nobody wants to defend the death penalty for homosexuals.” Well, I feel all warm and loved now.
Btw, Burundi just made homosexuality a crime in a bill that outlaws the death penalty, torture, rape and other violent crimes. Wtf kind of message are they trying to send with that mixture? The catholics are, of course, lapping it up and making every excuse for the discrimination.
only the lower house has passed the bill. It still has to go to the Senate and signed by the executive branch — although that does seem to be a formality.
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p>I found the second article you cited quite interesting, and certainly wouldn’t consider it lapping up nor excuse making. Instead, it tried to put the decisions in context of sub-Saharan African culture. I particularly appreciated it’s explanation of the seamless garment and how Catholics seem to be split between the pro-life anti-gay faction and the social & environmental justice faction [where I reside].
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p>And this goes to the core of my beef with the way Laurel has been presenting the Catholic rhetoric. The reality is that American Catholics are almost universally Catholic because of tradition — our parents and in fact our national heritages are Catholic. Furthermore, a large chunk of us are in that social & environmental justice faction. We’re the group which (a) will tend to support full equality for LGBTs, and (b) may eventually succeed in helping the other faction see that the Bible doesn’t actually call for homophobia or discrimination. So, jumping at the statement of individual bishops or fanboi leaders — or even in this case a Vatican government diplomat — as if their statement universally represented the belief of all Catholics laity or even all Catholic clergy is bound to trigger a defensive response… and wind up being counterproductive.
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p>Trust me — there are millions of Catholics who are frustrated by the Church’s position on homosexuality, and struggle to deal with the dichotomy of their personal morals and their church’s morals. Lashing out at “teh catholics” won’t help them make public choices based on their personal morals instead of the RCC’s morals, nor encourage them to work for positive change from inside the Church.
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p>But then, this frustration I have with Laurel’s tactics isn’t limited to Catholics. Laurel and I have publicly disagreed on her aggressive and negative tactics toward all people who haven’t carried what is in her opinion sufficient water for the LGBT equality movement. I think that her rhetoric pushes moderates away from working toward full equality because the hostile rhetoric makes them as uncomfortable as Fred Phelps’ rhetoric does.
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p>But then, I could have gotten married in any of the 50 states, and have the full rights and responsibilities of marriage, both state and federal, if I ever move out of Massachusetts. So, I sympathize but can’t empathize, and I just plain disagree with Laurel’s tactic while agreeing with the goal.
Laurel is doing what I call “fighting the good fight” and even though Laurel, myself and others who use this sort of “tactic” still do not have equality or respect in this country (neither do those who are gradualists), at least at the end of the day, we can sleep well.
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p>A large majority of states have Constitutional amendments against same sex marriage, many others now are working to hurt gays by attacking children with anti-adoption amendments, transgenders and LGBT can still be discriminated against in housing and employment and in many of those states, LGBT and supporters have tiptoed lighty, and never spoke the truth about what is behind all of this…hatred (of LGBT people). Plain and simple.
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p>Sorry stomv, your comfortability quotient is not high on my agenda. And quite frankly your comment, “I think that her rhetoric pushes moderates away from working toward full equality because the hostile rhetoric makes them as uncomfortable as Fred Phelps’ rhetoric does” makes me sick.
Thank you for your response to that comment, Tom. As it happens, I am facing a break up of my natal family since Nov 4th. I have never been able to get them to lift a finger to help stop these ugly amendments, although they profess undying love for their gay daughter/sister/aunt, etc. But I see now that that love is highly conditional on me never really rocking the boat. Now that I have shared with them my disgust over their laziness and am taking them to task for it, they use the same lines as stomv and are, shockingly, willing to end relations. Apparently some allies prefer house niggers to runaways.
… what Mr. Migliore is saying is that denying SSM is a Just form of discrimination. It’d be interesting to have them identify what other forms of ‘just’ forms of discrimination there can be. Adoption certainly I suspect.
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p>You may find the following article interesting Laurel:
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p>http://www.salon.com/news/feat…
don’t forget that colorado passed a law (since ruled unconstitutional) back in the 90’s stating that gay people couldn’t be protected by law. there are voting majorities in too many places that would like to see us invisible or gone.
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p>interesting article. however, i disagree with him on one major point.
i see zero evidence of this. to the contrary, churches have very effectively rallied voters to pass anti-gay amendments in every state where they’ve made it to the ballot. 30 for 30, and we have a u.s. supreme court and most state supreme courts that toe the religious nonsense anti-gay line. most recently, obama and mccain paid homage to rick warren at saddleback church. huckabee got a sizeable primary vote in many states. fire ‘n brimstone palin reinvigorated the gop until they realized that she was an idiot. losing power? no way. the hater churches are as strong as ever and i see no sign that they’re losing ground. the lgbt-friendly churches like the episcopal, uu, and ucc are very small and have no power on the national political scale or even local political scale. prop 8 showed very clearly that the churches are still very, very, very powerful.
I figure they are losing power to dictate behavior. That is, they are losing power over individuals. At least they are losing the power to dictate to individuals outright. I see the financial and political organizing as a furious attempt at an end-around to their problem. Thing is, though, they have one huge advantage: there will always be people willing to be led. Their enemy is the connected world where anyone can look next to them and see that the lives of people who haven’t been led are perfectly normal and fulfilling. They have been in the process of creating communities of connectedness that are nonetheless insular from being connected to the greater outside world. That’s why these mega-churches look more and more like malls. Once you go in, you can ‘connect’ yourself to all kinds of human activities (including shopping) without ever feeling the need to leave.
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p>The hater churches are losing ground… they are far fewer than say 40 years ago… but they are also much much more vocal and organized. This is symptomatic of an organization trying to build and develop. They are in this mode because their previous infrastructure for development was the mainstream surrounding community where racism and homophobia were practically ensconced as civic virtues. They can’t count on that anymore, so they look for their ‘connections’ by other means.
about 90% of Americans are affiliated with a religion or are religious. As you say, there will always be people who want to be lead. I remember my dad, who was a Baptist minister, worrying 30+ years ago that religion was losing it’s
strangleholdgrip on the Americanthroatheart and soul. He worried for nothing.<
p>When presidential candidates don’t feel the need to invoke god in every sentence, and religious coalitions are no longer successful in excising minorities from the law, I’ll believe that religion in on the wane. Until then, we’ll just see the same power struggles among the religious factions that have always existed. James Dobson, The Quorum of the 7, Rick Warren and Joe Ratzinger are all still raking in the dough. What more need be said?
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p>IMHO, of course. đŸ™‚
… to polling data that reports about high belief and church rates. Truth is, however, that your average believer today is much less under the power of religious leaders today than in yesteryear. I also suspect a self-reporting bias in religious polling. Money is certainly still a huge problem, but I think it is telling that they are spending their money not on their own ‘flocks’ but in the greater media and political arena. I take this to mean that they know that they get a bigger bang of ‘control’ for their buck that way and it is a sign that they don’t actually control the behavior of their members the way they used to.
“their” money comes from the flock. and the flock would scatter if it didn’t condone the use of the money in that way.
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p>in my view, a lot of americans are just plain homophobes regardless of religion. most churches reinforce that view and use it and associated fears to raise funds, create scapegoats, etc. i think a lot of homophobia is religious based, but i think a lot is independent of religion and religion merely is a convenient excuse to be a bigot. so in this way religion and bigotry in america are somewhat independent by very synergistic.
First, you didn’t really expect support from the Vatican, did you? This is the Church that still won’t even ordain women, while true to form simultaneously condeming gender-based discrimination. Of course another interesting question for the Vatican is why they won’t allow gay priests. After all, if they’re supposed to be celibate anyway, does it really matter what their sexual orientation is?
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p>Citing Dobson, Warren, and the Pope defines Christianity much too narrowly. The United Church of Christ supports marriage equality and many mainline Protestant churches make it a point to reach out and welcome members of the GLBT community. The Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire is openly gay. One of the groups lobbying to keep a marriage amendment out of the MA Constitution was the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry.
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p>I for one don’t care if candidates invoke God or not, but I want religious influence to transform rather than disappear. Imagine if our government followed the notion of serving the least of these, loving neighbor, and doing justice, core principle’s of Jesus’ teachings (not to mention being basic to the message of other religions). If we followed those precepts rather than getting worked up about abortion and homosexuality, about which Jesus said nothing, we’d be much better off.
to want to be good to other people. you just have to be a human being. religion is used as an excuse both for those who do good and for those who do bad. i prefer that people to take responsibility for their own actions rather than hide behind an institution. but i’m used to rarely getting what i want.
I certainly agree that it is possible to be good without it, but for many of us it is precisely our faith that calls upon us to create a better world and more just society.
And somewhat fairly, I might add. I write somewhat because another stomv in an alternative universe might not have appreciated it, but I do — fair play.
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p>And make no mistake, I don’t like the Catholic stance on the issue, and I pray that our understanding of the teaching of Jesus evolves, just as it has on a number of other social issues throughout history.
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p>Having written that… it would seem that Migliore has been painted in the corner. Given that Vatican City is indeed a religious nation state, and given that the religion in question doesn’t believe in marriage equality, he has no choice but to make the statement that (a) “unjust forms” of discrimination should be fought, but (b) the Vatican is against this declaration lest they be discriminated against for their religious-based discrimination of others.
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p>Frankly, I take his statement at face value. I do believe that the Catholic Church is against some forms of discrimination against gays and against all violence against gays. I understand that this isn’t much consolation, and I wish that my church would move to full equality. I will point out, though, that you left out the following quote
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p>We agree that the Catholic Church doesn’t consider same-sex marriage a fundamental human right, and we also agree that it ought to. Let’s get to the second half — that the Catholic Church actively opposes any and all violent or discriminatory criminal laws against homosexuals. That’s a much stronger statement than the admittedly weak one you quoted.
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p>Do I think that the Catholic Church as an institution should support marriage equality? You bet. Do I think that the Catholic Church as an institution gets unfairly painted as the driving force behind gay discrimination in all it’s forms? You bet. Both of my thoughts are evidenced in this thread.
… about him being painted into a corner. My take is that the very fact that a conversation about human rights can paint him into a corner is really prima fascia evidence that the policy is a problem. The quote you include is really an attempt to distract from the fundamental point that there is a problem with the Church and equality. At best it’s cover from the charge of being a ‘driving force’.
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p>To be fair to his original point that Laurel quoted, the next part that you quote could be written:
Such a quote would be an honest assertion, but would highlight the problems with the Church and equality. It’s not so conciliatory when put that way, which is why it isn’t of course. That’s why it’s a distraction from the actual problem.
At least when referring to a civil institution that involves such things as insurance, inheritance, taxes, etc.
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p>And get the government out of the sacrament business.
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p>Then people will remain free to use some non-legal non-bureaucratic colloquialism, such as “marriage” to describe their relationships, if they so choose.
gov’t is in the business of civil contracts. rather, it is many religious institutions that are trying to interfere with the civil marriage business. marriage began in the colonies as a civil contract, not a religious one. you might want to brush up on the constitution and american history when you have a mo.
But I’ll have to disagree here. Sacramental institution since the civil authority and the ecclesiastical authority were the same thing.
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p>When governmental and ecclesiastical functions were separated– and the “et ux” part of the married couple began to be perceived as an actual person, the then-necessary civil facets of the institution retained the name of the sacrament, in a misnomer. That colonial governments permitted churches to confer these civil rights compounded the problem, resulting in the present state of confusion, and exacerbating the emotionally-charged battles over a word that, by all rights, should have exactly zero significance to any institution of government. The government doesn’t care if I am baptized; neither should it care if I am married. It may care if I have entered into a civil contract with the person to whom I happen to be married.
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p>Given the present state of things, this is unfortunate.
correct me if i’m wrong, but to my knowledge no one is born into the nation state of the vatican. you get to live there by being a working member of the roman catholic church, right? so it’s not as if anyone in the vatican can’t leave if they feel painted into a corner. they are all citizens of italy or other countries who are free to live elsewhere and pursue other occupations if they don’t agree with what they are being told to say.
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p>as for your last paragraph, i know of not one priest or higher church official who hasn’t been disciplined or removed for supporting lgbt civil rights. on the contrary, it is catholic church officials who too often use the church organization to block legal advances for lgbt people. and the church regularily vilifies gay people and accuses gays of being pedophiles. so i find it incredible taht anyone can think the cathoic church is unfairly painted as being a force behind discrimination.
Father and (former) Canadian MP Raymond Gravel. Note that he was granted special permission by his bishop to run in 2006, well after it was known by the RCC that he, as an ordained priest, was vocally pro-gay-equality. He was neither disciplined nor removed — he was allowed to run for office giving further public outcry for gay rights, and then allowed to vote on social issues including gay rights and abortion issues
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p>P.S. There you go again with your “the church regularly…” rhetoric. Show me a single statement made by the Roman Catholic Church which accuses gays of being pedophiles. A single one.
the vatican conflated their pedophilia crimes with the presence of gay priests, and have said numerous times that as a result they’re weeding out gays from the priesthood or the seminaries. no, of course the pope never said outright that gays are pedophiles, but he damn well make it clear that that is how he wants people to understand the situation so the church to duck responsibility for its heinous actions surrounding its child rapist problems. haven’t you noticed that a lot of people have left the church over these disgusting attempts at deception on the part of your pope?
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p>it is nice to know that in the whole wide world, there is apparently one priest who is openly pro gay rights and survives. nice token. so now we can all go home and feel good about the church. stomv’s head, meet sand.
Don’t forget the gay priest witch hunts going on at the moment…
You wrote that you didn’t know of one. I provided you with one. I’m sure there are others… but it’s not my job to go find them for you.
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p>You’ve been doing this over and over in this debate. You claim an extreme position for the RCC when in fact an individual member of the RCC has taken that position. I state that in fact the RCC hasn’t taken that position, and it’s somehow up to me to prove that they didn’t make the statement, in spite of the fact that one can’t prove a negative.
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p>Your statements about the Church as a formal organization and about it’s entire membership are hurtful, hateful, and wrong. When I call you out on them, you often can’t prove them precisely because they’re overly broad. I agree that the Church’s policies are wrong, but you overstate them over and over again, claiming church positions that don’t exist, and poo-pooing counterclaims, counterarguments, and counterexamples because they don’t fit your simple view of “Catholic Church == evil”.
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p>You don’t think it’s fair to take shots at an entire community (the GBLT one), and I agree. You do think it’s fair to take shots at a different entire community (the Catholic Church, the laity, and the clergy), and I disagree. It’s clear that your views aren’t going to change, and frankly I think you’re a bigot on this one.
you apparently have never been the target of the relentlessly hateful policies of your own church. It’s all academic for you. In my view, what you are faced with is loving an institution that you know is deliberately harmful to others but not to you (except perhaps intellectually), and so you don’t understand the depth of the hurt. I don’t envy you being in that position and I can understand why, with the blinkers you wear, that you would call me a bigot. Well, what I see is that you support and enable the RCC which vigorously acts on its official homophobic positions. So what that makes you is a bigot or a bigot enabler. Even if you don’t agree with my conclusion about you, I’m sure you can see how I might have arrived at it.
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p>I think it is pathetic that you play the injured party here. I’m not the one on a worldwide mission systematically attacking the civil rights and very humanity of a minority. That would be your church. No, I am on the receiving end of your church’s “love”.
I agree with stomv that you do yourself harm by failing to note the distinction between the hierarchy and clergy, and the people, which is far, far wider than people from other traditions seem to assume. Most Catholic people are far less certain about “culture war” issues than bishop’s pronouncements would ever acknowledge, and far more open to persuasion than you seem to assume.
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p>At least in the Irish Catholic community, there is a centuries old tradition of anti-clericalism (Catholicism was supressed by the British, yet the Church largely collaborated with the British. The Irish are thus fiercely Catholic for nationalist reasons, yet bitterly anti-clerical.) that makes me think that few, other than the Opus Dei types, would be particularly offended by vituperative criticism of bishops, priests, or the Vatican.
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p>In my view, the power of religious authorities has been in obvious wane for decades. Even your biggest complaint is, in a sense, that you aren’t winning the culture war fast enough. For Catholics, I trace the breaking of that power to the promulgation of Humanae Vitae, which nearly all Catholics chose to simply ignore, and which opened up vast new possibilities of simply ignoring the clergy when we disagree with them. Increased stridency among the bishops is an unsuccessful attempt to recover that lost power.
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p>I’m likely to agree with just about any criticism of the Church hierarchy you write. Indeed, I just voted for my rather obviously ethically challenged State Rep, who attends an adjacent parish, specifically because he stood up to pressure from the church and was instrumental in killing the SSM ballot question, and I admired this act of political bravery.
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p>So why am I still a Catholic? Because it is about more than political issues. I remain a Catholic because, for 150 years, the Church in America has done more to educate and care for poor immigrant communities in urban areas than any other, including the government, and regardless of whether those communities are Catholic. I suppose I can tolerate the “moral dissonance” as aptly phrased by Lynn below, because I know that there is no such thing as perfection on this earth.
It was Mr. Lynn.
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p>Sorry, Mr. Lynn.
the congregation when it is the congregation that pays the salaries of the hierarchy. when you give money to the church, you support the hierarchy and everything it does. when you participate in church functions, you lend legitimacy to the church structure and the hierarchy that runs it.
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p>i might agree that there is perhaps a difference in degree of culpability between hierarchy and rank & file members of the church. but not by much. in my view, it is a difference similar to the old pairing of the southern slave owner and the northern mill owner who eschewed slavery yet still bought the slave-produced cotton. one step higher on the moral plain perhaps, but still keeping the system alive and even profiting from it personally (whether spiritually or economically).
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p>there are other religious (and non-religious) organizations that do very good things in the world that don’t also feel the compulsion to shit on gay people. why not seek one out if what you want is a christian organization to do good deeds through? it’s not as if there are not alternatives. there is no excuse, in my mind, for supporting an organization like the rcc that insists on attacking the wholeness of certain human beings.
Here is part of the dissonance — and I expect I’ll take a lot of heat for this one…
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p>I’m as Catholic as you are gay. I can’t turn it off. It’s part of me. It’s my family, both sides, for as far back as we can trace. It’s my culture, my holidays, my art, my music.
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p>This doesn’t mean I agree with 100% of the RCC or it’s actions, and I certainly don’t agree with the pro-life anti-gay faction. But, I also know that the Catholic Church does more good work than any other organization on the planet. And, I believe that I can work within the church to help people within the church see that homosexuality is not sinful. Person to person, one conversation at a time.
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p>Am I as motivated as you are on a day to day basis for this change? No, no I’m not. I don’t have to swallow the bitter pill every day. But, like anyone else, I can get discouraged. Sometimes I get discouraged with people in my church who insist on being hateful toward GLBTs. Sometimes, though, I get discouraged when someone suggests that I am the problem because I’m not volunteering enough effort for their cause as if their injustice was the only one in the world and it’s my obligation to spend all my hours and efforts on their suffering.
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p>I also get discouraged when that same person flippantly suggests that I get a new church. It’s no different to me than simply suggesting that you get new equipment or that you only be attracted to those of the opposite gender.
… it should be noted that you are equating the immutability of being Catholic as a similar level of immutability of sexual orientation. Your equating culture and beliefs with biology. Probably not an apt comparison. I’ll bet that people switch churches (or stop going) while maintaining the core beliefs all the time in the west far more often than people switch their sexual identity. I get that on a level of identity you find them similar,… but in terms of ‘mutability’ they are probably not. Cultures change so fast in the information age you’d better not blink.
There, of course, has been ample precedence for groups ‘breaking away’ from a given church over values. Then I read this contemporaneous example.
I was having difficulty articulating precisely this.
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p>Thank you.
“S.F. archbishop defends role in Prop. 8 passage”
Be sure to praise this good man, stomv. He works for you. He is doing the bidding of your pope.
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p>18,000 marriages ruined. Countless thousands of future marriages thwarted.
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p>If you live and breathe the RCC as you say, you live and breathe vilification theology. And you are as responsible as any of the hierarchy, because as you know this is not an isolated action by one wayward bishop, but part of a systematic plan that YOUR organization has been dedicating funds and souls to for decades. Shame on you. Shame on you for not seeing the difference between your religious feelings and a hateful religious organization using your good will to promote its hateful ends.
This is the official policy of your church. This is what you are supporting by your membership in the RCC.
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p>You own it.
Don’t forget that Bernard Law, who knew all about the rapes and other sexual abuse perpetrated by the priests he supervised, is enjoying a cushy retirement and a plumb job in Rome. The poor dear.
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p>He works for you, stomv & CMD. Be sure to drop an extra dollar in the basket next mass to be sure he remains well outfitted.
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p>You own him.
And how would you feel if the church told you had to leave your SO?
… of gay priests. Celibacy is the rule, so why single out gays? All start out as sinners, right? Is gayness, even if never acted upon, such a huge sin as to disallow ordination?
He was saying similar things, but feels he’s increasingly squeezed from above and below. The from above is fairly obvious: there’s been a shift to the “right” from the pope on down and O’Mally is apparently more doctrinaire than Law.
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p>It’s the from below that I find interesting. He’s seen a rise in self-appointed watchdogs (he calls them the “more Catholic than thou KGB). Not just the CJ Doyles and Carol McKinleys of the world, but regular parishioners intent on making the clergy adhere to their view of Catholic dogma.
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p>Two examples:
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p>1) A parishioner sent a letter of complaint to the Cardinal’s office when he put out anti-gay marriage petitions, but failed to preach about the evils of homosexuality.
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p>2) He gave a sermon reminding folks that the “culture of death” is not limited to abortion, but extends to war and the death penalty. A different parishioner came up to him and argued about it, then sent a letter accusing him of being soft on abortion.
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p>The latter incident was before the silliness about not honoring Obama as president because he’s pro-choice, but comes from exactly the same source. My friend’s point was and is that the culture of death is the culture of death – there’s no better or worse. To say McCain is acceptable despite his support of the death penalty, but Obama is not acceptable because of his support for choice, is a very strange line to walk.
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p>Which is not to disagree with any of the good things you point out, just to say these are very odd times. Dealing with the abuse case by singling out gay priests is just another example. And don’t forget that Bernie Law is still around.
… about shame. If it is shameful for an organization to act on or advocate policy X, then there should also be some level of shame in supporting or associated with an organization that does the same. How that affects a decision to stay with or keep supporting that organization depends on how that level of shame can be weighed against all the other values (good and bad) embodied by the organization and the totality of its acts. My guess is that, for her part, Laurel considers the issue so shame-worthy, she can’t imagine what set of circumstances could cause someone to consider that, on-balance, it’s worth staying with the organization. It’s not hard to see how she might arrive at that conclusion given the essential character of justice surrounding the suppression of what are human rights.
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p>Shame is only useful as an agent of change when you needle it. You have to hit a nerve to make people uncomfortable enough to reconsider their positions. If people stay too comfortable, it can result in an inertia of the status quo. Discomfort is the goal of shame. So I’d expect a certain amount of ‘offense’ being felt from anyone who is the subject of a shame campaign. That being said, it is worth noting that shame alone doesn’t always enact change. Shame lessened slavery’s popularity over time, but it did not end it. Of course, even when shame itself fails, the agent of change is still more often a force from outside. In the case of civil rights, it usually took the form of a legal opinion.
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p>The debate about whether it’s better to enact change ‘from the inside’ or ‘from the outside’ hinges on two points from my perspective. Does agitation from the inside create enough organizational discomfort to effect change at all? Is the change needed so fundamentally essential to a moral outcome that an offending organization’s acts and values that in order to maintain a reasonable moral footing for oneself it becomes a necessity to leave? One is a question of effectiveness and the other is a question of one’s personal tolerance level for moral dissonance. I’m guessing that Laurel’s position is that the particular dissonance in question should be too much for anyone to tolerate.
Whether it be the Pope/Vatican, Jerry Falwell, Kris Mineau of the Mass Family Institute, Brian Camenker of Article 8, or Fred Phelps, these anti-LGBT campaigns carry the same message, just in different packaging.
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p>The message is one of intolerance and that message is shameful. It leads to real hurt in the population at which is directed, whether it smells of Saintly roses or fundamentalist brimstone.
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p>Why is it that Kris Mineau asked LGBT leaders to join it in asking that “both sides” tone down the namecalling and rhetoric” during the SSM fight here in Massachusetts? Because the term “bigot” kept coming up. When we all categorized those who would hurt LGBT as “bigots” it created a label meant to shame. And rightly so. That term left no grey area which in terms of the United States of America there should not be (a grey area) regarding civil and equal rights. If you at all make excuses or try to justify keeping anyone in this country from full equality, then you earn this title. And the shame that comes with it. Mineau knew that a term such as this directed at “his followers” and those that he hoped to cement to his side might just cause the agitation (as Mr. Lynne describes) and prove detrimental to his group.
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p>The RCC has changed substantially since Pope John XXIII in 1962. It perhaps changed more in the following 46 years than in any other time in history. I believe that it will either (a) continue to evolve in ways which are universally tolerant to non-Catholics (a logical extension of Dignitatis Humanae), or (b) become less and less powerful to influence American society.
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p>I think agitation from the inside moves (a) forward.
… I’m assuming you are sticking with them.
Sarkozy has been very willing to tweak the Vatican’s nose lately…color me unsurprised.
I think this is more genuine than Sarkozy just wanting to tweak the Vatican. Not that I mind if he does, but I wouldn’t debase the move as nothing more than a thumb in the eye. The EU genuinely considers its LGBT citizens as full citizens and human beings. I know it’s hard to imagine that, coming from the United States. I wonder if the US will sign on before Bush leaves, if ever.
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p>Btw, your link doesn’t work.
What is a “genderqueer”?
for people covered under the “gender identity” category.
I thought so, but wasn’t sure. For some reason, that category seems to generate new names at quite a clip.