Pope denounces political push to legalize gay marriage
Pope Benedict on Friday denounced the “powerful political and cultural currents” seeking to legalize gay marriage in the United States, where Maryland has just become the eighth state to allow it.
The pope’s latest comments in opposition to homosexual marriage came in an address to bishops from several Midwestern states on a regular visit to the Vatican.
“Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage,” he said.
He added that the traditional family and marriage had to be “defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature” because, he said, whatever injured families injured society.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ratzinger had nothing to say about the continued presence (and institutional shielding from prosecution) of pedophiles in the Catholic priesthood.
You’re one to talk, old man.
For Santorum, as for Ratzinger, if your conscience says one thing, and the Pope says another, you obey the Pope, not your conscience. And for the Christianists, if your conscience or intelligence says one thing, and the Bible says another, you obey the Bible, not your conscience, and certainly not your intelligence. Because beneath Christianism is a deep fear of the human mind - as if they actually believe that reason is stronger than religion and therefore must be restrained. As if the human mind can will God out of existence. This is Santorum’s fear-laden vision. Which is why he is not a man of questioning, sincere faith and should not be flattered as such. He is a man of the kind of fear that leads to fundamentalist faith, a faith without doubt and in complete subservience to external authority. There is a reason he doesn’t want many kids to go to college. I mean: when we already know the truth, why bother to keep seeking it? And if we already know the truth, why are we not enforcing it as a matter of law in a country founded on Christian principles? It is not religious oppression if it is ‘the way things are supposed to be’, by natural law. In fact, a neutral public square, in his mind, is itself religious oppression.
(via azspot)
Accumulating random crap since 1976! Mostly strange humor, fountain pens, history, politics, LGBT issues, art, odd pictures from my iPhoto library, and irrelevant status updates. I'm an ESTJ. In my day job I'm a scientist or something. And I like boys.
