A rchive Date
[ 09-08-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/kaufmann.html
Twisted logic
Anti-gay sentiment is bigotry dressed up as morality
By BILL KAUFMANN - Calgary Sun
August 4, 2003
There could be no more timely a reminder of the need to separate church and state than the one we're witnessing now.
There's nothing like the impending sanction of same-sex marriage to bring out the Bible-thumping visions of the apocalypse many of us mistakenly thought were the preserve of history.
The most vociferous cries of looming damnation and perdition come from the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pope barely hesitated in issuing his fatwa-of-sorts, given the grim spectre of Canada's homosexuals being accorded treatment most of us take for granted.
Pope John Paul II certainly took his sweet time responding halfheartedly to the mind-boggling outrage of priestly sexual abuse. This is the same church that condemns homosexual marriage as unnatural, yet continues to deny its priests the fruits of a normal and healthy sexual life.
It's also the same organization that holds to weirdly excluding women from crucial aspects of church life. The Vatican statement on same-sex marriage also speaks of the "violence" inherent in homosexual adoption, though no evidence bears this out.
Proof of the violence meted out by the church's adherents, whether it be sexual abuse or in the residential schools, is, however, abundant.
We even hear our own, otherwise admirable Bishop in Calgary, Fred Henry, warning the souls of Catholic lawmakers who dare cross the church might well languish in Hades.
Henry's summoning of this fire and brimstone ooga-booga alone should be enough to convince Canadians of the archaic absurdity of the church's position.
Would he say the same for fellow-clerics who've raped children and those in the church protecting the abusers, or will confession purge only certain sins?
Apparently, the outrage of extending dignity, equality and human rights to a shunned minority falls outside forgiveness.
Such is the twisted logic of the church in this realm, infused with the rhetoric that we need to "protect marriage" from the threat of same-sex unions.
Protect it from what, exactly? The inclusion of yet more love and commitment?
Decades from now, with the official existence of homosexual marriage, the larger world of marriage will continue to both thrive and endure challenges, just as it always has. The institution and the heterosexual majority will see to that. The mere use of the term "protect" implies a cancerous, leprous threat posed by and applied to homosexuals.
Hopes that in the 21st century such hysterical hate-mongering would be mere relics have yet to be fulfilled.
Of course, the church rationalizes its intolerance with its "love the sinner, hate the sin" lingo. But terms like eternal damnation and "violence" seem more demonizing than loving.
Holding some as less deserving and worthy has little in common with the belief God created all as equals, in His image. It's just the kind of rhetoric that validates the worst excesses in the minds of gay bashers.
Here we have religious teachings that marginalize and make more trying the lives of a minority whose only sin was to be born a certain way, presumably by the grace of God - and they call it Christianity. Of course, Christianity isn't alone; other faiths do the same. If those faiths choose to follow the sorry path of dressing up bigotry as morality, they have that right and the right to be heard, but they shouldn't expect that to extend into secular political policy.
Marriage is a civil as well as religious institution - that it's a gift from God is only one interpretation and Canadians deserve protection from its blanket application.
There's another reason to ensure the Vatican's power over our politicians is constrained: George W. Bush is in agreement with it on same-sex marriage.
Bush heads a political party indignant over the recent legalization of consenting sex between adults of the same gender. He's also the president who's looted the U.S. treasury to benefit the rich and foisted a bloody colonial quagmire on his nation on the basis of bunkum.
And according to the fine Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Bush claims to have received direct orders from God to bring destruction to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Does Fred Henry want to keep that kind of company?
Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@calgarysun.com
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