Pop Benedict attacks government over Equality Bill

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK’s Equality Bill with “missionary zeal”. – Source: BBC Online

Yep, the Holy One believes that a bill aimed at protecting people from discrimination based on sexuality and gender is an evil law that must be fought with the kind of zeal missionaries have. I’m not 100% sure what missionary zeal is – I think it’s where the zealot is on top and the infidel is underneath, thus allowing the zealot to look the infidel in the eyes while he fucks them (metaphorically speaking). I do think it worth pointing out that had a leading figure in the Muslim faith uttered the phrase ‘fight with missionary zeal’ we’d be talking terrorism – but because the only people the Pope is condemning to death are countless Africans (more of that later) we see him as something of a weird but harmless old man. Go figure.

What’s more, the Pope has said the legislation “violates natural law” – a pretty clear reference to the fact that it would allow homosexuals more freedom from discrimination from, say, religious organisations. The very use of the phrase ‘violates natural law’ is immensely telling, if you ask me – it’s so homophobic I’m surprised Jan Moir hasn’t had it tattooed across her forehead.

In a speech he made in Rome, Bene/Ratzy told the Catholic bishops of England and Wales:

“Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.

“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”

The statements have rightly caused an uproar, as has the planned official 4-day visit the Holy Father intends to make to our unGodly and equality-seeking land. At a cost of £20million of tax-payers money. That’s £20million that could be better spent… on homeopathy, bankers’ bonuses or MPs expenses, for example. It’s certainly £20million too much – a view shared by over 12,000 protesters, who’ve signed a petition to appeal to the Prime Minister to have the Pope’s club (worldwide Catholicism) to foot the bill, rather than the UK Government. The petition states:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ask the Catholic Church to pay for the proposed visit of the Pope to the UK and relieve the taxpayer of the estimated £20 million cost. We accept the right of the Pope to visit his followers in Britain, but public money would be better spent on hard-pressed schools, hospitals and social services which are facing cuts.

If you agree with the cause, feel free to sign the petition online.

This isn’t the first outrageous statement God’s representative on Earth has made of late. On March 17, 2009, Pope Benedict flew to Africa to visit Cameroon and Angola. During the flight, he was asked about the Catholic Church’s stance on AIDS in Africa.

Pope Benedict gave a lengthy response, detailing many of the Church’s humanitarian efforts to help people with AIDS in Africa.

“I would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it.”

That’s right – condoms help spread AIDS, says the leader of the Catholic Church.

Obviously, this stance from the head of the Catholic Church has been met with unprecedented levels of condemnation – most recently by Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. On Tuesday of last week Knox reiterated his stance that Pope Benedict XVI is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.”

“The Pope’s statement that condoms don’t help control the spread of HIV, but rather condoms increase infection rates, is hurting people in the name of Jesus.

On a continent where millions of people are infected with HIV, it is morally reprehensible to spread such blatant falsehoods. The Pope’s rejection of scientifically proven prevention methods is forcing Catholics in Africa to choose between their faith and the health of their entire community. Jesus was about helping the marginalized and downtrodden, not harming them further.”

Condemning the third world to an AIDS epidemic isn’t the only blotch on the past record of il Papa. In May 2001, Ratzinger issued an order ensuring church investigations into child abuse by members of the clergy would be conducted in private. The letter from the then-Cardinal stated that the church has jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric’, and stressed a policy of ‘strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse, threatening those who speak out with excommunication.

The order also calls for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials.

The victim.

Just to be completely clear, the current Pope specified that an abused child must take an oath of secrecy, lasting until 10 years after the child turns 18. Breach of that secrecy is met with excommunication.

As the Times reported, Dr Rowan Williams stated the choice of Canon Mary Glasspool to be a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles had “important implications”. Glasspool’s appointment is the second instance of an openly homosexual clergy member appointed to the position of bishop in the US Episcopal Church, after a vote at last summer’s General Convention of the Episcopal Church had in effect ended the moratorium on gay bishops.

Speaking of the election, Williams said:

“The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop-elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion but for the Communion as a whole. The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.” - Source: The Times Online

The timing of Williams’ homophobic comments could not be more ill thought out, coming just as the world stands appalled at the abhorrent bills being pushed through Ugandan courts, along with the other countless instances of intolerance and homophobia committed in the name of religion. It’s alarming then that Williams has chosen to take the stance he has – especially for someone with a reputation for relative liberalism within the religious world.

Williams isn’t the only influential religious representative to condemn the appointment – the American Anglican Council was among the first of the conservative bodies to speak against the latest election, accusing the Episcopal Church of a further departure from biblical teaching. President of the group Bishop David Anderson said of the decision:

“Unfortunately, this election provides further clarity to the rest of the Anglican Communion. Should the rest of the Episcopal Church consent to this election, there can be no more pretending that the Episcopal Church holds to Anglican Communion doctrine. Not only has it elected another non-celibate homosexual bishop, but it repeatedly defies the moratorium on same-sex blessings.”

Glasspool herself is defiant in the face of the homophobia of the mainstream Anglican church, saying:

“Any group of people who have been oppressed because of any one isolated aspect of their persons yearns for justice and equal rights.”

There’s so much of this whole story that I can’t help but find deeply disappointing – firstly that the so-called liberal and relaxed Church of England, along with other Anglican and Protestant groups, has reacted with the kind of homophobia and intolerance we expect to see of religious extremists. Not only that, but the timing of the announcement particularly disturbs me – Williams has made a real choice in deciding to condemn the appointment of a lesbian bishop and yet to remain silent on the recent Ugandan law that outlaws homosexuality.

For me, it really does back up something Dawkins is adamant on, and something I’ve never really particularly subscribed to before now – the mainstream moderate areas of religion survive by seeming reasonable and liberal, but with their central tenants based on the same unfounded and unproven ideas as the extremists, we have to tar the two groups with the same brush and treat them accordingly.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, an expansion of a previous bill from April of this year, proposes the death penalty for what it describes as ‘aggravated homosexuality’ – one definition of which involves consensual sex between two partners, where one is HIV positive. On top of that, consensual homosexual relationships where HIV is not involved is punishable by lifetime imprisonment, and anyone who is aware of a gay or lesbian couple and fails to inform the authorities of their existence within 24 hours is subject to a fine and up to three years imprisonment. Not content with those horrendous violations of human rights, the bill then imposes further restrictions on free speech – banning the homosexual community from blogging and communicating under the accusation of their ‘promotion of homosexuality’.

Ugandan citizens looking to leave the country in order to escape the reaches of this hateful act aren’t beyond action, with provisions in the bill to extend punishments and death penalties to Uganda citizens abroad, to be served upon their return to the country. What’s more, the bill sets out extradition rights, to bring such ‘offenders’ to ‘justice’ back in their home countries. In other extraordinarily draconian measures set out by the bill, new charges of ‘aiding and abetting homosexuality’ and ‘conspiracy to engage in homosexuality’ carry prison sentences of seven years, while charges for operating a brothel are defined in terms so loose as to include any hotel owner – again with an associated prison sentence of seven years.

Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni – a supporter of the act – looks likely to press the bill through parliament. Museveni has a history of anti-gay vitriol, having claimed that homosexuality has been imported to Africa from the decadent west, stating in 1998:

“When I was in America some time ago I saw a rally of 300,000 homosexuals. If you have a rally of 20 homosexuals here I want to disperse it,”

The bill, supported by the country’s strong religious leadership and evangelical churches (many of which have links to the American Christian right), has unsurprisingly attracted attention and condemnation across the world – with Gordon Brown joining the ranks of world leaders speaking out against the Ugandan government.

Unlike the Church of England – who’s spokesperson Archbishop Rowan Williams chose this week to speak out about lesbians in the American clergy, rather than to condemn homophobia in Uganda – Ugandan Aglican minister Gideon Byamugisha was clear in speaking out against the act he believes will breed violence and intolerance through all levels of society:

“I believe that this bill [if passed into law] will be state-legislated genocide against a specific community of Ugandans, however few they may be”

Uganda is one of the most HIV-hit countries in the world, and Byamugisha believes not only will the bill have a devastating effect on the fight against the disease in the country (forcing carriers to hide their symptoms rather than seek treatment), but that the bill actively targets HIV sufferers as the cause of the country’s problems. As the Guardian reported:

“[The politicians] are exploiting the traditional and cultural abhorrence to same-sex relationships to their advantage”

“What makes this proposed law truly distasteful is the amount and level of violence that is being proposed against suspected, rumoured and known individuals who are gay, and their families and community leaders in their places of worship, residence, education, work, business and entertainment.”

“When you say that parents of homosexual children, and that pastors and counsellors who extend spiritual guidance and psycho-social support to homosexuals, will be regarded as ‘accomplices’ in promoting and abetting homosexuality if they don’t report them to police, then you take the law a bit too far.”

Other ramifications of the bill could be far-reaching, with Sweden threatening to withdraw annual aid of $50million should Uganda force the homophobic law through – needless to say the poor of Uganda can ill afford to see that aid stopped, and there’s a real danger that in forcing through this act and thus cutting off international relations, Uganda is cutting itself off from the help its people desperately need. A distasteful and distressing affair all round, and a real dark day for rationalism and reason in the face of religious intolerance and extremism, I believe.

Rev. Rick Nelson, Central’s senior pastor, says of the freak tornado:

“We give thanks to God that no one was injured by today’s tornado” – Source: www.centralmpls.org

So far, so normal. But not everyone was as willing to take it as a random act of weather as we reasonably sorts might. In fact, soon after the reports went out, the hardline Christian blogs were alight with tales of fearful vengeance from the magic sky man. Especially given the unfortunate fact that, at the same time as the tornado landed, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America debate was taking place over the road, in order to decide whether to allow practicing homosexuals to be ordained clergy. So, of course, the more hardline and nuttier elements of the church – and the wider Christian community in America – have taken this freak weather event as some kind of warning from God, a kind of ‘Repent lest ye be blown!’

One great such post I found was from John Piper of the DesiringGod.org blog – a particularly creepy and smug character who I urge you to check out, if you can stand it. He wrote of the whole affair:

Let me venture an interpretation of this Providence with some biblical warrant:

The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God.

“The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)” – Source:  www.desiringgod.org

This, I think, is a great argument from John, because it’s so clearly self-defeating – if homosexuality is a sin on par with adultery, greed, thievery or drunkenness, then surely we should be having a hell of a lot more tornadoes! Strange then that God only seems to take weathery vengeance on the gay community.  Also, and it might be childish of me to point out, but I fail to see how anyone who has a website called ‘Desiring God’ can criticise anyone for being gay…

I did, however, find a nice reasonably rebuttal from ChristianityToday.com, where Julia Duin wrote:

“If God was speaking in downtown Minneapolis through the twister, no one was listening… if God had wanted to get through to the assembly, why didn’t he send the tornado a day earlier so word would have gotten through to everyone?” - Source: blog.christianitytoday.com

And she has a point – exploring the story more, I found that many of the voting committee were only informed of the damage to the church a long time after they’d voted. And as it turns out, the vote ended with a two thirds majority in favour of allowing homosexual clergy. So they failed to take heed of God’s warning – surely we should expect some even greater catastrophe to befall them? Surely God’s not going to take it lying down?

Seeking a slightly more independent source, I found reports of the incident on Associated Press:

“Residents began cleaning up Thursday after tornadoes and severe storms slammed a large part of the Midwest, tearing the roofs from buildings and overturning vehicles” - Source: Associated Press

So unless the Central Lutheran Church can be considered to be ‘a large part of the Midwest’, it seems like the Lutheran’s who think God’s holy rage is upon them are just being a little self-centred. Didn’t I read somewhere that vanity is a sin…?