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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Tue Nov 13, 2012, 05:54 AM Nov 2012

The Vatican Hates Gays

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/vatican-hates-gays



In light of stunning, sweeping gains for marriage equality not just in last week’s United States elections but in France and Spain, it was inevitable that the men in long dresses and funny hats would get their dander up. But what’s most laughably ridiculous about the Vatican’s latest outburst against LGBT rights is that it just can’t let go of one of the oldest, dumbest arguments against them in the world.

In an editorial this weekend, Vatican chief spokesman Father Federico Lombardi — the guy who thinks the Church’s widespread sexual abuse crisis needs to be viewed within, I’m not even kidding, “the more general context of secularization” — affirmed that “monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilization.” And then he added, “If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry?” Why not? If two men can pledge their love in a legally recognized union, who’s to stop a woman from marrying a wedge of cheese, right? I mean, where does it end?

Father Lombardi isn’t the first person with a head full of faulty logic to trot out the “This slope! It’s just so darn slippery!” argument, of course. Last month, U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert declared, when pressed about same-sex unions on a campaign stop, “You know, we don’t have polygamy and bigamy and all of these things in, in the federal government. It’s the states that take care of that.” She lost the election, by the way.

And why limit the comparing same-sex unions to polygamy? Why not any crazy-ass combination at all? In September, Australian senator Cory Bernardi resigned after remarking, “The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship … There are even some creepy people out there … [who] say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals. Will that be a future step? In the future, will we say: ‘These two creatures love each other, and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union’? I think that these things are the next step.” And last year, in a piece called “If same-sex marriage, why not polygamy?” in the American Conservative, Rod Dreher facetiously argued, ”Why, for example, should a brother and sister who have agreed to undergo sterilization as a condition of their marital union be denied the right to marry, if that is their wish?” That right there is the template for How These People Think. Civil rights? What’s next? Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!
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The Vatican Hates Gays (Original Post) xchrom Nov 2012 OP
The feeling is mutual I'm sure. Fearless Nov 2012 #1
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz MFM008 Nov 2012 #2
What else do you expect from fascists? joeybee12 Nov 2012 #3
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