LAT: Catholic Church leads massive protest vs. gay marriage in Spain

[Nothing Without Hope]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-spaingays19jun19,0,4896018.story?track=tothtml
June 19, 2005 latimes.com
THE WORLD

Church Leads Protest in Spain

The Catholic hierarchy takes on the Socialists in power as priests and nuns march with at least 200,000 against a bill to legalize gay marriage.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Michael Moffett, Special to The Times

MADRID — Making an unusually forceful foray into Spanish politics, the Roman Catholic Church led an enormous march through the streets of Madrid on Saturday to protest legislation that would legalize marriage for gay couples.

(snip)

Right-wing politicians also joined the demonstration, which was organized by a coalition called the Forum for the Family. It was the most coordinated protest to date against the agenda of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The gay marriage measure is one of several social policies that have heightened tensions between the Catholic Church and Zapatero's government, which came to power a year ago in an upset electoral victory that ended eight years of conservative rule.

Zapatero also plans to relax restrictions on abortion, divorce and stem cell research. And he has focused on the church itself, which receives public funding in Spain. His government has proposed reducing the church's budget and extending financial benefits to other religions.

(snip)

Looking at that last paragraph, no wonder the Spanish Catholic hierarchy wants the Conservatives back! Let's hope the people and the Spanish lawmakers stand firm against backsliding into bigotry, hate and fear.

[Hissyspit]

1. Well, whoopie-doo...

for the Catholic Church in Spain. "A forceful foray into politics"... or a forceful foray into irrelevancy?

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. "A forceful foray into irrelevancy" - yes, that's what I'm thinking

After a while, the contrast between the hypothetical universal Christian charity and what these people are really pushing is bound to open some people's eyes. The fact that the Conservatives were voted out in an upset victory last year is encouraging.

This is all about power in the material world, not the professed afterlife. And it's not all that hard to figure that out.

[cap]

3. the article also points out that the Vatican helped

defeat a change in fertility legislation in Italy.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Yeah, that was a tantalizing little bit -anyone know WHAT fertility

legislation the Vatican is trying to forbid? IVF? How broad is the Vatican trying to go? Last I heard, they were still forbidding condoms, even as a means to prevent a fatal disease.

I was struck by the paragraph that pointed out that a lot of people in Spain see these blatantly political moves by the Catholic Church as an attempt to return to the great power of the Spanish Church hierarchy under fascist dictator Franco, who was in power until 1975 - not so long ago as to be forgotten. He outlawed homosexuals and was a horror, but he really upheld the power of the Church.

[dsc]

9. they actually were defending an existing law

which banned unmarried women from using in vitro, only permitted one fertalization at a time, and gave embryos certain legal rights.

[fasttense]

5. Don't like them gays marrying but it's OK to molest small boys.

The Catholic Church sure has it's priorities in order.

[Algorem]

6. Religious leaders list their beliefs in manifesto

http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/living/1119087667302511.xml?lrnew&coll=2

(there's another article that goes with this but it's not on the paper's website)

Saturday, June 18, 2005

"Moral values have the power to shape the future of our country." That's the message of a moral manifesto the Religious and Spiritual Leaders Group of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Service Center of Cleveland presents today.

What follows is a list of moral values developed for the downtown Pride celebration at Voinovich Park.


Human sexuality

We believe human sexuality is a gift from God. We uphold a sexual ethic of fidelity in committed relationships and integrity in all human relations. We believe that sexual exploitation and sexual violence degrade this precious gift and are to be avoided and/or actively denied...

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. How much more humanity and kindness is in THIS list of moral values

than in the narrow-minded, hateful intolerance of the Spanish Church hierarchy and those that push their agenda, including both the Spanish conservative politicians and the Vatican. They were happy with the bloody-handed fascist dictator Franco but march in the streets to protest legislation that would allow all human beings the right to have committed, loving relationships. The god they worship must be vengeful and malicious - creating people in a range of sexual orientations and then denying and condemning all but one. Doesn't sound much like what is known of the historical Jesus to me.

They don't push love, they push shame and fear. I was saddened to read of the woman in the anti-gay march who said her own 70-year-old brother was gay but that he was also against the tolerizing legislation because he saw it as necessary for being a good Catholic who "recognizes that matrimony is a sacrament of God." All those years of pain and self-hatred behind that little story!

And yet, like this brother and sister, few of the people interviewed for the LAT article were young It would have been interesting to know the demographic breakdown of the protesters. The GOOD news is that even with the strong influence of the Catholic Church there, a clear majority of Spanish citizens support gay marriage and this humane new legislation is expected to pass into law soon. The more toward tolerance and common sense has come about even in a society with such strong opposition by the long-entrenched, state-supported religion.

Thank you for the article you cited. The list of REAL moral values will be good to bring forward to compare with the cruel, hateful diatribes of the Fristian zealots in our own country. Tolerance is growing, but the more tools to help it along in the people around us, the better. A society embracing open-hearted kindness and respect for all is better in every way, on every level than one based on exclusion, imposed shame and hatred.

[Democrats_win]

8. This is the thanks we get after a gay man decorated your Sistine Chapel.

[kweerwolf]

11. If a straight guy would have done the Sistine Chapel ...

... it would have been wallpapered and the church would still be waiting for the last two walls to get done.

:evilgrin:

[Democrats_win]

13. LOL

[arwalden]

10. I Guess It's Easier To Attack Homos Than To Purge Pedos

... and just think of all the OTHER uses that their efforts and time and MONEY could have been put towards. Food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, healthcare for infants.

How exactly do they come up with their PRIORITIES???!!!

[Nothing Without Hope]

12. I've always wondered why they are so comfortable with those priorities.

I think it's because they've trained themselves in a discipline where all questions have automatic, rote answers - it's all in the catechisms and in theological texts and books of rules and orders of superiors - so that they don't have to truly search for real answers.

I still remember the first question in the Baltimore Catechism, the blue book we all had to memorize answers from in religion classes in Catholic School:

Q: Who is God?
A: God is the Supreme Being Who made all things.

For the first couple of years I wondered what a "Supreme Bean" was, but it was OK because I gave the correct answer as far as the teacher could tell. I got A's in religion class but I didn't have a clue. In later years the blue book got fatter and fatter and we had to memorize more and more. What a waste, and what a training in limited circumspection.

There is a smug satisfaction to believing you're God's special bud and you have ALL the answers. Ratzinger was the head of the renamed Inquisition for over 20 years, the centuries-old organization that specializes in having THE correct answer to every question and punishes people for having alternative answers, or even unwelcome questions. He obviously gets a real kick out of it and zestfully "disciplines" anyone who questions his interpretation of orthodoxy. What a disaster that he was elected pope. I am no longer a Catholic, or even a Christian, but even so, I cannot bring myself to call him "pope." He's Ratzie to me, and I don't like to think about him at all. Hard to see how they could have chosen worse. And he's a big Opus Dei favorite too, which is another scary story.

It's all in their books of rules: all of life, everything. There's no room for an open heart or mind. They're not allowed. It's an utterly closed system. Some people derive a kind of comfort from it - no untidy corners, all the uncertainties of life and death controlled and done up in organized, rote order - but it does make for a closed mind with unchangeable and unquestioned priorities and an unquestioning belief that nothing else can be valid. And everyone who does not agree, who thinks or feels outside those rigid boxes, is vilified as an evil influence that must be suppressed and remolded to fit the orthodoxy. It's not only that the laity are forced into compliance, Ratzie himself has "disciplined" many teachers and theologians who dared to be open to ideas beyond the dusty, square-cornered old traditional ones he accepts, muzzling them or worse.

Ratzie and his doctrinaire followers are the ultimate control freaks, and with such smug self-satisfaction in their narrowness. What a colossal waste of human potential this has led to.