The British perspective

Gay marriage is not yet legal in Britain, but an opinion column in the Guardian, the country's leading left-wing paper, declares: "New York must pass the same-sex marriage bill." Writer Hadley Freeman takes a passing shot at New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan's "homophobia" before summing up: "If a film director can be banned from Cannes for making a stupid joke about Hitler and a fashion designer can lose his job for drunkenly blathering about Nazism, then politicians and religious leaders who strive to ensure gay people live lives of inequality should face measures far more stringent." One wonders what those "measures far more stringent" than firing might be. Imprisonment, torture, stoning?

Comments

[Johannah]

I think Freeman meant that those politicans and religious leaders should face measures far more stringent than the measures they face currently--which are exactly none.

[Johannah]

We must always have a group or class of people to scapegoat, musn't we. In anxious times, in western culture, it's Jews and homosexuals who come in for our collective transference, objectification, slander, contempt, and persecution.

Waivers are issued for misdirected violence such as mid-20th century pogroms. Early 21st century USA shocks the world by attempting to legalize the practice of torture.

Gays aspiring to lead loving, committed, stable, decent lives as couples, and wanting the legal rights and benefits of that arrangement? And (gasp) not making babies? Or worse, raising children? Heaven forfend. Pass the smelling salts. Break out the pink triangle patches.

[Johannah]

Dolan might better turn his attention to the problems and perils of "straight" sexuality--that is, if this babyfaced, possibly virginal prelate knows anything about that at all.

First let him publicly explicate and denounce the personality deficits and sexual criminality of the celibate priests over whom he has authority and for whose behavior he is responsible. The lunatics who brazenly protest their innocence by declaring to investigators (read the transcripts) that "it's not sex" no matter what they did do a terrified boychild or to a willing but already emotionally devastated adolescent, because after all it wasn't intercourse with a woman. Dolan still needs to root out the psychotic misogyny element. He also needs to root out the narcissists who have zero concept of or concern about the harm they inflict on others. This mentality--this hateful, sinful disposition--is an ongoing problem with the clergy.

Dolan should also find the balls to address the problem of "straight" married and parental laymen who molest children, including and usually children within their own families, which they do in far greater numbers, with far more devastating effects on far greater numbers of children, than do perverted Catholic priests.

[Johannah]

Anti gay marriage people should really look elsewhere for threats to civilization, or for the culprits responsible for the already advanced state of its decay.

[Brian]

How about churches losing their tax exempt status if they want to be political lobbying groups?

(Especially ones who claim that their rights to freedom of religion and speech require the denial of rights to others)

[Bob Conner]

Those far more stringent measures imply severe punishment for political opinion, which is a seriously bad idea.