quote:Vatican: Gay families = cockroaches No, that’s not an exaggeration: A Vatican official has said that the idea of gay-led families is no different than including cockroaches in a family. It seems the prospect of legalized same-sex marriage in Spain has brought the Vatican to the edge of hysteria. By the Most Reverend Bruce J. Simpson, Benedictine Order of St. John the Beloved An Advocate.com exclusive posted October 29, 2004
In what can only be described as a dangerous escalation in the declared war on the world’s gay population, the Vatican health secretary recently compared gay families directly to “cockroaches.” Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of Mexico made the analogy in a newspaper interview published October 12, while condemning same-sex marriage in his effort to carry out the papal edict concerning all things gay.
Talking about the Spanish government’s proposal to legalize same-sex marriage in 2005, Lozano, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, reportedly said to the Mexico City newspaper Reforma, “They even give cockroaches the rank of family now because they live under the same roof.”
It seems that the prospect of same-sex marriage being legalized by traditionally Roman Catholic Spain--since its government and people are ignoring the church’s demands to do the contrary--has severely rattled various cages in the Catholic hierarchy. This all has brought the Vatican to the edge of hysteria, and it is showing more and more each day.
The tactic of comparing human beings to animals is certainly not new. In the 1930s and ’40s the Third Reich dehumanized the entire Jewish population, asserting that they too were less than human by comparing them to pigs and rats, among other things.This was the Nazis’ way of desensitizing the German people to the impending slaughter of 6 million Jews throughout Europe--while the same Roman Catholic Church looked the other way.
If one ceases to think of a particular class of human beings as people, it is far easier to acquiesce to the notion that their lives hold far less value then everyone else’s. Once such a notion takes hold, genocide can, and has, occurred in a “civilized” society.
In a rather bizarre but telling statement, Cardinal Lozano went on to say that “one of the great goals of the culture of death is destruction of the family.”
What has not become evident in any statement issued by any official organ of the Vatican is how allowing two people in love--who want to commit to each other for the rest of their lives--threatens the “family” in any manner. This statement has no more validity than the assertion that same-sex marriage destroys straight marriage. By allowing gay people to marry, families are created, not destroyed—in spite of the Vatican.
This never-ending downward spiral of hate and repression can only lead to tragic consequences for both the gay and lesbian community and the Roman Catholic Church. Why any gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person continues to be Catholic is beyond reason to me. In fact, how any family that has a gay child or relative continues to belong to a church that would compare their loved ones to cockroaches is quite inexplicable.
And not to mention the gay or lesbian people who continue to serve in the Roman Catholic clergy and holy orders. To be a member of an organization that hates you, while also serving it as it perpetuates that bigotry, is the height of hypocrisy.
It is time for the entire community to wake up, smell the coffee, and react to this latest outrage with their feet.
posted
In all fairness to the Catholic Church, Telp, it doesn't appear that they were comparing homosexuals to cockroaches directly, but rather engaging in the same kind of polarizing slippery slope argument that we see in this country.
Their point was "if creatures living under the same roof can be considered married, then cockroaches are part of the family." Now, this is a horrible distortion and exaggeration, and I agree that it's intended to demean homosexuals in the same way that OSC's "playing house" comment and common arguments that "if we legalize gay marriage, what's to stop all the pedophiles from taking over" do, but I'm not sure the article is framing the insult correctly.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Telp, this isn't just the freaking Vatican. Not but a few months ago, John Cornyn (MY senator ) compared gay marriage to a man marrying a box turtle.
I know I don't really post much, but I hope you will accept this, my humblest of well wishes.
Be okay, Telp. There are a lot of us with you on this. Just not enough right now. But we won't quit.
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I am so tired of this and these people... I do not care what they say anymore, they are wrong. Every single thing they say about gays is just wrong. It has to stop.....
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To be fair to Telp, this statement is actually pretty tame compared to some of the stuff we got taught about homosexuals in religion class back when I was in catholic high school.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Just reminding you the gay marriage bans wouldn't have gained such widespread passage if it didn't have bipartisan support. That, and that there are Republicans, although we are a minority, that do support completely equal rights for all.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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The problem is, no matter how much we don't care what they have to say, we just missed our opportunity to fix it.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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We can write to our Reps in the Legislature and tell them we support gay rights and want them to stop the amendments...
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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And Syn, taking the position that they are simply wrong doesn't help. It only alienates moderates and makes it harder to "convert" people to the "right" side. I would contend that if Martin Luther King had simply acted like everyone who didn't side with him was an idiot instead of actively seeking to prove the logic of his position his movement wouldn't have succeeded.
Posts: 3446 | Registered: Jul 2002
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And then maybe he wouldn't have beeen assasinated. I'm all for considering other people's viewpoints, but it's important to realize that for at least some people the conscious reasons they have were made to justify their hatred and as such aren't amenable to change through anything other than extinguishing this hatred.
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I'm not saying they are idiots. I am saying they are wrong. Folks have tried logic again and again. It doesn't seem to be sinking in. It's an impenitrable fortress and many people are getting hurt because of it. Being polite isn't really working as long as one can counter with terrible statements in between Leviticus something or another. Trust me, I know. I've been arguing about this issue since '96. I have tried to understand their point of view. I lived it. I was born into the SDA religion after all. When I was young I thought homosexuality was wrong and bad. Until I read all those books, until the feelings started. Then I knew I was a shapeshifter. It was amazing the shock I got when I found out the Indigo Girls were gay in high school! I believe in respecting people's points of view but some people's points of view are flat out wrong. Just like the KKK and others like them are wrong about their ideas about blacks and minorities conservative groups are wrong about their views on gay people. Wrong and misinformed.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The problem is that when the Civil Rights movement started, most people felt it was perfectly justifiable to deprive people of their rights based on race. You have to convince people that their viewpoint is wrong in order for the law to be changed. You don't have to convince everyone, just enough people for the politicians to either change their viewpoint or get replaced.
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The logic of the Civil Rights movement (or at least Martin Luther King's side of it) wasn't primarily centered around refuting people's arguments (although this also happned), but instead of having more and more people see blacks as human beings and of the actions of their enemies provoking rage and disgust. Bull Shannon was one of the best things to happen to the Civil Rights movement. When they carried the same logical message to Chigago, Richard Daley, a much smoother political operator, pretty easily defused any effect they could have.
Prejudice isn't countered by logically disproving the foundation of the prejudice. Few people, even those not especially possessed of prejudice, are all that open to logical persuasion on things they have a strong motivation to believe. Instead, it's generally countered by altering the underlying motivations.
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I understand that the comparison to animals is unflattering and dangerous, and so I feel some sympathy for you on this point, guys. Unfortunately I think there's a fundamental disconnect happening somewhere.
The idea I suspect people are trying to convey is that "a relationship between two members of the same sex is fundamentally different from a relationship between two members of different sexes, and should not be called by the same name or necessarily give the same privileges." But there are a limited number of other relationships one can use for such a comparison--I've been trying for weeks to come up with one that isn't offensive for one reason or another. I can't say it's like an adult "marrying" a child, for instance, because that evokes pedophilia.
Perhaps if one were to say that it is like an adult "adopting" another (mentally normal) adult and acquiring legal guardianship of that person as if the second adult were a child. Most people would recognize that such a legal situation in an adult-adult relationship is peculiar and most likely inappropriate, and I can'f find any invidious comparisons in it.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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But Mabus, how can you judge the appropriateness of the relationships of other people? You are given stewardship over your own choices and relationships, not those of other people! Their relationships and choices are their own stewardship!
Nobody can understand what it's like to be someone else! People aren't actually truly qualified to make their OWN life choices. If we knew in advance the things that life teaches us, we wouldn't have to live it! So how can anyone feel qualified to make someone else's for them? People have no idea what it's like being someone else!
I can't tell you how many times in my life people have told me I shouldn't be an engineer because I'm female. They feel qualified to choose my profession for me because they are sure that since I'm a girl I must not really like the things I like, or know the things I know, or be good at the things I'm good at. If I made the choices in my life that people have told me I should have made, I would be dead now of suicide for sure.
Telpy, dear heart, I support you totally in all your life choices. I hope if marriage is what you wish, that you will marry the one you love and live happily ever after! This is a fundamental matter of human rights, and it WILL change. The truth just wins over time. Reality trumps people's prejudices, because it's real.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Mabus, A part of the disconnect comes from your side too. I've known gay people and I'll tell you, they're relationships don't differ substantially from the one's I have. I had a interesting night of drinking with a gay friend of mine where we bemoaned the problems with dating and his complaints were pretty much the same as mine. I've been to gay commitment ceremonies, and the love and joy I see there are not substantially different from that I see at weddings. I know both committed gay couples and committed straight couples and their lives and relationships don't seem to me to be all that different.
So, for me, claiming that these relationships are not just significantly different but in an entirely different category that is also as immature as "playing house" or "marrying a cockroach" seems pretty equivilent to saying that interracial marriages are just people playing house or marrying a cockroach.
The only difference that it seems like many of the people who are arguing against this are offerring is that their God doesn't like it and that marriage was established as a sacred thing. While on a personal level, I do care about their experiences with God, in an Enlightenment country such as ours should be, that is not an adequate reason for compulsive actions. Also, considering what I know about the history of marriage, I find their descripton of marriages as a fundamentally sacredly ordained relationship to be poorly founded.
If you can look at gay relationships and show how they differ substantially from straight ones in ways that validate the idea that these peopel aren't forming emotionally valid and socially useful partnerships, that's one thing. But what we're getting is an attempt to legislate your religious beliefs and/or enshrine the same sorts of prejudices that made interacial marriages a big no-no not 50 years ago.
edit: And yeah, what tatiana said. I have enough respect for people's autonomy that I can respect that it you for religious or other reasons think that it is different. It's fine that you personally or your God don't think it isn't a marriage. The big thing here is that you want to force me to agree with you without offering me any reason to do so. What gives you that right?
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) compared gay marriage to a man marrying a box turtle.
