Pope Benedict XVI's Crusade Against Gays and Lesbians

In one of his first major speeches as the new pope, Benedict XVI made clear what the central themes of his papacy would be.  He did not speak about world poverty, the global destruction of natural resource, war, executions in China and the US, or torture in Uzbekistan and Guantanamo.  No, he used the occasion to attack gay marriage:

"The various modern forms of the dissolution of marriage -- like free unions, 'trial marriages' and the pseudomarriage between persons of the same sex -- are expressions of an anarchic freedom," he said.

Why an expression of committed love and fidelity between two human beings is an "expression of anarchic freedom" Benedict did not say. 

The leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, Volker Beck, had a forceful response to Benedict's speech, pointing out that this was a continuation of Cardinal Ratzinger's crusade against equal rights for gays and lesbians. 

Beck sagte dazu, die "Beschimpfung" zeige, dass der Papst weder von Freiheit noch Verantwortung etwas verstehe und vor einer Beleidigung der Homosexuellen nicht zurückschrecke. "Papst Benedikt XVI. hat seine Aktivitäten gegen die Homosexualität, die er als Chef der Glaubenskongregation wie kein Theologe neben ihm mit einer Besessenheit in unzähligen Lehrschreiben betrieben hat, nun in seiner Rolle als Papst wieder aufgenommen."

Benedict's early speeches have shown that the Roman Catholic Church will continue its implicit support for status quo of social injustice, even as it attacks the reproductive rights of women and the demands for equal rights by gays. 

Comments

[Dr. Arthur Frederick Ide]

Benedict XVI has wasted no time in condemning LGBT people or communities. He has blessed the Speaker of Uganda's Parliament (REBECCA ALITWALA KADAGA) who has tirelessly worked for passage of the "kill the gays" legislation introduced by USA evangelist Scott Lively and his organized hate group Abiding Truth Ministries, and has stayed silent on the Jesuit pedophiles in Alaska, and forbidding bishops from Mahoney in California to Dolan in New York to release any information on other predatory priests in the ministry. The German pope is re-enacting his attack on reason and justice as did other NAZI youth 1933-1945, who carried "forbidden books" out to bonfires, in the same way that this treacherous pontiff re-established the unHoly Inquisition and List of Forbidden Books.