Sunday, November 02, 2008

More homophobia from the church

Quelle surprise.
The vatican wants to use psychological testing to weed out gay priests. From the news story on the internet (emphasis mine):
"Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Catholic Education Congregation, said that a celibate candidate with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be barred "not because he commits a sin, but because homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound" that would prevent him from fulfilling his duties.
The guidelines, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests"

GAY DOES NOT EQUAL PAEDOPHILE. HETEROSEXUALS AND BISEXUALS CAN BE PAEDOPHILES TOO.

Deep seated homosexual tendencies? Are there shallow tendencies? I guess this comes from the same line of thinking that insists that gayness can be cured.
For cured, read repressed, quashed, tricked and led into a lifetime of unhappiness and dishonesty.
Also, homosexuality isn't a deviation, an irregularity or a wound. It's normal, it's not a sin, it's not morally wrong, it's just a way of being.
Where do the bisexuals come into this? Yet again, we're ignored. We can pass as straight if we want, so I guess that's OK huh? Or is it that bisexuals don't have 'deep seated' homosexual tendencies? Guess I'm back to being invisible, again.

To be fair to the newspaper, the online article does state that:
"The decree appears to ignore the consensus among sex abuse experts that homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals."
This is a damn site more than I expected from the Daily Torygraph and is in stark contrast to the physical newspaper version of the story which reads as follows:

"Trainee priests suspected of being homosexual should be weeded out by psychologists and banned from joining the catholic church, the vatican has said.
Homosexuality was a "deviation" that must be rooted out in would-be-clergy early on in order to prevent "tragedies", it decreed in the new guidelines.
The guidelines are designed to prevent the sort of sex scandals involving paedophile priests that have rocked the catholic church in recent years."

I refuse to give vatican, catholic or church capital letters. They don't deserve the distinction. The problems with the dead tree version of this story:
  • The use of psychologists implies that homosexuality is a mental illness. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
  • The description of homosexuality as a deviation.
  • The implication that only gay people cause tragedies or are paedophiles
  • The lack of a rebuttal to the above implication, as included in the online version. By not including the rebuttal it infers (implies?) that the church's views are correct, and that gay people are indeed the only ones who rape children. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Abuse is not about sex, it's not about hitting on someone you crush on, it's about power. It's the same whether the victim is adult or child, male or female.
I can see why deviation is in quotation marks, as the assertion that being gay is a deviation is incorrect, but why is tragedies in quotation marks?

Why isn't the church concentrating on weeding out paedophiles? Or unstable aggressive morally corrupt individuals who are potential attackers? Why aren't they seeking to help the victims more? Or even listen to the victims?

Fuckers. Ignorant, homophobic, hate filled morally bankrupt fuckers.

1 comment:

Christian Zamora said...

Oh, yeah, I read about these news in here too and I broke a laughter when I noticed what it was all about.

No wonder Catholicism is fast going back to the caves. But it is still annoying. Mostly considering there's so many good people that actually practices that faith. My "in-laws" included.