# Pope rants about gay marriage again **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 13, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673 "2006-05-13T21:33:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/21 "2006-05-14T18:42:33Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > How is wishing someone would shut up restricting their freedom of speech? Well OK I could see your point, he is just wishing that they self restrict their own freedom of speach. It doesn’t negate the hatred and bigotry of **Der Trihs** in the OP however. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/22 "2006-05-14T18:50:29Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Because the same people who constantly harp on the bigotedness of Christianity (by which they mean that they disagree with its tenets), much more rarely attack Islam. Check past Pit threads, and compile a list. I’m not necessarily down with **Der Trihs** ’s OP (mostly because my first reaction to a rant about Pope Palpatine dissing gays would be “Is the Pope Catholic?”), but I’m really tired of this particular criticism. Maybe when the majority of the members who post here come from a country in which Muslims are the overwhelming majority and a very small but very vocal subset of those Muslims is attempting to dictate what everyone is allowed to do or not do we will achieve parity between harping about Christians and harping about Muslims on these subjects. Until then, it’s going to be the annoying Christian harpies who are going to get the lion’s share of the attention here. The same way that it’s American government-approved human rights abuses that get the lion’s share of attention here, rather than Uzbekistan’s. It’s not that we love the Uzbeki government THIS much but that we are both more affected by and more able to influence the American government’s actions. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/23 "2006-05-14T19:47:40Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Now one issue I see that you are ignoring **Der Trihs** is that you can disagree with one’s activities, and disagree with a expanded concept of marriage without hating the person doing it. No, you can’t. That’ just Christian rhetoric designed to let them spew hatred toward gays ( and others ), while pretending that they _don’t_ hate most of humanity. > [@kanicbird](#): > > And it seems like you are the one who is hating the person here due to someone’s views on activities, so who’s the bigot here? Hating someone for choosing to be a bigot is not the same as hating someone for being born with a taste for their own gender; something that harms no one, unlike Christian homophobia. > [@kanicbird](#): > > And further you are the one wanting to restrict this groups freedom of speach Oh, please. I said I wanted them to shut up, not that I wanted to send in the Marines to shut them up. > [@IGJoe1](#): > > People saying the church should become ‘modern’. It should; the past was barbaric. > [@athelas](#): > > Because the same people who constantly harp on the bigotedness of Christianity (by which they mean that they disagree with its tenets), much more rarely attack Islam. What **jayjay** said. Not to mention, many of it’s tenet’s _are_ bigoted, and therefore should be opposed. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/24 "2006-05-14T19:49:42Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Because the same people who constantly harp on the bigotedness of Christianity (by which they mean that they disagree with its tenets), much more rarely attack Islam. Check past Pit threads, and compile a list. And that’s because if someone’s trying to use their religion as an excuse to fuck with me, 99 times out of 100 it’s going to be a Christian who’s doing it. If the majority of the posters on this board lived in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Egypt, you’d see more threads about intolerant Muslims. But most of us live in the US, or Canada, or Western Europe, where the vast majority of people who use religion to excuse their bigotry are going to be Christians. And for the record, no, that’s not the same thing as “disagreeing with their tenets.” Jesus was not the Son of God, but people who think that he was aren’t bigots. Believing that God exsists in the first place doesn’t make anyone a bigot, no matter how much I disagree with it. Believing that homosexuality is a sin? Makes you a bigot. Doesn’t matter what excuse you try to hang it on, bigotry is bigotry. And it is in no way a requisite part of their faith. Take a random sampling of Christians, and you’ll find a large number of them who have no problem with homosexuality. You won’t find a single one who doesn’t believe that Jesus was their savior. People choose their faith, and they choose how to express that faith. A Christian who believes that homosexuality is a sin has chosen to adopt that belief in no lesser a manner than another bigot has chosen to believe that blacks are “mud people,” or that Jews conspire to control the world. Pointing at the Bible and saying, “He told me to believe it!” doesn’t ennoble the idea. If anything, it denigrates the entire concept of God. I will agree, however, that **Der Trihs** is no better than the folks he likes to rail against, and anyone who cares to look will see that this is far from the first time I’ve called him on it. It just so happens that for once, he was right about something. The pope is a nasty little bigot, and he needs to keep his religious prejudices insides the Vatican, and out of the legislature. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/25 "2006-05-14T19:49:54Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > A bigoted idea that has existed for 2,000 years and won’t change overnight is still a bigoted fucking idea. So then this is nothing new, it’s just the same old, same old. As to quote a SD member, he couldn’t of put it so eloquently; > [@](#): > > **IGJoe1** > > If you believe in God you don’t have the luxury to say ‘well, I guess this is ok now since everyone is doing it’. If you believe in God you really don’t have the luxury of condemning others either. Those who try to shape the world via secular means to thier religion are just as lost in “faith” as those who try to shape thier religion to the world. ---
**Author:** ![athelas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/26 "2006-05-14T19:50:35Z")
Well, considering the much greater virulence of “orthodox” Islam against gays, one would assume that those truly for gay rights would target Islam first. That they instead attack a relatively moderate orthodox religion indicates that they have another agenda (namely, attacking the values of the American right), and clothing it as simple pro-gay sentiment is disingenouous. It is as though a friend owed you $100, while an enemy owed you $10. If, when neither pays up, you harp on and on about that $10 while ignoring the debt owed by your friend, one would suspect that your animosity towards the enemy is your true motivating factor, not recovering the money. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/27 "2006-05-14T20:04:08Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Well, considering the much greater virulence of “orthodox” Islam against gays, one would assume that those truly for gay rights would target Islam first. That they instead attack a relatively moderate orthodox religion indicates that they have another agenda (namely, attacking the values of the American right), and clothing it as simple pro-gay sentiment is disingenouous. Don’t be stupid. Christianity gets criticized more for its homophobic policies because those homophobic policies are directly effecting the people who are complaining. If I bitch about taxes being too high in the US, but not about taxes being too high in Sweden, it’s not because I have some other, non-tax-based agenda. It’s because I don’t have to pay taxes in Sweden in the first place. > [@](#): > > It is as though a friend owed you $100, while an enemy owed you $10. If, when neither pays up, you harp on and on about that $10 while ignoring the debt owed by your friend, one would suspect that your animosity towards the enemy is your true motivating factor, not recovering the money. Your analogy would work better if it were the friend who owed you the $10, and the enemy who owed you the $100, and you keep harping about the $10 because you expect your friend to have the decency to pay it back some time. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/28 "2006-05-14T20:05:12Z")
> [@athelas](#): > > Well, considering the much greater virulence of “orthodox” Islam against gays, one would assume that those truly for gay rights would target Islam first. That they instead attack a relatively moderate orthodox religion indicates that they have another agenda (namely, attacking the values of the American right), and clothing it as simple pro-gay sentiment is disingenouous. Or maybe, just maybe, it could be the case that Papal statements affect them and their society much more than whatever random Ayatollahs say. Naah. Too implausible. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/29 "2006-05-14T22:15:09Z")
> [@IGJoe1](#): > > Wow, the two things I hate to see the most in a religious debate and both of them are going on here: > > 1. A religious person trying to use religious sources to convince a non-religious person to take a certain course of action: person A “Why should I do X?” …Person B “Cuz the Bible says so” … Person A " I don’t believe in the sanctity of the Bible" … Person B “Well, the Bible still says so.” > > 2. People saying the church should become ‘modern’. See item 1 in reverse, for a person who does ‘believe’ there can be no greater example of the tail wagging the god. > > If you believe in God you don’t have the luxury to say ‘well, I guess this is ok now since everyone is doing it’. If you believe in God you really don’t have the luxury of condemning others either. Those who try to shape the world via secular means to thier religion are just as lost in “faith” as those who try to shape thier religion to the world. The whole problem with this silliness is that it presumes that what the press publicizes and **Der Trihs** decries as “the evils of Christianity” is the whole package of what all Christians and their Founder are saying. Many of us are inclined **not** to denounce gay people and their lives for being sinful, not because we are inclined to “modernize and secularize religion” or are “picking and choosing from Scripture” (both classic canards levelled at us) but rather because Jesus Christ’s principal teachings and commandments **require** us to treat gay people as our equals, no more sinful (and no less) than we ourselves are, and any fustiliation founded in the Old Testament, various standard readings of Paul’s letters, etc., that are not in accord with what He taught are clearly being misapplied. If being a Christian is being a follower of Jesus Christ, and doing what He commanded, then people who profess Christianity but act in manners other than what Jesus commanded are not doing their Christian duty. Whether their name be Ratziger, Dobson, Falwell, Wildmon, Robertson, Virtue, or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/30 "2006-05-14T22:26:12Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > No, you can’t. That’ just Christian rhetoric designed to let them spew hatred toward gays ( and others ), while pretending that they don’t hate most of humanity. Yea right, you want to see ugly hate read YOUR text - it is ugly, very ugly and hateful, wishing people of a belief system rot. You do know that you can be against the notion of gay mariage and not hate gay people. Further you have not provided a cite of anything that shows any Christain hatred towards gays (no less the pope), but only you have shown a lot of hate you have towards them. > [@](#): > > Hating someone for choosing to be a bigot is not the same as hating someone for being born with a taste for their own gender; something that harms no one, unlike Christian homophobia. You have NOT proven that the pope is a bigot, but you hate him because you beleive him to be one. You have NOT proven that the pope hates homesexuals at all > [@](#): > > Oh, please. I said I wanted them to shut up, not that I wanted to send in the Marines to shut them up. I gave you that point, you are just a hateful bigot, not a hateful bigot who also wished to deny someone their rights due to their religious beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/31 "2006-05-14T22:46:42Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > You have NOT proven that the pope hates homesexuals at all As I may have said before, I’m still trying to come up with a non-hateful way of reading “intrinsic moral evil,” but I’m not coming up with anything. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/32 "2006-05-14T23:05:24Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > As I may have said before, I’m still trying to come up with a non-hateful way of reading “intrinsic moral evil,” but I’m not coming up with anything. Please give me the total phrase, is this talking about the homosexual act, or the people who parctice it? Context please. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/33 "2006-05-14T23:14:15Z")
[Context](http://www.dignityusa.org/1986doctrine/ratzinger.html) [More context](http://www.dignityusa.org/1992pastoral.html) ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/34 "2006-05-14T23:18:09Z")
And seriously, if you think there’s some great difference between calling gay _people_ an intrinsic moral evil and calling gay _sex_ an intrinsic moral evil, then, well, you’re a fucking idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/35 "2006-05-14T23:22:34Z")
> [@Otto's first link](#): > > 1. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable. > > Here, the Church’s wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God’s liberating grace. You have got to be fucking kidding me. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/36 "2006-05-14T23:37:39Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > As I may have said before, I’m still trying to come up with a non-hateful way of reading “intrinsic moral evil,” but I’m not coming up with anything. I’ve been searching this thread and the link for the phrase “intrinsic moral evil” but I haven’t been able to find it. Can you help me out? Where are you quoting it from? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/37 "2006-05-14T23:39:32Z")
thanks **Otto** From what you cite I get: > [@](#): > > is a proper focus for the Church’s pastoral care. It thus requires of her ministers attentive study, active concern and honest, theologically well-balanced counsel. So far sounds pretty caring about the homosexual person. > [@](#): > > Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder. The intrinsic moral evil is now obviously the sin of the homosexual act, The ‘lying with a man as you would a woman is a no-no’ part of the Bible. OK I think we all know this, Christian teaching is that the act of homosexuality is a sin and tendency to sin (any sin) is a disorder. But we are all sinners, we all have tendencies towards intrinsic moral evil, this does not make us worthy of hate. I could go on here, and did, but it gets too far off the OP, so I took it out. The way I read it is yes the act of homosexuality is a sin, we will support people who have this tendency try to resist the temptation to act on it. This sounds very much like the Church’s policy of hate the sin, love the sinner. You may disagree with their view of ‘love’, but it is certainly not hate. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/38 "2006-05-14T23:42:57Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > If being a Christian is being a follower of Jesus Christ, and doing what He commanded, then people who profess Christianity but act in manners other than what Jesus commanded are not doing their Christian duty. Whether their name be Ratziger, Dobson, Falwell, Wildmon, Robertson, Virtue, or whatever. Well said. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2006, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/39 "2006-05-14T23:47:40Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > The way I read it is yes the act of homosexuality is a sin, we will support people who have this tendency try to resist the temptation to act on it. I’m sorry, I know you mean well, but this is just evil. Inspiring guilt in innocents over a preference that harms no-one, attempting to get them to ignore and suppress that preference, while pretending to do good… it’s just evil. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2006, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673/40 "2006-05-15T00:23:35Z")
> [@Priceguy](#): > > I’m sorry, I know you mean well, but this is just evil. Inspiring guilt in innocents over a preference that harms no-one, attempting to get them to ignore and suppress that preference, while pretending to do good… it’s just evil. Priceguy I can accept your statement, and to some degree agree with it, but it is not hateful, and that’s the issue here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pope-rants-about-gay-marriage-again/356673.md?page=3)