Catholic Church Ups Anti-Gay Messaging in Face of Damaging Reports of Sex Abuse by Clergy

Pope Francis and his past marriage equality foe, former president
of Argentina, Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner. Sex abuse by
Catholic clergy claims are exploding in Argentina.

Is it a coincidence that the Roman Catholic Church is increasing its anti-gay messaging in Australia and elsewhere and A diocese in Wisconsin is barring funerals for gays just as more damaging reports on clergy sex abuse are being released, including damaging reports from Pope Francis' own Argentina?  Personally, I suspect not.  Just like Donald Trump, members of the Church hierarchy are trying to distract the sheeple still in the pews from the reality that the Church remains a complete moral cesspool.  Also of interest is the fact that many of the new instances of sexual abuse in Argentina occurred AFTER 2001 and after the sex abuse scandal exploded in Boston in early 2002.  Hence, the effort to blame the worldwide scandal on Vatican II and liberal priests simply does not wash.  The International Business Times reports on many damning details coming out that show that little has substantively changed in the Catholic Church.  Here are highlights:

Karen Maydana says she was 9 years old when the Rev. Carlos Jose fondled her at a church pew facing the altar. It was her first confession ahead of her first Holy Communion.

She blames the trauma of that moment in 2004 for a teenage suicide attempt. And yet she never spoke about it publicly until this year. After hearing that two women who attended her school in the Argentine town of Caseros were allegedly abused by the same priest, she joined them as complainants in a case that in July led to his arrest for investigation of aggravated sexual abuse.

The allegations are part of a growing trend: While Pope Francis struggles to make good on his "zero tolerance" pledge to fight clerical sex abuse worldwide, victims in his native Argentina are denouncing abuses in unprecedented numbers. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that the number of clerics publicly identified as alleged sexual abusers has increased dramatically in the last two years.

Experts attribute the spike to a cultural shift as victims feel more emboldened to denounce abuse, prosecutors are more inclined to investigate complaints of even decades-old abuse, the media are increasingly aggressive about reporting them and courts are willing to hand down stiff sentences.

In the U.S., confidential files on hundreds of pedophile priests have been released either through civil litigation, settlements or court order. The contents have revealed that top church officials worked behind the scenes to control the sex abuse scandal and keep it from authorities as well as parishioners.

"What is really remarkable here is that the survivors in Argentina don't have the same powerful legal tools that we see in other countries," Barrett Doyle said. "And yet, we're still seeing the significant increase in cases."

The AP compiled a list of 66 priests, nuns and brothers who have been accused since 2001 of abusing dozens of people, most of them children.

"In Argentina, the abuse crisis is just beginning," said San Francisco Bishop Sergio Buenanueva in Cordoba province, who leads a church council on clerical abuse. "I'm sure the Argentine church is going to face increasing numbers of these disclosures."

Some of the accused remain in the ministry. In several cases, no canonical or judicial investigation was carried out. Some were probed and dismissed. Others, especially in recent years, have led to arrests and convictions.

Advocates of priestly abuse victims question how Francis could have been unaware of the allegations against Corradi since he was publicly named by the Italian victims starting in 2009 and most recently in 2014.

Francis has pledged "zero tolerance" for abuse, but he has also said he never had to confront the issue as archbishop of Buenos Aires, where he served from 1998 to 2013. Recently, he has acknowledged that the church was "late" in recognizing the scale of abuse and the damage it wreaked on victims, and said the practice of cover-up and moving pedophiles around was to blame.

Many Argentine victims of abuse say they feel abandoned by the church.  "You realize the complicity, the cover-up of the church hierarchy that goes all the way up to the Vatican," Anazco said.

It is helpful to remember that the Catholic Church in Argentina, including Pope Francis who was then a cardinal in Argentina, worked hysterically to block same sex marriage.  Ultimately it was a speech made by the then president of Argentina, Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, addressed to the Argentine Senate which referenced the Church's ugly history, including the Inquisition, that tipped the scales and caused marriage equality to be enacted. 

Mexico’s Revenge on Trump - and His Supporters

While Donald Trump's attacks on Hispanics and non-whites in general has played well with the most most ignorant - evangelical Christians are the least educated of any religious group in America - and racist/xenophobic elements of his base, the economic results could prove catastrophic if Mexico decides to exact revenge against Trump's America.  Already, talk of Mexico shifting its agricultural purchases to Argentina and Brazil has Mid-West farmers sweating bullets at the prospect of severe economic and financial damage.  Indeed, the repeal of NAFTA, one of Trump's favorite whipping boys, does not play well in these farming states. But Mexico's revenge could prove even more damaging.  In addition to Mexican intelligence services ending their cooperation with their American counterparts - something that could increase illegal immigration into America - Mexico could tilt toward China as its new found favorite trading partner.  Needless to say, the ignorant, loud mouthed, bullying, narcissist in the White House has never thought of these types of  consequences.  A long piece in The Atlantic looks at the Mexican revenge Trump may be setting into motion. Here are highlights:

When donald trump first made sport of thumping Mexico—when he accused America’s neighbor of exporting rapists and “bad hombres,” when he deemed the country such a threat that it should be contained by a wall and so clueless that it could be suckered into paying for its own encasement—its president responded with strange equilibrium. 

Since then, the Mexican political elite has begun to ponder retaliatory measures that would reassert the country’s dignity, and perhaps even cause the Trump administration to reverse its hostile course. With a presidential election in just over a year—and Peña Nieto prevented by term limits from running again—vehement responses to Trump are considered an electoral necessity. Memos outlining policies that could wound the United States have begun flying around Mexico City. These show that Trump has committed the bully’s error of underestimating the target of his gibes. As it turns out, Mexico could hurt the United States very badly.

The Mexico–U.S. border is long, but the history of close cooperation across it is short. As recently as the 1980s, the countries barely contained their feelings of mutual contempt. Mexico didn’t care for the United States’ anticommunist policy in Central America, especially its support of Nicaraguan rebels. In 1983, President Miguel de la Madrid obliquely warned the Reagan administration against “shows of force which threaten to touch off a conflagration.” 

The grandiose promise of trade is that it binds countries together, breeding peace and cooperation. This is a risible overstatement when applied generally to the world. But in the case of the countries separated by the Rio Grande, it has proved wondrously true. A generation after the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States and Mexico couldn’t be more interdependent. Anti-Americanism, once a staple of Mexican politics, has largely faded. The flow of migrants from Mexico to the U.S. has, more or less, abated. Economic ties have fostered greater intimacy between intelligence services and security agencies, which are today deeply enmeshed in each other’s business. 

But the Trump administration has come dangerously close to trashing the relationship—and, in the process, unleashing a terrifying new reality.

The Chinese invested heavily in places like Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela, discreetly flexing soft power as they funded new roads, refineries, and railways. From 2000 to 2013, China’s bilateral trade with Latin America increased by 2,300 percent, according to one calculation. A raft of recently inked deals forms the architecture for China to double its annual trade with the region, to $500 billion, by the middle of the next decade. Mexico, however, has remained a grand exception to this grand strategy. 

Mexico also happens to be the one spot in Latin America where the United States would respond with alarm to a heavy Chinese presence.

That sort of alarm is just the thing some Mexicans would now like to provoke. What Mexican analysts have called the “China card”—a threat to align with America’s greatest competitor—is an extreme retaliatory option. Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda told me he considers it an implausible expression of “machismo.” Unfortunately, Trump has elevated machismo to foreign-policy doctrine . . . And while a tighter Chinese–Mexican relationship would fly in the face of recent economic history, Trump may have already set it in motion.

The painful early days of the Trump administration have reminded Mexico of a core economic weakness: The country depends far too heavily on the American market. “Mexico is realizing that it has been overexposed to the U.S., and it’s now trying to hedge its bets,” says Kevin Gallagher, an economist at Boston University who specializes in Latin America. “Any country where 80 percent of exports go to the U.S., it’s a danger.” . . . . The presence of Trump, with his brusque talk of tariffs and promises of economic nationalism, makes that an urgent task.

Until recently, a Mexican–Chinese rapprochement would have been unthinkable. . . . . But China has played the long game, and its patience has proved farsighted. The reason so many Chinese are ascending to the middle class is that wages have tripled over the past decade. The average hourly wage in Chinese manufacturing is now $3.60. Over that same period of time, hourly manufacturing wages in Mexico have fallen to $2.10. Even taking into account the extraordinary productivity of Chinese factories—not to mention the expense that comes with Mexico’s far greater fidelity to the rules of international trade—Mexico increasingly looks like a sensible place for Chinese firms to set up shop, particularly given its proximity to China’s biggest export market.

Let’s pause to consider the illogic. Trump says that China is a grave threat, both militarily and economically. He has accused China of “rap[ing] our country.” That’s not the way most analysts would put it, but a fairly broad bipartisan consensus holds that China’s expansionism should be contained and its mercantilism checked. Barack Obama’s vaunted “pivot” to Asia tried to keep China’s neighbors from succumbing to its gravitational pull. Thanks to Donald Trump, China is now better positioned to execute the most difficult maneuver in its own, North American pivot—pushing the U.S. and Mexico further apart.

What seems more likely is that relations between the security agencies will slowly decay, as trust between the two countries evaporates and warm feelings give way to tensions.

Trump’s rush toward hard-line immigration policies could yield a grim bonanza of other unintended consequences. Mass deportations of Mexicans could uproot hundreds of thousands and deposit them on the other side of the border, forcing their reintegration into lives they left, many of them long ago. Perhaps the Mexican economy, the 15th-largest in the world, has the capacity to absorb these refugees from Trump’s America. But it’s equally easy to imagine a scenario in which they inundate the labor market. And even that possibility doesn’t begin to capture the likely economic costs of deportation. The Mexican economy would be deprived of the remittances that immigrants send back to their relatives. It’s hard to speak hyperbolically about the importance of these transfers—in 2016, Mexican Americans sent $27 billion back to their Mexican families, more than the value of the crude petroleum Mexico exports annually. 

[W]ith Trump’s angry talk and the Mexican resentment it stirs, the best hope for the persistence of this improved relationship is inertia—the interlocking supply chain that crosses the border and won’t easily pull apart, the agricultural exports that flow in both directions, all the bureaucratic cooperation. Unwinding this relationship would be ugly and painful, a strategic blunder of the highest order, a gift to America’s enemies, a gaping vulnerability for the homeland that Donald Trump professes to protect, a very messy divorce.

The perverse part of me would love to see Mexico shift its agricultural product purchases from Mid-West sources.  The cretins in these states who put Trump in office deserve to suffer greatly.  As for the rise of China-Mexico relations, if it happens, it will be the fault of Der Trumpenführer.

Pope Francis Can Begin By Apologizing For His Own Hateful Words

I have been highly critical of Pope Francis' statement that the Catholic Church needs to apologize to gays for they way the Church has mistreated them (he also named other groups mistreated by the foul old men in dresses at the Vatican).  I will take another swing at the issue in my July column in VEER Magazine.  Over at Huffington Post, Michelangelo Signorile has a great column that takes Francis to task for not just for the Church's past demonetization of - and at times out right murder of  - gays but also for his own misdeeds while Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina.  I will not be holding my breath for a real, heartfelt apology  from Pope Francis.  Here are highlights from Michelangelo's column: 

Last week the media gave a lot of attention to Pope Francis agreeing that the Catholic Church owed an apology to gays. But his statement, while positive on its face, deflected from horrendous remarks Francis himself made in the past and which he can and should personally apologize for right now. Before diving into that, however, let’s review Francis’s journey on the issue of homosexuality since he became pope in 2013.

Francis stayed silent as country after country in Europe and the Americas legalized marriage for gays and lesbians over the past few years, in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Pope Benedict, who railed against Spain when it was out front on marriage equality in 2005; he even traveled there to speak out against it. And then came Francis’s “Who am I to judge?”response to a question about a gay priest, and several other comments that indicated his emphasis would be different.

Like an artful politician, however, Francis has seemed to play to his audiences. Six months into his papacy he told a fellow Jesuit interviewer for a Jesuit journal that he is not a “right-winger” and criticized those in the church who had become “obsessed” with gay marriage and abortion. But then in January of last year it was Francis who seemed obsessed with the issue while speaking to an audience in the Philippines, a traditional Catholic country, suggesting that gay marriage threatens families.

And now these new comments from the pope last week have reverberated after he was asked about a German cardinal’s opinion that, in light of the Orlando mass shooting at the Pulse LGBT nightclub in Orlando, the church should apologize to gays.

Francis agreed that the church owed an apology to gays, and it drew headlines around the world. He repeated his “who are we to judge?” line, though was was careful to add in that the church should apologize to a lot of groups, which mitigated his statement somewhat . . . . Nonetheless, it was a major statement — enough to drive anti-LGBT forces into a frenzy. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League emphatically said “No!” when asked if he agreed with his pope that gays deserved an apology.

LGBT Catholic groups, however, were right to criticize the pope for saying nothing of church doctrine that condemns homosexuality as “intrinsically disordered” — and pointed to the fact that young people, including LGBT people, are taught this from a young age and that teachers in Catholic schools are fired if found to be gay. Francis referred to the catechism to back his stance that gays shouldn’t be discriminated against, yet it is that same catechism that condemns homosexuality — and it needs to be re-written.

That’s an immense undertaking that he likely doesn’t have the will for — if it could even be done at all in the current climate at the Vatican.  One thing, however, that the pope could easily do is apologize for his own harsh and, yes, violence-inciting words about gays when he was Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina in 2010.

As the Argentine government was moving to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, Bergoglio was quietly lobbying for civil unions instead, having spoken to at least one gay activist, realizing that the rights gays were deprived of were real and knowing that he and the church couldn’t support marriage.

When that didn’t work, and the government made it clear it was moving forward on marriage, Bergoglio did what the Vatican expected of him and which, like a politician, he knew he likely had to do if he were ever to have a shot at becoming pope in Benedict’s Vatican: He issued an ugly, earth-scorching attack against gays, equating gay marriage and adoption by gay couples with the work of the Devil, and declared that gay marriage was a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”

Those kinds of words are the kind that killers of gay people take solace in. Those are the words that empower those who bash gays, and those who fire gays from their jobs. And those are the kinds of words that Francis clearly is saying the church must apologize for. If it’s not those words, after all, then what exactly is Francis referring to?

So, Francis didn’t have to say the “church” should apologize, and thus distance himself from an institution that, though he leads it, he likely rightly sees as difficult to change. All he had to do was say, “I apologize” for the harsh words that “I’ve made,” in the name of the church by equating gay people with evil — words that inspire those who would do harm to LGBT people.

Rather than wait for “the church” to make the apology for which he called — which could take eons — he could still make that personal apology himself right now.

The Far Right Targets Pope Francis as a "Leftist" and "Marxist"

As noted before, Pope Francis has hit a raw nerve with the American far right as a result of his statements condemning vulture capitalism and now his upcoming encyclical on climate change.  The result?  Among others, a hatchet piece in The Federalist that describes Francis as a "leftist" and a "Marxist."  Tellingly, among the slurs are claims that Francis is not a scientist even as the author ignores the reality that 95% of scientists believe that climate change is occurring and that mankind is a contributing cause.  The following are highlights from the slurs being thrown at Francis:

She [Rachel Lu] cites criticism of Francis as evidence of a “war.” A Republican war at that. Doing so, she strays into the same reductive trap set by the mainstream media that she wants conservatives to avoid.

Under the tutelage of a pope who ascribes to himself an omnicompetency in geopolitical and scientific matters, the Catholic Church is at risk of a death walk of its own. Its descent into a left-leaning political entity is underway while we circle the wagons and measure our tones. It is a serious matter when a pope confuses political and ideological symbols for religious ones.

Civil society has an immense stake in that confusion. And the stakes are raised when papal preferences, masked in a Christian idiom, align themselves with ideological agendas (e.g. radical environmentalism) that impinge on democratic freedoms and the sanctity of the individual.
Francis, raised in Argentina during the apogee of Peronism, gives every evidence of tilting toward the state.

[L]et us go back to that for a moment. “Francis and Political Illusion” included a photo of the pope standing between two environmental activists and holding an anti-fracking T-shirt. . . . . And these were not just any activists. The older of the two men in the photo is Fernando Solanas, an Argentine film director, avowed propagandist, and politician. A key player in Buenos Aires, he ran for president of Argentina on the Socialist ticket in 2007 and stood for the senate last year. In the 1960s, he co-founded the influential, radical film collective Grupo Cine Liberación (The Liberation Film Group) with Octavio Gettino, Both were Marxists and supporters of Juan Perón at the time.

Francis is no naïf. He signals his priorities to anyone paying attention. You do not have to be a Republican or a conservative to get the message. In support of his green theology, he plans a speech at the United Nations and a congress of world religious leaders at the Vatican. He is preparing to lend this agenda the magisterial weight of an encyclical. Yet, when innocents are slaughtered in Paris by the same forces that are shedding Christian blood in the Middle East, the most he can muster is a hashtag, #PrayersforParis.

Let us be honest. Conservatives are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. While deferential observers are measuring their tones, Francis drives ahead with a demagogic program which makes the state the guardian and enforcer all values.

This past October, Francis took aim at “ideological Catholics,” calling them “a serious illness” within the Church. What is Francis, if not an ideologue?

The real fear of the far right and Republican Party?  That Francis might just open the eyes of Catholics to the true ugliness of the GOP's reverse Robin Hood policies and the rape and pollution of the Earth that are pillars to the GOP agenda.  The fact that this agenda is the antithesis of the Gospel message matters not at all to today's "conservatives."  

Five Reasons To Perhaps Stay off the Pope Francis Bandwagon

Many Catholics - at least outside of far right Catholic circles - and members of the news media are gushing over Pope Francis and acting as if he has already worked a revolution within the Roman Catholic Church.  Blogger Andrew Sullivan, for instances, reads much - perhaps too much - into some of Francis' statements and style, which is admittedly easy to do after the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI.  Yet, the bottom line is that in reality, other than some nice sounding statements and actions which suggest Francis is more humble than Benedict XVI, nothing has really changed at the Vatican.  Only time will tell if Francis will make real, meaningful changes.  In the meantime, it is worth remembering some of Francis' troubling baggage.  A piece in the Global Post reminds one of these issues.  Here are excerpts:

Pope Francis. He loves the sick and the poor. He lives a simple life that reflects his values. He has criticized the Catholic church for its alienating obsession with social issues. And he has called out global capitalism for the greed it has produced and the social devastation it has wrought.
Sounds good? Not so fast.

Here are some reasons we should think twice before hopping on the Pope Francis bandwagon.

1) Unanswered questions about the Dirty War in Argentina

The past is good place to start when questioning the hype surrounding Pope Francis.  Specifically, what was he doing during the Dirty War in Argentina, when the military junta that ruled from 1976 to 1983 was undertaking the systematical mass murder of so-called “subversives,” all under the Western-supported banner of “anti-Communism.” As few as 9,000 and as many as 30,000 men, women, and children were killed or “disappeared” in the course of the purge.

The Catholic Church was complicit in many ways. Archibishop Juan Carlos Aramburu openly supported the military junta and its murderous purge. Some priests gave last rights to men and women as they were headed to execution.

So what was Pope Francis, then known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, doing during all this?  He was the Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus from 1973 to 1979, meaning he was the boss of the Jesuits in Argentina. His role in the Dirty War is hazy. According to some reports, he was a willing collaborator: at worst, pointing out liberal ministers to the military and, at least, refusing to protect priests who were seized. He denies all of this, insisting that he secretly helped priests who had been targeted.

We might never uncover all the facts about what happened. But there is enough there to at least be a little skeptical of Francis, his past, and his character.

2) Poor handling of the Church's child sex abuse crisis

Francis has made some headway on the child sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. He’s spoken out on the problem and instituted some new laws governing Vatican officials and employees.

That's a start, but there is much more to be done when it comes to putting words into actions.  This is especially true in Latin America, where some have questioned Francis' handling of molestation cases in Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and Peru.  He has been largely silent on four shocking cases.

3) His new tone on abortion and gay marriage is really new

Francis’ softened tone on gay marriage and abortion is one of the things drawing admiration from socially liberal folks. He said that the Church shouldn’t “interfere spiritually” in the lives of gay men and women. And he warned that the Catholic ministry had become “obsessed” with abortion.  He hasn’t always held such views, it seems.

Just before Argentina legalized same-sex marriage, as recent as 2010, Francis called the bill “a plan to destroy God’s plan” and “a move by the fathers of lies to confused and deceive the children of God.”

[T]he less conservative tone is new for Pope Francis. We'll need to wait and see whether it translates into doctrinal change.

4) He’s continuing the Vatican “inquisition” against American nuns

Under the harrowing reign of Pope Benedict, the Vatican cracked down on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that represents most American nuns. A Doctrinal Assessment by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) accused the LCWR and American nuns of promoting “radical feminist themes” by tempering or even opposing the Vatican’s positions on gay rights and abortion. 

When Pope Francis took over for Benedict, he had the opportunity to reverse or change the CDF’s controversial decision. Instead he “reaffirmed the findings."

So maybe Francis was feeling some pressure as a new Pope in the unusual circumstances of evaluating decisions made by a living predecessor. Either way, he had an opportunity to do end a witch-hunt against American nuns and didn’t.

5) He might have performed an exorcism on live TV

In the scheme of things, this one isn’t nearly as important as Francis’s take on Church doctrine or his willingness to combat child sex abuse. But it’s disturbing enough to join this list.

During a Mass in St. Peter’s Square in May, TV cameras filmed Francis praying over a man in a wheelchair. They exchanged words and Francis placed two hands on the man's forehead for several seconds while then man appeared to convulse slightly and gasp for breath.

Almost immediately, people began to speculate that Francis, who often talks of demons and devils in his sermons, had performed an exorcism.

The Vatican released a statement denying it. Gabriel Amorth, formerly a chief exorcist for the Vatican, saw it differently.

“That was a real exorcism and what is more,” he told reporters, “the boy the pope exorcized came to me today. His name is Angelo and he is possessed by four demons. I performed a long exorcism on him.”

Don't get me wrong.  As a former Catholic, I would be thrilled to see change take place in the Catholic Church.  I just think that some who are having the vapors over Francis may be acting far too prematurely.

How Did Latin America Become More Gay Friendly Than the USA?

This blog has noted a number of times that it is somewhat mind boggling that a number of nations in South America have become more accepting of gay rights and gay marriage than the United States of America, the alleged "land of liberty" and home of "religious freedom" for all, which in fact puts the religious views of conservative Christians ahead of the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  A piece in the New York Times pointed out to me by a blog reader in The Netherlands looks at this surprising twist of circumstance which one can only hope will change with the rulings of the Supreme Court this week. Here are some article excepts:

How can we reconcile these developments with the stereotype of Latin culture as a bastion of religiosity and machismo? How is it that the continent the Catholic Church looks to as its future (along with Africa) is home to what is said to be the largest gay-pride celebration in the world, in São Paulo, Brazil? 

The church’s presence in Latin America is undeniable, but its influence on social policy is nothing like that of conservative Christian evangelicals in the United States, nor have the rising numbers of Pentecostals been obsessed with homosexuality like their conservative counterparts up north. Mexico, for instance, has long emphasized separation between church and state and recognizes only civil marriage — that is, clerics can officiate at weddings, but are not empowered to legally marry couples.

Political history is another factor. Since the 1970s, protest movements helped end military dictatorships or long periods of one-party rule; this democratic opening empowered left or center-left governments that have strongly emphasized human rights and individual freedom.

The recent expansion of same-sex marriage rights has come about in part through alliances of left-of-center legislative majorities with progressive executives, like Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico City, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and President José Mujica of Uruguay. In addition, as in the United States, judges have played an important role in advancing the cause of gay equality, as evidenced this week in Brazil, where the National Council of Justice, which oversees the judiciary, ruled that notary publics may not refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. 

So to understand why the politics changed, we must also look to society. .  .  .  .  In the 1990s, I interviewed dozens of Mexicans, straight and gay, in Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city. They spoke about how they wanted their lives to differ from their parents’.  .  .   .  .  This desire for individual autonomy — which in some ways lagged behind the sexual revolution in the United States — extended to gay and lesbian people.

Mexican media, which reaches even remote rural hamlets, features telenovelas that portray homosexuality in frank (if melodramatic) terms and talk shows where tolerance is a sign of cosmopolitan modernity. 

These developments not only undermine stereotypes about machismo, but also the assumption that the prominence of Catholicism makes progressive change impossible. Same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, Portugal and Spain, and Ireland recognizes civil unions. As the United States Supreme Court debates same-sex marriage, perhaps it should consider the precedent set by other nations of the Western Hemisphere.

Should the Supreme Court fail to rule broadly for gay marriage, to me it will be yet further proof that the image that America seeks to project to the rest of the world is a lie and a farce.  As long as ignorance and bigotry based religious beliefs are allowed to trump the Constitution's guaranty of equality for all Americans, hypocrisy will be the main attribute of the USA.  It does not practice what it preaches.  Why should African nations and Islamic nations listen to America on gays rights issues when America itself still allows widespread discrimination and legal inequality?  Virginia is a prime example of this hypocrisy.

Alécio and Luiz Felipe - A Gay Wedding Ceremony in Brazil

As noted before on this blog, it is amazing that Brazil and Argentina and Uruguay all have full gay marriage nationwide while America, which claims to be the land of liberty and home of religious freedom does not.  Why, because far right religious beliefs are still afforded undeserved - one might even say unconstitutional - deference under America's civil laws.  

A reader in the Netherlands - Amsterdam to be exact - sent me a link to a video clip of a gay marriage ceremony in Brazil.  Watching the video, I can only ask, what is so frightening about recognizing the relationship between a loving couple who seek to share their lives together?  Is the faith of far right Christians - and Muslims for that matter so weak and shallow that it cannot be confronted with anything that goes against the ignorance and mindlessness of such individuals?  Or do couples like the ones in the video terrify them because they - and all of us other out and normal gays - are all too normal.  We don't fit the bogeyman image the far right Christofascists seek to bestow on us?  Ignorance which is often self-selected and fear are at the root of homophobia and bigotry of all kinds.  Here's the video.  What do you think?

Love, commitment and the pledging one's self to another through good times and bad ought to be applauded and supported by our society and by our civil laws. It isn't gay marriage that's scary. Rather it is those who oppose it due to their own psychosis, paranoia and/or fear of thinking who are the scary ones. While the following isn't an actual wedding, it's a video that like the other one sends the message that love is love and commitment is commitment be it between gay couples or straight couples. Hopefully, one day every state in America will grasp this reality.

Margaret Thatcher "The Iron Lady" Dies at 87

Margaret Thatcher provoked strong reactions and opinions both in life and now in death.  Some worshiped her and others hated her.   That will not change now that she has died of a stroke at age 87.  I am not one to judge the dead, but Thatcher did some good things.  She also did some bad things and often she never apologized for her bad deeds even if she perhaps knew she was wrong.  Some like the singer Morrissey, of the 1980s band, The Smiths, has little good to say about her:

Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish Freedom Fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the ivory trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own cabinet booted her out. She gave the order to blow up The Belgrano even though it was outside of the Malvinas Exclusion Zone—and was sailing AWAY from the islands! When the young Argentinean boys aboard The Belgrano had suffered a most appalling and unjust death, Thatcher gave the thumbs-up sign for the British press.  .   .  .  .  the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity.

UK Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell is perhaps less harsh, but cannot forgive Thatcher for the passage of  Section 28 which was approved as part of the Local Government Act enacted in 1988 and which provided that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship."  Here's a sampling of Tatchell's remarks:

“Margaret Thatcher was an extraordinary woman but she was extraordinary for mostly the wrong reasons. So many of her policies were wrong and heartless. Nevertheless, I don’t rejoice in her death. I commiserate, as I do with the death of any person. In contrast, she showed no empathy for the victims of her harsh, ruthless policy decisions,” said human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

“In 1988, the Thatcher government legislated Britain’s first new anti-gay law in 100 years: Section 28. At the 1987 Conservative party conference she mocked people who defended the right to be gay, insinuating that there was no such right. During her rule, arrests and convictions for consenting same-sex behaviour rocketed, as did queer bashing violence and murder. Gay men were widely demonised and scapegoated for the AIDS pandemic and Thatcher did nothing to challenge this vilification.

A piece in The Daily Beast gives a more positive spin to Thatcher's legacy.  Here are excerpts:

Thatcher’s steely reputation as Britain’s first and only female prime minister, serving for more than 11 years from 1979 to 1990, was based on a succession of showdowns with labor unions, with the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army, with the Argentines in the Falklands War, and with many in the leadership of her own Conservative Party. She was also a devoted friend and counselor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan in his confrontations with the Soviets’ “Evil Empire.” (As recently as a year ago her face would brighten at mention of Reagan’s name, and the memories would flood back.) Thatcher had no problem with what she saw as moral absolutes.

“She was completely uncompromising,” says Lord Peter Palumbo, a close friend and associate for many years. “She had a very, very definite view. She had vision, which politicians, really, all over the world don’t share today. She was one of those people, like Winston Churchill, who gave the country hope. She came in at a very low ebb and singlehandedly turned it around. She felt that, on the whole, the country had 1,000 years of rather glorious history, and everything good that was British should be celebrated. She was unflinching in that view.”

Thatcher had to crash through countless glass ceilings not only of gender but of class. “The Tories played a very risky card in selecting her,” says Palumbo. “They knew it was risky. And having won the election both as leader of the party and as prime minister, I think they rather turned up their nose about a woman who was the daughter of a grocer in Grantham, and I think she took a very hard line because it was survival time. She would have been just run over by the grandees of the party, but she ran over them.”

That pattern was repeated over and over again when anyone underestimated Thatcher. In 1981, Irish prisoners staged a much-publicized hunger strike to protest British rule over Ulster and the conditions under which they were incarcerated. Ten starved themselves to death. “I don’t think any other prime minister would have allowed the hunger strikers to kill themselves as she did,” says Harris.

Andrew Sullivan gushes:

Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir preceded her; but Thatcher’s three election victories, the longest prime ministership since the 1820s, her alliance with the US in defeating the Soviet Union, and her liberation of the British economy place her above their achievements. What inspires me still is the thought of a young woman in a chemistry lab at Oxford daring to believe that she could one day be prime minister – and not just any prime minister, but the defining public figure in British post-war political history.

That took vision and self-confidence of a quite extraordinary degree. It was infectious. And it made Thatcher and Thatcherism a much more complicated thing than many analyses contain.

It should be noted that in the 1960s, Thatcher went against traditional Tories by voting in favor of a law that would legalize homosexuality.  I will let others reach their own evaluation of Thatcher.  She seems to have been multifaceted and not easily pigeon holed.  I know one thing for certain, however: I would NOT have wanted to debate her.  She could give back better than she got.

Vatican Does Damage Control Over Francis I's Role in "Dirty War"

 

 UPDATED 3-16-2013:  The questions about Francis' role in the "Dirty War" continues to have legs.  The Washington Post looks at the story here.

While much of the media continues to fawn over the newly elected Pope Francis I happily gulping down up the pablum dished out by the Vatican, some news outlets are continuing to focus on Francis I - then Jorge Bergogli's - role during Argentina's "Dirty War" when the military dictatorship kidnapped and murdered thousands of political opponents and their presumed supporters.   Apparently, the focus on Francis I's past actions that do not comport with the image the Vatican is trying to spin has hit some raw nerves in Rome.  As the Virginian Pilot reports, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi has had a temper tantrum and is blaming calling such coverage "defamatory" and part of a "anti-clerical left-wing" campaign to discredit the new Pope.   One has to wonder why the bitter old men who elected Bergoglio pope had not considered this possible negative baggage before hand.  Particularly after having selected a former Hitler youth as pope in 2005.  A piece in Democracy Now looks at the lingering questions about events during the "Dirty War."  Here are some highlights:

While praised for his work with the poor, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio — now Pope Francis — has long been dogged by accusations of his role during Argentina’s military dictatorship. We speak to Horacio Verbitsky, a leading Argentine journalist who exposed Francis’ connection to the abduction of two Jesuit priests. Verbitsky is an investigative journalist for the newspaper Página/12, or Page/12, and head of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, an Argentine human rights organization

Horacio Verbitsky, who has written extensively about the career of Cardinal Bergoglio and his actions during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. During that time, up to 30,000 people were kidnapped and killed. A 2005 lawsuit accused Jorge Bergoglio of being connected to the 1976 kidnappings of two Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. The lawsuit was filed after the publication of Verbitsky’s book, The Silence: From Paul VI to Bergoglio: The Secret Relations Between the Church and the ESMA. ESMA refers to the former navy school that was turned into a detention center where people were tortured by the military dictatorship. The new pope has denied the charges. He twice invoked his right under Argentine law to refuse to appear in open court to testify about the allegations. When he eventually did testify in 2010, human rights activists characterized his answers as evasive.

But when the military coup overthrow the Isabel Perón government, he was in touch with the military that ousted this government and asked the Jesuits to stop their social work. And when they refused to do it, he stopped protecting them, and he let the military know that they were not more inside the protection of the Jesuits’ company, and they were kidnapped. And they accuse him for this deed. He denies this. He said to me that he tried to get them free, that he talked with the former dictator, Videla, and with former dictator Massera to have them freed.

And during a long period, I heard two versions: the version of the two kidnapped priests that were released after six months of torture and captivity, and the version of Bergoglio.

I found documents in the archive of the foreign relations minister in Argentina, which, from my understanding, gave an end to the debate and show the double standard that Bergoglio used. The first document is a note in which Bergoglio asked the ministry to—the renewal of the passport of one of these two Jesuits that, after his releasing, was living in Germany, asking that the passport was renewed without necessity of this priest coming back to Argentina. The second document is a note from the officer that received the petition recommending to his superior, the minister, the refusal of the renewal of the passport. And the third document is a note from the same officer telling that these priests have links with subversion—that was the name that the military gave to all the people involved in opposition to the government, political or armed opposition to the military—and that he was jailed in the mechanics school of the navy, and saying that this information was provided to the officer by Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, provincial superior of the Jesuit company. This means, to my understanding, a double standard. He asked the passport given to the priest in a formal note with his signature, but under the table he said the opposite and repeated the accusations that produced the kidnapping of these priests.

[The two priests] They were tortured. They were interrogated. One of the interrogators had externally knowings about theological questions, that induced one of them, Orlando Yorio, to think that their own provincial, Bergoglio, had been involved in this interrogatory.

There's much more that deserves a full read.  The sad truth is that the Church has often sided with cruel and repressive regimes when it has been thought that such alliances with evil would protect the Church's wealth and power.  Wealth and power are at the end of the day the Church hierarchy's true god.

Justly Deserved Criticism of the Catholic Church and Francis I

One blogger is unhappy that this blog has been critical of the election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church:

Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I hadn't been the newly elected Pope an hour when LGBT bloggers, groups and other self-appointed important voices were attacking him.

This continuing attack against the Roman Catholic Church, of which this writer is not a member, is getting almost as old as the Church itself . . . There is a very simple solution for the detractors to follow.  Leave the Church if you can't abide by its rules of Faith.  No one presuming you're an adult forces you to be Roman Catholic. Find another Faith, more progressive to you're liking.

Those not of the Faith, particularly the Atheist faggots just need to stifle.

Easy words for a blogger who lives in a progressive state like Connecticut where it is a different world from Virginia where the Catholic Church teams up with the Christofascists at The Family Foundation almost daily to deny LGBT Virginians such things as basic employment non-discrimination protections.  Easy words for a blogger who perhaps doesn't know victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests who suffered threats and intimidation in the Church's efforts to keep them silent.   Easy words for a blogger who may not have personally known talented young men who ended their lives because of their inability to deal with the religious based hate and stigma the Catholic Church hierarchy works to perpetuate daily.   And easy words for a blogger who admittedly wasn't raised Catholic and who never experienced the psychological abuse that such an upbringing entailed, especially if one is gay.  And lastly, easy words for a blogger who may not have look at reports on Bergoglio's failings during Argentina's "Dirty War."

Meanwhile, events continue to demonstrate the true face of the Catholic hierarchy and its moral bankruptcy - including one of the electors of Francis I.  Yes, the Los Angeles archdiocese is paying out another $10 million to victims of sexual abuse - on top of the $600 million previously paid out.  Here are highlights from USA Today:

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay four men almost $10 million to settle allegations of sexual abuse by a former priest who more than a quarter century ago had confessed to molesting children, attorneys said Tuesday.  Two brothers will receive $4 million each, and the other two men will get nearly $1 million apiece, said John Manly, a plaintiff's attorney.

The settlement is the first since the Catholic Church released thousands of internal records detailing the actions of the defrocked priest, Michael Baker, and how church officials responded. Baker was convicted in 2007 of child molestation and paroled in 2011.

In January, as the files were about to be made public, a California judge ordered the archdiocese to identify all priests and church officials named in the documents.

Mahony retired as Los Angeles archbishop in 2011. Last month, his successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, stripped him of his official duties.  Mahony is in Rome participating in the conclave selecting the next pope. He was aware of the settlement, J. Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, told the Associated Press.

Another plaintiff attorney, Vince Finaldi, told the Los Angeles Times that he believed that the release of the files was a major factor in the settlement.  "Once we got the files it confirmed everything we had argued for years and years," Finaldi said. "Cardinal Mahony's fingerprints were all over the case."

If Francis I cleans house and strips men like Mahony and Cardinal Bernard Law and many others of their titles and plush retirements and stops inciting hatred towards gays now that he's pope, I may reconsider my criticisms.  Frankly, I do not expect any meaningful change to occur, so my criticism will stand.  The days of special rights, deference and respect for the Catholic Church need to end.

What Role Jorge Bergoglio(Pope Francis I) Play in Argentina's "Dirty War" and the Murder of Thousands?

The college of cardinals sure know how to pick popes of late.  The last go round that brought us Pope Benedict XVI, a former Hitler Youth who seemed to continue a fascist mentality to the throne of St. Peter.  Now, by selecting Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the replacement for Benedict XVI, the cardinals have again selected a man with some possibly ugly ties to a dictatorial regime credited with kidnappings and the murder of possibly thousands of Argentine citizens deemed to be "subversives."  The Guardian, Reuters, and NPR all have some coverage that raises very serious questions about Bergioglio's complicity and cooperation with the military dictatorship that brutally ruled  Argentina from 1976 to 1983 when democracy and free elections were restored.   During the dictatorship's rule it closed the Congress, removed the members of the Supreme Court, and banned political parties, unions, student unions, etc.  You get the idea.  First these highlights from The Guardian which ironically were published two years ago:

To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentinian church contained many "lost sheep in the wilderness", men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal western-supported military dictatorship that seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years. Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.

As it happens, in the week before Christmas [2011] in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country's courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military. These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighboring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons.

What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentinian hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church's collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church's complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina's most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship's political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio's name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. 

A Reuters piece has these passages:

Bergoglio's career coincided with the bloody 1976-1983 military dictatorship, during which up to 30,000 suspected leftists were kidnapped and killed -- which prompted sharp questions about his role.
The most well-known episode relates to the abduction of two Jesuits whom the military government secretly jailed for their work in poor neighborhoods.

According to "The Silence," a book written by journalist Horacio Verbitsky, Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection of the two men after they refused to quit visiting the slums, which ultimately paved the way for their capture.

Verbitsky's book is based on statements by Orlando Yorio, one of the kidnapped Jesuits, before he died of natural causes in 2000. Both of the abducted clergymen suffered five months of imprisonment.

"History condemns him. It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the Church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cozy with the military," Fortunato Mallimacci, the former dean of social sciences at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, once said.

His actions during this period strained his relations with many brother Jesuits around the world, who tend to be more politically liberal.

And then there are these highlights from an NPR story:

His preference to remain in the wings, however, has been challenged by rights activists seeking answers about church actions during the dictatorship after the 1976 coup, often known as Argentina's "Dirty War."

Many Argentines remain angry over the church's acknowledged failure to openly confront a regime that was kidnapping and killing thousands of people as it sought to eliminate "subversive elements" in society. It's one reason why more than two-thirds of Argentines describe themselves as Catholic, but fewer than 10 percent regularly attend Mass.

Under Bergoglio's leadership, Argentina's bishops issued a collective apology in October 2012 for the church's failures to protect its flock. But the statement blamed the era's violence in roughly equal measure on both the junta and its enemies.

"Bergoglio has been very critical of human rights violations during the dictatorship, but he has always also criticized the leftist guerrillas. He doesn't forget that side," said the biographer Rubin.
The statements came far too late for some activists, who accused Bergoglio of being more concerned about the church's image than about aiding the many human rights investigations into the junta era.

[R]ights attorney Bregman said Bergoglio's own statements proved church officials knew from early on that the junta was torturing and killing its citizens, and yet publicly endorsed the dictators.  "The dictatorship could not have operated this way without this key support," she said.

Bergoglio also was accused of turning his back on a family that lost five relatives to state terror, including a young woman who was five months' pregnant before she was kidnapped and killed in 1977. The De la Cuadra family appealed to the leader of the Jesuits in Rome, who urged Bergoglio to help them; Bergoglio then assigned a monsignor to the case. Months passed before the monsignor came back with a written note from a colonel: The woman had given birth in captivity to a girl who was given to a family "too important" for the adoption to be reversed.

Despite this written evidence in a case he was personally involved with, Bergoglio testified in 2010 that he didn't know about any stolen babies until well after the dictatorship was over.

The new pope may like to put forth a simple and humble facade, but these reports raise serious questions about his true morality - or lack thereof.    Personally, the selection of Bergoglio as the new pope seems only too appropriate for an institution that has orchestrated a worldwide criminal conspiracy to protect sexual predators and avoid paying just compensation to victims of sexual abuse by priests.  Morally bankrupt is the term that first springs to mind.   Thus my question remains: how can moral and decent individuals remain members of the Catholic Church.

Argentine Homophoble Selected as New Pope

It would appear that those who were hoping for change in the Roman Catholic Church and in particular a cessation of its anti-gay jihad have received a punch in the gut by the prissy, bitter old men of the conclave who have selected Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new pope.  Back when Argentina was considering adoption of gay marriage, the new pontiff had this to say about gay marriage and gay parenting, as if, of course, he had any real experience in either one:

Bergoglio began “I write these lines to each of you who are in the four monasteries of Buenos Aires. The people of Argentina will face in the coming weeks, a situation whose outcome may seriously injure the family. This is the bill on marriage for same sex. “

Then he added, “At stake are the lives of many children who are discriminated against in advance by depriving them of human growth that God wanted to given with a father and a mother. At stake is a total rejection of the law of God, engraved in our hearts as well”.

The Archbishop stated flatly “we are not naive: it is not just a political struggle is a destructive attempt to God’s plan. It is not just a bill (this is only the instrument) but a ‘move’ from the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."

This fun aside from  USA Today: 

 

[Bergoglio] Couldn't prevent Argentina from becoming the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage or stop its president, Cristina Fernandez, from promoting free contraception and artificial insemination. When Bergoglio argued that gay adoptions discriminate against children, Fernandez compared his tone to "medieval times and the Inquisition."

In the run up to the conclave, The National Catholic Reporter summed up why Bergoglio might be attractive to the bitter old men in the college of cardinals:

The case for Bergoglio in 2013 rests on four points.

First and most basically, he had strong support last time around, and some cardinals may think that they're getting another bite at the apple now.

Second, Bergoglio is a candidates who brings together the first world and the developing world in his own person. He's a Latin American with Italian roots, who studied in Germany. As a Jesuit he's a member of a truly international religious community, and his ties to Comunione e Liberazione make him part of another global network.

Third, Bergoglio still has appeal across the usual divides in the church, drawing respect from both conservatives and moderates for his keen pastoral sense, his intelligence, and his personal modesty. He's also seen as a genuinely spiritual soul, and a man of deep prayer.

"Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord," Bergoglio said in 2001. "I beg the theologians who are present not to turn me in to the Sant'Uffizio or the Inquisition; however, forcing things a bit, I dare to say that the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin."

Fourth, he's also seen as a successful evangelist.

Apparently, in Bergoglio's book, mercy and the social gospel message don't extend to LGBT individuals.  Obviously, I won't be returning to the Roman Catholic Church.  And I suspect that as Pope Francis, Bergoglio will not be able to staunch the hemorrhaging of members of the Church in Europe, North America or South America.  Selecting a pope from South America does not make up for the Church's increasingly Medieval views of women, gays and modernity.

Will theVotes for Gay Marriage in Britain and France Influence the Supreme Court

This blog has often noted that while the United States claims that it is the land of liberty and the home of religious freedom, on the gay marriage front, America is quickly beginning to look more like the Islamic theocracies of the Middle east than the modern developed democracies of the West.  Fifty or even twenty years ago who would have thought that Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa would be more socially progressive and in tune with equality under the civil laws for LGBT citizens than America?  With resounding votes for gay marriage in France and Britain, Andrew Sullivan speculates on how this may influence the U. S. Supreme Court in the DOMA and Proposition 8 cases.  Here are excerpts:

Two of the wealthiest Western democracies are now on the verge of having full marriage equality: Britain and France. The vote yesterday in the Commons – 400 – 175 – was echoed in the French National Assembly five days ago – 249 – 97. These were not close votes. Yes, they have divided the British right – with a slim majority of Tory MPs in Britain deciding not to follow David Cameron’s modernizing lead. But those dissenters should not be confused with the Christianist opposition in the GOP. In the UK, gay couples in civil partnerships have almost all the rights of heterosexual married partners, including immigration rights, which John McCain just dismissed as utterly unimportant to him. The Conservative opposition in Britain was nonetheless in favor of consigning gays to a separate but equal category of civil partnerships. The Christianist opposition in America is in favor of denying gay couples any civil recognition or protection of any kind.

The difference is that between a conservative party seeking to govern a country and a religious party seeking an eternal culture war. But when the Supreme Court comes to weigh the issue next month, I think the fast-growing support for equality in America, especially among the young, the growing number of states in the US with marriage equality, and the overwhelming embrace of equality by many countries both physically close – Canada and Mexico – and historically close – Britain and France – will have an effect.

Justices do not rule in a cultural or historical vacuum. They could still vote narrowly and duck a big national resolution   .  .  .  .  . But Kennedy in particular could also see the emerging future in the West as a decisive factor, believe he has played a critical judicial role in this civil rights movement in America (as he has), and decide to go big. It’s his legacy. And it will last.

Personally, I expect a narrow ruling - but I'd be thrilled to be wrong and see a sweeping ruling that brings marriage equality nationwide.

USA is Increasingly Behind the Curve on Marriage Equality

As noted a number of times, the United States of America advertises that it is the land of liberty that grants religious freedom to all.  But the reality is that the USA's advertised promise is increasingly hollow and being shown as such by neighbors both north and south of the USA's borders in the Western Hemisphere.  A piece in Foreign Policy looks at the United State's increasingly embarrassing behind the curve position compared to countries in Latin America.  Countries that many Americans once sneered at as "backwards."   Who is backwards now?  Here are highlights from the Foreign Policy article:

In his second inaugural address, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to make the United States a beacon for the world by recommitting the country to its ideals of equality. He also made history by saying those ideals demand marriage rights for same-sex couples just as they have demanded equal citizenship for women and African Americans.

But even if the Supreme Court or lawmakers soon agree with Obama's words -- "for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well" -- the United States will be a latecomer to advancing marriage rights. The world's leaders on this issue are not just from places Americans might expect -- Western Europe or Canada -- but many countries in our own hemisphere; places not usually known for progressivism on social issues. While Obama was undergoing his "evolution" on marriage rights, there has been a gay rights revolution that has stretched from Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande.

One dramatic illustration: When a broad coalition of human-rights activists brought a gay rights charter to the United Nations in 2007, the push was led not by the likes of Sweden or the Netherlands, but by Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

In 2010, Argentina's congress approved an "Equal Marriage" law, the same year same-sex marriage also became legal in Mexico City. A year later, Brazil's supreme court ruled same-sex couples were entitled to partnership rights through a kind of domestic partnership status, and some states -- including the largest, São Paulo -- are now performing full marriages for same-sex couples. The lower house of Uruguay's legislature voted in December 2012 to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, and its senate is widely expected to pass the law when it votes in April.

There were also several LGBT rights victories on issues beyond marriage. Though Bolivia's 2009 constitution bans same-sex marriage, it also bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Chile, one of South America's most conservative countries, passed a non-discrimination bill in 2012 and elected its first openly gay politician. And the government of Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner built on its passage of the marriage law to enact the world's broadest legal protections for transgender people last year.

This is not to say that all of Latin America is a gay-rights paradise. Laws throughout Central America, where there is an especially strong evangelical movement, remain particularly hostile, as they do in Peru. . . .

The specific reasons these gains have been possible differ in each country. But a major factor in all of them is that LGBT activists have managed to link their cause to broader efforts to shore up human-rights protections in countries still coping with the legacies of anti-democratic regimes that fell in the late 20th century. Additionally, the courts have embraced their role as defenders of human rights and measure themselves against international standards.

Take the case of Colombia. In 2011, the Constitutional Court ruled that same-sex couples must be considered a "family" under the law. It ordered the congress to pass a law equalizing the rights of same-sex couples within two years.  .  .  .  .  The ruling came despite strong pressure from the Catholic Church, which is continuing to lobby against same-sex marriage in the Colombian congress.

Benedetti told me in a November interview in his Bogotá office. "That is the [influence of] the Catholic religion, which always puts its principles above the rights of minorities." 

Latin America's marriage movement has been helped by the fact that most countries' courts take international jurisprudence far more seriously than do courts in the United States. Human rights law takes an especially international perspective, since almost every country in Latin America is under the jurisdiction of two human rights bodies within the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, charged with investigating violations of the American Convention on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which adjudicates violations on the recommendation of the Commission. Though the United States, Canada, and a handful of Caribbean nations do not recognize the court's jurisdiction, most of Latin America does.

On Dec. 5, Mexico's high court sided with the three couples and said that marriage could not be restricted to heterosexual couples. Technicalities of Mexico's legal system mean that more lawsuits are still required before same-sex couples can easily marry in every state, but this ruling means that it will soon be possible.

This year, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing exactly the same questions that Mexico's court has already resolved. But the U.S. justice system is fiercely resistant to considering legal decisions from abroad.

When the justices take up the gay marriage cases in March, there will be more at stake than the status of American gay and lesbian couples. They will be deciding whether the United States will fall behind as its neighbors establish a new standard of human rights, or whether it will join a revolution that is well underway.

That's right, the U. S. Supreme Court will ultimately be deciding whether the promises of the U. S. Constitution are a lie or whether it is time that religious based anti-gay discrimination is thrown on the trash heap of history where it belongs.  The Christofascists may revel in their hate, bigotry and ignorance, but the rest of us ought to be concerned about the USA's declining position in the world as a beacon of of freedom.