German Catholic Bishops Declare Homosexuality Is “Normal”

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy has clung to ignorance based dogma when confronted with modern knowledge - e.g., the Church resisted knowledge that the Earth was not flat and revolved around the Sun - until a breaking point comes when it becomes no longer possible to cling to ignorance without losing all credibility.   Now, Germany's bishops may be poised to force the Vatican to finally begin discarding 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality, especially on the issue of homosexuality.  Right wing elements within the Church that seem to have a desperate need to condemn others (much like hypocrisy-filled evangelicals) will no doubt be foaming at the mouth and shrieking "heresy" as antiquated, myth based dogma confronts the reality of science and modern knowledge. I for one will never return to the Catholic Church in light of the continued cover ups of sexual abuse of children and minors.  That said, if the German bishops can help end the Church's harmful mistreatment of LGBT people, perhaps fewer lives will be harmed or destroyed by dogma that should have been jettisoned ages ago.  The Catholic News Service looks at this development: 

The German bishops’ conference has committed to “newly assessing” the universal Church’s teaching on homosexuality, sexual morality in general, as well as the sacraments of ordination and marriage. The commitment comes at the beginning of a controversial two-year “Synodal Process” by the German hierarchy.

Following consultations in Berlin last week, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the bishops agreed that homosexuality is a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

“The sexual preference of man expresses itself in puberty and assumes a hetero- or homosexual orientation,” Berlin’s Archbishop Heiner Koch asserted in a statement released by the bishops’ conference.

“Both belong to the normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be be changed with the help of a specific socialization”.

Archbishop Koch, together with diocesan bishops Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz, as well as several auxiliary bishops from the Faith and Family Commission of the bishops' conference consulted with a number of invited medical specialists, theologians and canon lawyers during the event.

Calling for a "solid discussion supported by human sciences and theology" Koch and Bode said that Amoris Laetitia already provides for noticeable "developments" of both Church doctrine and practice, adding that a sexual relationship for divorced and remarried couples after Amoris laetitia "was no longer always to be qualified as grave sin," and that wholesale “exclusion from the reception of the Eucharist" of such couples could no longer be justified.

And since sexual orientation was to be considered unchangeable, “any form of discrimination of persons with a homosexual orientation” was to be rejected, as was “explicitly stressed by Pope Francis” in Amoris laetitia.

According to a press release issued by the bishops, there was also discussion on whether the prohibition of homosexual acts by the Church’s magisterium was "still up-to-date" – and whether artificial contraception should still be condemend by the Chuch for “both married and unmarried” couples.

Coinciding with the opening of the Synodal Process, several diocesan and national Catholic associations funded by the German Church tax, or Kirchensteuer, have made public demands for changes to the Church’s teaching and practice on similar issues.

Calls for “reform” range from the blessing of homosexual unions to the priestly ordination of women . . . Agnes Wuckelt, deputy chairwoman of the German Catholic Women’s Association (KFD), demanded that women be ordained to the priesthood, asserting that a “sacramental ordination of women as deacons” would be a welcome first step in that direction.

Fear of Being Outed Prompted Killing by Aaron Hernandez

Internalized homophobia is a horrible thing.  It impacts individuals in varying ways: (i) it causes some individuals to be overwhelmed with self-hate and resort to suicide, (ii) others lash out against others in the LGBT community by embracing anti-gay politics and religion, and (iii) others take desperate steps to conceal their "secret."  New reports indicate that  former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who hung himself in his solitary jail cell, took deadly action and killed a one time friend to prevent being "outed."  A sad end to a sad story and life.  Tainted because of religious fueled homophobia and the internalized self-hate that it causes in so many LGBT individuals.  Science tells us that sexual orientation is not a choice, is set before we are born, and is a normal aspect of biology.  Yet, ignorance embracing religion demonizes same sex attraction and continues to destroy lives across the world.  The Advocate looks at Hernandez' disturbing tale.  Here are excepts:

Newsweek confirmed that Hernandez, 27, left a suicide note for his female fiancee, his daughter, and the boyfriend he met at the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Mass, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. Hernandez's boyfriend, who has not been named by the media, is under suicide watch.

Hernandez was convicted for the murder of his one-time friend, Odin Lloyd. A motive for the 2013 killing was never clear, but Newsweek and other outlets reported that Lloyd was aware Hernandez was bisexual and had carried on a long-time affair with a male friend from high school. At the time of his death, Lloyd was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee; it's believed Hernandez was fearful word of his bisexuality would reach his fiancee.

Lloyd also allegedly called Hernandez a "smoocher," which the football star believed was an antigay slur. Later, a man accused of helping Hernandez attempt to conceal Lloyd's murder told his girlfriend he would not have helped him had he known he was a "limp wrist."

Hernandez, born in Bristol, Conn., in 1989, lost his father at the age of 16. Even with a promising football future at the University of Florida, Hernandez could not escape a life of crime and violence. He was accused of taking part in a 2007 double-shooting that left two men injured in Gainseville, Fla.; he was not convicted. Five years later, he was connected to a shooting in Boston that left two men dead, but was found not guilty of that crime five days before he committed suicide. 

When Hernandez's body was discovered this week — the same day his former teammates traveled to the White House to celebrate their Super Bowl win in February — he had a Bible verse scrawled on his forehead and red ink on his hands and feet, imitating the stigmata.

The 2017 Academy Awards: A Bad Night For Right Wingers

Last night's Academy Awards were not a happy event for much of the GOP base.  An Iranian won for best foreign film, black actors won awards and a gay drama won best picture.  then too there were numerous shots taken at Der Trumpenführer and his regime of lies.   Expect much whining that Hollywood is "out of touch" with real America.  Except, increasingly, it is not out of touch.  It's the GOP's "real Americans" and the minority who through a fluke put an unfit, mentally unstable narcissist in the White House who are out of touch with the majority of the country. Indeed, like their chosen leader, this minority is devoid of any empathy for those who are not just like them in terms of skin color, religious beliefs and seem unable to see the common humanity of others notwithstanding the religious posturing that so many engage in.  The Atlantic review of Moonlight looks at some of these aspects that the film brings to life for those willing to open their hearts and minds:

There’s insight to Moonlight that should pierce viewers to their core, even if Chiron’s life is very different from their own. This is not an “issue” film that’s mainly “about” race or sexuality; this is a humane movie, one that’s looking to prompt empathy and introspection most of all. On those terms alone, Moonlight is one of the year’s most gripping viewing experiences.

Moonlight veers away from the gritty stereotypes its setting might suggest; in fact, this film deliberately rejects the visual markers viewers might anticipate in such a tale. Liberty City is bright and often colorful, even at its most dilapidated. When Chiron is rescued by Juan (Mahershala Ali), one of the drug dealers shown cruising around in a vintage Cadillac, the boy is taken to Juan’s suburban-ish home, and later to the beach, where Juan cradles him in the water to try and teach him how to swim. Juan quickly realizes that Chiron doesn’t need to be forced or coddled into opening up emotionally—he just needs space to be himself. At every juncture, Juan tries to dissuade the boy from accepting whatever lot he’s handed by his tormenters, or by his crack-addicted mother Paula (a frightening, and wonderful, Naomie Harris).

There is tragedy at the heart of Moonlight, and the film is not an easy watch at times, partly because it delves so deeply into its protagonist’s haunted psyche. . . . . To say more would be to spoil a singular journey suffused with melancholy and hope, emotions that Jenkins communicates through the screen with uncommon grace. The result is a film that is one of the most essential of the year, and one whose depth rewards repeated viewings.

Needless to say, the modern day Pharisees at Focus on the Family are not pleased with the film and in part of a review states:

Moonlight is a well-made movie with an obvious agenda. Chiron, the film suggests, suffered mightily due to his sexual inclinations. Thus, the movie says, Chiron's life would've been so much better had his world been more accepting.

Christians who hold the Bible as the Word of God, of course, can't go where the movie would like to push us. We can't applaud where Chiron goes. . . . . As such, Moonlight, as mesmerizing as the movie is, isn't just filled with problematic content: It gives us a message counter to what we believe God tells us. 

The truth is that Focus on the Family focuses only on some families: those that are white, conservative Christian and heterosexual.  The rest of us don't matter and, worse yet, are to be marginalized and condemned.  WWJD? 

Quote of the Day: Sexual Repression Costs Lives

Having grown up Catholic and remained a member of the Catholic Church until a few years before I came out, I am all too aware of the Church hierarchy's total obsession with all things sexual and the manner in which anything other than procreative sex is evil.  Of course, homosexuality and/or same sex physical relations was about the fastest ticket to Hell outside of possibly murder, although their were some clergy who seeming equated the two as the same in heinousness.  Meanwhile, as well all know, priests, bishops and other clergy were sexually molesting children and youth with abandon, knowing that the hierarchy would cover up the crimes and rarely, if ever, report the criminal conduct to police authorities. Yet there remain Catholics who blindly parrot the Church's official condemnation of sexuality while ignoring the fact that from many Popes on down, a vile, worldwide criminal conspiracy was going on.  Candidly, I cannot understand this mindset other than to assume that such right wing Catholics cannot let go of the Church teachings that in many cases made their lives miserable.  To admit they were wrong apparently would be too painful of an admission.  A letter to the editor in the Bucks County Courier-Times has a wonderful come back to such bitter right wing Catholics.  Here are some excerpts:

Older people jaded by their loss of youth and turning that dissatisfaction outward on the world is nothing new. But I don't think I've ever seen it put on display so outlandishly that it makes "All in the Family" look like a documentary.

In a column last month, J.D. Mullane conjured up a whirlwind of excuses to not only defend the Catholic Church from accusations of being "sex-obsessed," but to turn around and blame, well, everyone and everything he possibly could, it seems. To him, our evolution into a much more sex-positive nation is a disaster, and if the once pure holy beacon of Catholic theology on sex is now tarnished, it's because of this rising tide of naughtiness.

Most offensively, he lists Disney's attempt at transgender inclusiveness as an example of what he perceives as the moral degradation of society that's truly to blame for making the Catholic Church seem out of touch. Never mind the shockingly high suicide rate of transgendered people who feel they lack an identity -- 41 percent have attempted it!

It's likely as high as the suicide rate of those who, as children, were sexually assaulted, though that statistic is harder to come by. And while it's generally estimated that child sex abuse rates among Catholic priests are actually comparable to that of the general population, the depravity of it comes from the years -- decades even! -- that it was kept secret, allowing it to happen over and over again to more and more children.

Perhaps if we as a society had been more open to and accepting of the spectrum of human sexuality, instead of hushed by an invisible Victorian code of sexual conduct, these crimes could have been caught years earlier, and thousands of lives could have been saved.

[L]ook to the parts of Africa where the Catholic Church dominates. Its insistence that the use of condoms is wrong is causing preventable deaths from HIV/AIDS to continue to flourish, year after year. From the relative safety of America and western Europe, they preach abstinence instead, implying that they'd rather see whole swaths of the impoverished die from AIDS than compromise on a rule that, as far as I can tell, Jesus wasn't concerned with.

In short, sex positivity is hardly a moral ill; rather, it is sexual repression that costs lives, even if it makes suburban columnists nostalgic for the good old days. The truth is, these good old days were a time before the HIV/AIDS crisis, when LGBT people were free to be beaten and exiled from their communities, when mothers living in poverty were forced to give birth, and when children were being raped by priests by the thousands but were too ashamed to say anything about it.

 As I have said before, the moral bankruptcy of the Catholic hierarchy - including Pope Francis - is complete. These bitter old men in dresses should be the last people anyone should consult or defer to in matters of sexuality or anything else. 

Neanderthal Catholics React to Pope Francis' Apology to Gays

While I give no credence to Pope Francis' recent remarks that Christianity and the Catholic Church owe gays an apology for the mistreatment that has been inflicted on us by Christianity, because when given the opportunity to change Church doctrine on gays, Francis has yielded the field to the gay haters within the Church hierarchy.  However, while Francis'  remarks are meaningless in terms of marking any change in the Church, they have nonetheless sent right wing Catholics into conniption fits - even as they have targeted other senior members of the hierarchy rather than Francis himself. Supporting their raging anti-gay animus, these Neanderthals reach back to writings from the 11th century for justification.  Indeed, they rely on some of the same mentally disturbed "church fathers" who laid out the Church's bizarre obsession with all things sexual.   Lifesite carries one such diatribe directed against Cardinal Reinhard Marx.   Here are samples of the spittle flecked batshitery that passes as thoughtful argument in this world of ignorance and sexual obsession:

[Cardinal] Marx’s statements seem to fly in the face of repeated affirmations by some of the Catholic Church’s most authoritative documents, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which calls homosexual sexual acts “acts of grave depravity” which are “intrinsically disordered,” and “can never be approved.” They also contradict the Vatican’s 2003 instruction on homosexual unions, which forbids support for legal recognition for homosexual unions of any kind.

St. Peter Damian, a cardinal who wrote the most extensive treatment of the issue of homosexual unions in the Church’s history, also had a very different understanding of the value of homosexual relations from that of Cardinal Marx. 

According to Damian’s work on the subject, the Book of Gomorrah, written in the 11^th century in response to a plague of homosexual vice among priests and clergy, homosexual unions are in no way beneficial to their participants; to the contrary, they are utterly destructive to them, spiritually, psychologically and even physically, throwing them into an emotional and spiritual confusion that makes them subject to demonic manipulation.  

Damian writes that “this vice, which surpasses the savagery of all other vices, is to be compared to no other. For this vice is the death of bodies, the destruction of souls, pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the intellect, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, introduces the diabolical inciter of lust, throws into confusion, and removes the truth completely from the deceived mind.”

Damian recognizes that the logic of homosexual vice leads to ever-more degrading and self-destructive acts, a reality confirmed by those who have come out of the gay lifestyle. The homosexual relationship “violates sobriety, kills modesty, slays chastity,” writes Damian. “It butchers virginity with the sword of a most filthy contagion. It befouls everything, it stains everything, it pollutes everything, and for itself it permits nothing pure, nothing foreign to filth, nothing clean.”

In contrast to Cardinal Marx and other Catholic prelates who have recently advocated affirming homosexual relationships or tolerating them, Peter Damian writes that we must avoid the “cruel mercy” of staying silent in the face of evil, and even warns that we become the “murderer of another’s soul” if we do not speak against the immorality of their behavior.

There's more, but the take away is that these folks are seriously mentally disturbed and in need of a serious mental health intervention.  I truly find it remarkable as to just how srcewed up these people are and how desperate they are to have others to condemn.  If there is an evil to be defeated, it is they themselves.

UPDATED: Here's what Damian and his fellow nutjobs thought about sex in general:

". . . .the reformers as a group considered sex and other pleasurable experiences tainted by evil and a potent source of sin.  They were not merely suspicious of sex, but hostile to any sexual activity at all save for marital relations undertaken expressly and consciously to conceive a child.  . . . . were determined to limit marital sex to the absolute minimum, and on penalizing extra-marital sex as harshly as possible."

" . . .  married couples were allowed sexual intercourse under only three conditions: 1) for the explicit purpose of conceiving a child; 2) to prevent the temptation of marital infidelity; and 3) to yield to the unrelenting demands -  most likely sinful - of their partner. Even then the sexual intercourse could not be performed in the daytime, had to be in the "missionary position', could not be performed on Sundays, Wednesdays or Fridays - removing the equivalent of five months of the year - and was not to be performed during Lent or other forbidden times. . . All other sexual activity was categorically condemned."

In short, these men were seriously mentally disturbed.

Science Triumphs Over Religion: Depathologizing Homosexuality

Being gay and of a generation that still recalls the era when homosexuality was classified as a form of mental illness and was classified as such in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) - which certainly played a strong role in my refusal to accept my sexual orientation for many years - I find the role that science played in depathologizing sexual orientation.  Jack Drescher, MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, New York Medical College
and Adjunct Professor, New York University, has a piece in Behavior Sciences Journal that looks at the original, principally Christian, religious basis for anti-gay and then tracks the scientific developments and research that ultimately brought an end to the treatment of homosexuality as a "disease" or "mental illness" outside of Christofascist circles.  Here are some article excepts:

Rigid gender beliefs usually flourish in fundamentalist, religious communities where any information or alternative explanations that might challenge implicit and explicit assumptions are unwelcome. When entering the realms of gender and sexuality, it is not unusual to encounter another form of binary thinking: “morality tales” about whether certain kinds of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors are “good or bad” or, in some cases, whether they are “good or evil” [14–16]. The good/bad binary is not confined to religion alone, as the language of morality is inevitably found, for example, in theories about the “causes” of homosexuality.

For much of Western history, official pronouncements on the meanings of same-sex behaviors were primarily the province of religions, many of which deemed homosexuality to be morally “bad” [36]. However, as 19th century Western culture shifted power from religious to secular authority, same-sex behaviors, like other “sins,” received increased scrutiny from the law, medicine, psychiatry, sexology, and human rights activism. Eventually, religious categories like demonic possession, drunkenness, and sodomy were transformed into the scientific categories of insanity, alcoholism, and homosexuality.

Thus, the modern history of homosexuality usually begins in the mid-19th century, most notably with the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs [21]. Trained in law, theology, and history, he might be considered an early gay rights advocate who wrote a series of political tracts criticizing German laws criminalizing same sex relationships between men. He hypothesized that some men were born with a woman’s spirit trapped in their bodies and that these men constituted a third sex he named urnings. He also defined a woman who we would today call a lesbian as urningin, a man’s spirit trapped in the body of a woman.

Freud saw expressions of adult homosexual behavior as caused by “arrested” psychosexual development, a theory of immaturity. Toward the end of his life, Freud wrote “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development” [39], (p. 423). This belief made him pessimistic about efforts to change a homosexual orientation to a heterosexual one: “In general, to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual does not offer much more prospect of success than the reverse, except that for good practical reasons the latter is never attempted”

As psychiatrists, physicians, and psychologists tried to “cure” homosexuality, sex researchers of the mid-20th century instead studied a wider spectrum of individuals that included non-patient populations. Psychiatrists and other clinicians drew conclusions from a skewed sample of patients seeking treatment for homosexuality or other difficulties and then wrote up their findings of this self-selected group as case reports. Some theories about homosexuality were based on studies of prison populations. Sexologists, on the other hand, did field studies in which they went out and recruited large numbers of non-patient subjects in the general population.

The most important research in this area was that of Alfred Kinsey and his collaborators, published in two headline-generating reports [22,23]. The Kinsey reports, surveying thousands of people who were not psychiatric patients, found homosexuality to be more common in the general population than was generally believed, although his now-famous “10%” statistic is today believed to be closer to 1%–4% [46]. This finding was sharply at odds with psychiatric claims of the time that homosexuality was extremely rare in the general population. Ford and Beach’s [47] study of diverse cultures and of animal behaviors, confirmed Kinsey’s view that homosexuality was more common than psychiatry maintained and that it was found regularly in nature. In the late 1950s, Evelyn Hooker [24], a psychologist, published a study Behav. Sci. 2015, 5 570 in which she compared psychological test results of 30 gay men with 30 heterosexual controls, none of whom were psychiatric patients. Her study found no more signs of psychological disturbances in the gay male group, a finding that refuted psychiatric beliefs of her time that all gay men had severe psychological disturbances.

[I]f homosexuality was no longer considered an illness, and if one did not literally accept biblical prohibitions against it, and if gay people are able and prepared to function as productive citizens, then what is wrong with being gay? Additionally, if there is nothing wrong with being gay, what moral and legal principles should the larger society endorse in helping gay people openly live their lives?

The result, in many countries, eventually led, among other things, to (1) the repeal of sodomy laws that criminalized homosexuality; (2) the enactment of laws protecting the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in society and the workplace; (3) the ability of LGBT personnel to serve openly in the military; (4) marriage equality and civil unions in an ever growing number of countries; (5) the facilitation of gay parents’ adoption rights; (6) the easing of gay spouses’ rights of inheritance; and (7) an ever increasing number of religious denominations that would allow openly gay people to serve as clergy. 

Most importantly, in medicine, psychiatry, and other mental health professions, removing the diagnosis from the DSM led to an important shift from asking questions about “what causes homosexuality?” and “how can we treat it?” to focusing instead on the health and mental health needs of LGBT patient populations.

Many young gays have no idea of the mental anguish I and others suffered in our teens and early twenties as we feared being labeled mentally ill.  Add to this the poison of religious brainwashing and it is little wonder that I remained closeted for years and contemplated suicide constantly.   I am thankful that science saved me from the hate, ignorance and bigotry of religion.

Religion as an Evil: Egypt's Anus Inspector

Ridiculous cretin "Dr." Louis

One has to wonder at times why the Abrahamic religions are so obsessed with sex and the suppression of what modern science and medical knowledge have found to be normal sexual activities and sexual orientations.  An obsession with homosexuality is found across conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  And none of these "godly folk" will face the fact that (i) the Old Testament was written by ignorant goat herders and (ii) nowadays, Mohammed would have been likely committed to an insane asylum.  Islam, however, seems hell bent on winning the prize for the most bizarrely obsessed with all things gays. As BuzzFeed is reporting, in Egypt the police medical examiners actually inspect the anus of anyone suspected of homosexuality.  This reality makes the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican almost look rational.  Here are highlights on this sick, bizarre practice:

When asked to explain what Cairo’s medical inspectors look for when they examine someone who’s been arrested for homosexuality, Dr. Maged Louis picked up a pen and started sketching an oval with sharp points on both ends. 

“The shape of the hole will change,” he said. The anus “won’t be normal any more and will look like the female vagina.”

More than 150 people have been arrested on charges of homosexuality since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power just under two years ago, the largest roundup of alleged LGBT people in more than a decade in Egypt. Anal exams are a routine part of the investigation in such cases, and Louis has a role in overseeing all of them. He is the deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medical Authority, as well as the chief of forensic medicine for the Cairo police district.

“First we make them take the prostrate position — the position that Muslims take when they pray,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. The tests are intended not just to determine whether someone has ever had anal sex, but also to detect “chronic homosexuals,” because the letter of Egyptian law only criminalizes men who engage in “habitual debauchery.” Louis said that he believed that in addition to their elongation, the anuses of “chronic homosexuals” also don’t clench when touched or don’t contract as tightly.  “A normal man’s anus can’t take more than one joint of the small finger,” he said. 

International human rights and medical experts dismissed Louis’s checklist as having “no medical basis” and being “categorically not true.” Most of those interviewed by BuzzFeed News couldn’t contain their shock before all of the criteria were listed.

“I think you heard my laugh — I think that says it all,” said Dr. Joel Palefsky, a professor at the University of California San Francisco specializing in anal cancer who is president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society. “We run a clinic where we do anal examinations of thousands of patients … Never in my 20 years of doing this have I seen an anus that looks like a vagina.”

The idea that inspectors are intentionally fabricating evidence because of their own homophobia isn’t what makes these exams so disturbing — though that does sometimes happen, according to defendants’ accounts. It’s that beliefs about homosexuality are leading doctors — some of whom have done extensive (and horrific) research into perfecting diagnostic techniques — to believe that what they are doing is science.

This insane drivel sounds like something the Nazis dreamed up about the Jews and skull size, etc.   I'm not sure where Dr. Louis got his supposed medical degree, but it needs to be revoked immediately.   The larger issue, of course, is why the USA continues to give billions of dollars to such retrograde regimes and why anyone gives any deference to the practitioners of such batshitery.

What's Really Behind the Vatican's Reclosing the Door to Gays

There has been much commentary on the recent synod in Rome where at first it appeared that the Roman Catholic Church might finally come into the 21st Century in terms of its treatment of gays - as well as divorced and remarried Catholics and its position on contraception.  Sadly, the forces of reaction rallied and promising statements were erased from the final statement at the end of the synod.  Some hope that next year's assembly may be more progressive, but in order for that to happen the Church's sick neurosis toward all things sexual must end.  Most importantly, a mindset that formed in the Middle Ages must die once and for all.  That mindset?  Chapter 14 of The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies explains it well.  It's a mindset alive and well within the Church hierarchy.  Here are some excerpts:

There is one evil, an evil above all other evils, that I am aware is always within me, that grievously and piteously lacerates and afflicts my soul.  It was with me from the cradle, it grew with me in childhood, in adolescence, in my youth it always  stuck to me, and it does not desert me even now that my limbs are failing because of my old age.  This evil is sexual desire, carnal delight, the storm of lust that has smashed and battered my unhappy soul, emptied it of all strength, and left it weak and empty.

Late in the life of Saint Anselm of Canterbury anguished in these words over the sexual drive that, despite a lifetime of devotion to God, stubbornly refused to release him even in old age. In writing these words, Anselm could have been speaking for many other Medieval clergymen who devoted themselves to the church's strict anti-sexual moral teachings - a moral code that demonized their own sexual natures.  The roots of the psychological disturbance or neurosis are easy to see in the sincere dedication of these devout clergymen to the ascetic sexual ideal that not only required them to suppress a fundamental human instinct, but taught them that an innermost selves was evil.  The conflict between their beliefs, on the one hand, and the urges of their bodies on the other, set in motion a psychological struggle that was, in fact, a classic example of neurosis as defined in standard psychoanalytic reference work, . . .

Such a conflict would appear to be particularly acute in the case of a person conditioned by religious indoctrination to be repelled by sex, one of the most basic instinctual drives.  If the urges were homosexual, the psychological stress would be even greater.  The "neurotic symptoms" produced in individuals with such an internal conflict typically take the form of reaction formation, a psychological defense in which the negativity they feel toward the intolerable characteristic is directed to others who display the same loathed characteristics. . . . . the level of hostility they displayed to homosexuality was directly proportional to the strength of homosexual responsiveness recorded within each of them.

Putting it another way, because of the distorted lens through which such clergymen perceiced sex, and because of his own emotional discomfort with it, he could never deal with the subject truly rationally or dispationately.  Hence the references we see to sexual behavior in the morally conservative clergy of the Middle Ages are in almost all cases couched in histrionic and super-heated hyperbole.  Likewise the visceral disgust conservative clergy felt for those practicing homosexuality . . . .

The centuries have passed since this mindset developed, but most of the aging Catholic clerics still cling to a 13th century concept of "natural law" and exhibit the same neurosis described by the author.  Thus, when I described the Church hierarchy and fundamentalist Christians as "mentally ill," they are in fact mentally/psychologically disturbed.   Until this mindset dies, gays can expect more hysteria as we gain equality.  The more we become accepted by society, the greater the stress on those indoctrinated in out dated and ignorant understandings of sexuality.

A Long Ago Defense of Sexual Liberty

The burning of the knight of Hohenburg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, 1482

In addition to power and money one of the things that has always defined religion and religious leaders is a desire to control others.  And given that the majority of Christianity's history has been dominated by bitter supposedly celibate men in the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the areas of control that became an obsession was the control of other peoples' bodies and their sex lives. If the bitter old men could not openly enjoy sex, then they wanted to make sure that no one else did either. Throughout time their have been rebellious free thinkers who are not afraid to think or question the all too often oppressive status quo.  One such person was British thinker and essayist Jeremy Bentham.  Andrew Sullivan notes the publishing of previously unpublished writings of Betham which would make the bitter old queens at the Vatican and the sexually frustrated males at the Southern Baptist Convention have conniptions.  Here are excerpts:

Jeremy Bentham’s collected writings on religion and sex have recently been published for the first time. Bentham argued for a perspective on sexual morality that was, to say the least, unusual for his era:

If an activity did not cause harm, Bentham had argued as early as the 1770s and 1780s, then it should not be subject to legal punishment, and had called for the decriminalization of homosexuality. By the mid-1810s he was prepared to link the problem not only with law, but with religion. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was taken by ‘religionists’, as Bentham called religious believers, to prove that God had issued a universal condemnation of homosexuality. Bentham pointed out that what the Bible story condemned was gang rape. Paul’s injunctions against homosexuality were also taken to be authoritative by the Church. Bentham pointed out that not only did Jesus never condemn homosexuality, but that the Gospels presented evidence that Jesus engaged in sexual activity, and that he had his male lovers — the disciple whom he loved, traditionally said to be John, and the boy, probably a male prostitute, who remained with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after all the disciples had fled (for a more detailed account see ‘Not Paul, but Jesus’). …

Bentham looked to ancient Greece and Rome, where certain forms of homosexual activity were not only permitted but regarded as normal, as more appropriate models for sexual morality than that which existed in modern Christian Europe.

 Bentham attacked the notion, still propagated by religious apologists, that homosexuality was ‘unnatural’. All that ‘unnatural’ meant, argued Bentham, was ‘not common’. The fact that something was not common was not a ground for condemning it. Neither was the fact that something was not to your taste. It was a form of tyranny to say that, because you did not like to do a particular thing, you were going to punish another person for doing it. Because you thought something was ‘disgusting’ did not mean that everyone else thought it was disgusting. You might not want to have sex with a sow, but the father of her piglets thought differently.

These writings were, for Bentham, a critical part of a much broader attack on religion and the ‘gloomy terrors’ inspired by the religious mentality. By putting forward the case for sexual liberty, he was undermining religion in one of the areas where, in his view, it was most pernicious.

Conservative fundamentalist religion is a pernicious evil whether it be Christian or Muslim in its dogma.  The main goal is to degridate individuals and give power to the clerics who are ultimately only concerned about their own power, ability to control others and wealth.

Pope to Travel to Uganda to Worship Martyrs who Rejected Gay Sex

Gay Star News is reporting that according to Ugandan officials Pope Francis is scheduled to travel to Uganda in October to honor martyrs who were executed in the 1880's for refusing to have gay sex with the then ruling king.  The martyrs were canonized in 1964 by Pope Paul VI. Apparently, the Vatican has not yet confirmed the Pope will be going to Uganda.  If in fact Francis does attend this event, those like Andrew Sullivan and other liberals having near swoons over Pope Francis' supposed change in the Catholic Church's approach to gays, will have to do a dramatic reassessment of their views.  Frankly, it would be nice if this turned out to merely be a stunt by Uganda in an effort to find authority for its newly enacted horrific anti-gay law.  The irony, however, is that the whole martyrdom story line defeats the current claims by ignorant religious leaders that homosexuality was a European import.   Once again, knowing accurate history is the enemy of the "godly folk."  Here are details from Gay Star News: 

Pope Francis will be flying to Uganda in order to worship Uganda martyrs who rejected gay sex from the country's former king.  The head of the Catholic Church will visit Uganda in October, which has recently enacted one of the worst anti-gay laws in the world.

Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi has confirmed the Pope has accepted the invitation to attend the celebrations to mark 50 years since the canonisation of the Uganda Martyrs.  The Vatican is yet to confirm the visit.

The martyrs, who were killed between 1885 and 1887, refused to have sex with the gay King Mwanga II of Bugunda, now part of Uganda.  In a report released by Sexual Minorities Uganda, it proved it was not true that homosexuality is ‘un-African’ and it existed long before British colonialized the country in 1894.

Researcher Ambrose Mukasa said: ‘It is documented that King Mwanga II had many young men in his palace and was sodomizing them at his will.

‘When missionaries introduced Christianity and some of the young men were baptized and taught about the dangers of homosexuality, they started denying Mwanga the usual “pleasure” he used to get from them.

‘Mwanga reportedly became annoyed and went wild wondering how mere pages had started disobeying him. He clashed with the missionaries.  ‘He instructed the killing of all the young men who disobeyed him – with the executions taking place between 1885 and 1887.

‘The murdered young men were considered martyrs because they resolved to die for their new religion rather than surrendering their bodies to the king.’

The martyrs were canonized in 1964 by Pope Paul VI. - See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/pope-will-fly-uganda-worship-martyrs-who-rejected-gay-sex280214#sthash.y9MRhUcu.dpuf

Stop Fawning Over Pope Francis

I have made the point several times that while Pope Francis has made nice sounding, conciliatory statements, the reality is that the Roman Catholic Church's position on gays, women in the Church, contraception and a host of other things has not changed.  A change in tone does not equate to a change in dogma or underlying positions.  This doesn't mean that Francis isn't a welcome change from the horrible Pope Benedict XVI.  It simply means that one cannot be deceived by nice sounding statements.  A piece in The New Republic underscores this reality.  Here are highlights:

Even if they themselves don’t believe a word of scripture, many liberals wish to see something of their own politics reflected in the outlook of the Catholic Church—hence the repeated references in recent weeks to the "progressive" Pope and the overrated idea of "liberation theology."

It is predictable that the reactionary politics of the new Pope should be played down by liberal Catholics in favour of his musings on social justice and global capitalism. What’s so depressing has been the extent to which liberal non-believers have fallen so hook, line and sinker for what is in reality nothing more than a clever repackaging exercise.

I say this because, apart from a few centrist musings about inequality, the Catholic Church—which Pope Francis heads and therefore has the power to change—stands on roughly the same political terrain as it did under the leadership of Pope Benedict. Pope Francis’s position on most issues should make the hair of every liberal curl. Instead we get article after article of saccharine from people who really should know better.

But as is so often the case, the search for a hero has resulted in people switching off their critical faculties and overlooking inconvenient truths which don’t align with their worldview. How else could the Pope come out of 2013 a "progressive" icon while at the same time holding views on women and abortion that make Jeremy Clarkson look like a radical socialist?

[T]he Pope’s popularity among the right-on surely has something to do with the fact that women and gay people are still viewed as appendages in the struggle for a better society. The new Pope has done nothing to fundamentally alter the Church’s bigoted stance on homosexuality. He has referred to gay marriage as "moral relativism." He presumably believes that men who sleep with men are going to hell. He views the all-male priesthood and the church’s prohibition of abortion as beyond debate.

[U]nder Francis little of substance has actually changed. The Catholic Church continues to vehemently discriminate against gay people and women, it’s simply sugar-coated its message with fashionable sound bites about inequality. And depressingly this has worked.  

Aside from the fact that we still hold religious figures to a lower standard than secular ones, the fawning over Pope Francis demonstrates something profoundly depressing: in the struggle for a better world, women’s and LGBT rights are still not taken seriously. 

What Jesus Says About Homosexuality

A piece in Huffington Post brings up a topic that the anti-gay animus filled Christofascists do not like to mention: what Jesus had to say against homosexuality: absolutely nothing.  He never mentions it.  Ever.   In contrast, he said plenty about judging others and the loveless legalism of the Pharisees.  Despite all of this, the Christofascists - all the while claiming the the Bible is inerrant as they pick and choose passages to adhere to as if the Bible were a Chinese menu - cling to a handful of passages written by ignorant herders.  The hypocrisy is exquisite.  The "godly folk" are truly the modern day Pharisees.

How People Lie About Gay Sex and Homophobia

Since coming out I have become convinced that the actual number of gays is actually much larger than the official statistics on the LGBT population state.  Why?  Because so many men lie about their real sexual orientation.  Go to any Craigslist M4M "personals" section and you will find countless "MWM - married white male - and DL - down low black guys looking for gay sex.  Does anyone seriously believe these guys admit that they are gay on surveys?  They are in denial and have countless excuses as to why they are looking for other guys, none of which include the fact that they are gay.  I assume a similar phenomenon goes on in the W4W sections.   A piece in Bloomberg seems to bear out my unscientific research conclusions.  Here are excerpts:

Social theorists, above all Duke University’s Timur Kuran, have drawn attention to the phenomenon of “preference falsification.” The basic idea is that when people speak in public, they aren’t always truthful about their preferences. What they say is different from what they really think. 

Recent research uncovers strong evidence of preference falsification in the U.S. When people are assured of anonymity, it turns out, a lot more of them will acknowledge that they have had same-sex experiences and that they don’t entirely identify as heterosexual. But it also turns out that when people are assured of anonymity, they will show significantly higher rates of anti-gay sentiment. 

These results suggest that recent surveys have been understating, at least to some degree, two different things: the current level of same-sex activity and the current level of opposition to gay rights. 

The research, conducted by Ohio State University economist Katherine B. Coffman and her colleagues, involved 2,516 participants, all from the U.S. About half of the participants were randomly assigned to take a standard survey, employing the “best practices” in widespread use today. 

In this survey, people were asked to respond to several innocuous questions, not involving sensitive issues, and then to answer questions about sexual orientation, designed to elicit both their views and their reports about their own behavior. This approach gives apparently credible assurances of anonymity to those surveyed, but it remains possible, in practice, for the experimenters to link particular answers to particular questions. 

The other participants were assigned to what Coffman and her colleagues call a “veiled report” treatment. The details are a bit technical, but the basic point is to design the survey so that the experimenters can’t learn, and can’t even make inferences about, any individual’s answers to particular questions. They can calculate answers only at the aggregate level. 

The two approaches produced significantly different results. In the best practices survey, 17 percent of participants said they had had a sexual experience with someone of the same sex (12 percent of men, 24 percent of women). For the veiled report, the corresponding number was 27 percent (17 percent of men and 43 percent of women) -- an increase of 58 percent.

The effect of assuring anonymity varied significantly across demographic groups. The veiled survey had no effect on the answers of young people to questions about their sexual orientation, apparently because social norms don’t much discourage young people from revealing the truth.

[A]mong Christians and older people, the effect of the veiled approach was especially large, increasing their reports of non-heterosexuality and of same-sex experiences by more than 100 percent. 

Americans increasingly disapprove of discrimination against gay men and lesbians. That disapproval is likely to grow over time.  But social norms continue to matter. We have good reason to believe that there is more same-sex activity, and also more homophobia, than current surveys suggest.

 Note the findings on responses from Christians.  

Pope Francis: Church Cannot "Interfere" With Gays and Must Not Obsess About Abortion, Contraception and Homosexuality

On his flight back from his visit to Brazil earlier this year Pope Francis made statements that sounded as if they might signal a softening in the Catholic Church's stance on gays and homosexuality.  Anti-gay members of the Church hierarchy rushed tot the forefront to state that nothing had changed and the Francis' comments should not be misconstrued to mean that any kind of doctrinal shift was occurring.  Now, a new 12,000 word interview with the editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal, Francis stated views and positions that must be giving many hard right elements of the Church hierarchy and Extreme Catholic organizations such as opus Dei and the Catholic League absolute apoplexy.   What did Francis say?  That the Church needed to end its obsession with teachings on abortion, homosexuality and contraception.  And much more, none of which is consistent with what one hears incessantly from Catholic pulpits across the world.

For a study of contrasts that Francis' comments underscores consider his words:

In Buenos Aires I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are ‘socially wounded’ because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this. During the return flight from Rio de Janeiro I said that if a homosexual person is of good will and is in search of God, I am no one to judge. By saying this, I said what the catechism says. Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.

Now consider recent statements by  Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, John C. Nienstedt:

"Today, many evil forces have set their sights on the dissolution of marriage and the debasing of family life," Nienstedt said. "Sodomy, abortion, contraception, pornography, the redefinition of marriage, and the denial of objective truth are just some of the forces threatening the stability of our civilization. The source of these machinations is none other than the Father of Lies. Satan knows all too well the value that the family contributes to the fabric of a good solid society, as well as the future of God’s work on earth."

One can only assume that Nienstedt dropped to the floor in convulsions upon learning  of Francis' statements.  The same holds true for Brian Brown and the gay haters at the National Organization for Marriage and Catholic demagogues like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League.

Other bombshells in Francis' remarks that must be anathema to far right Catholis include the following:

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. . . . . “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, . . . 

[T]he proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing. The homily is the touchstone to measure the pastor’s proximity and ability to meet his people, because those who preach must recognize the heart of their community and must be able to see where the desire for God is lively and ardent. The message of the Gospel, therefore, is not to be reduced to some aspects that, although relevant, on their own do not show the heart of the message of Jesus Christ.”

Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman.

If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble. Uncertainty is in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation.

“If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God. Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‘security,’ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists­—they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies. 

There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nuance or different understandings is wrong.  . . . . “When does a formulation of thought cease to be valid? When it loses sight of the human or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself.

“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity. 

“The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all. 

These random statements suggest that much of what Francis said is anathema to far right Catholics and members of the Church hierarchy like Nienstedt and the far too many like him.  The queation will be whether or not Francis, if he was sincere in his interview, will have the strength to stand up to those in the Hierarchy and the pews who prefer to disseminate hate and bigotry and who have made today's Catholic Church exceeding ugly.  If Francis is sincere, I hope that he will force reform and return the Church's focus to practicing the Gospel message rather than control and power over the lives of individuals.