Portugal passed gay marriage legislation earlier this year, and within the next week, that legislation might be set to go into effect. All that's left is for Portugal's Prime Minister, Jose Socrates, to sign the law; a step most folks think he'll take, since during his campaign last year, he pledged to support marriage equality. Photo Portugal's marriage equality debate has some pretty interesting timing, given that this week, the country is being visited by Pope Benedict XVI. Many of us know where the Pope falls on gay marriage. In different contexts, the Pope has called gay marriage more of a threat to the world than climate change, an attack on creation, and an obstacle to world peace.
So it only makes sense that Pope Benedict XVI would use the opportunity of his Portugal visit to denounce gay marriage, given that the country is set to become the latest member of the marriage equality club. And denounce it he did, during an open air Mass before at least 50,000 people at one of Catholicism's most holy shrines, Fatima. Read complete article and access the related links - by Michael A. Jones - May 13, 2010 – Gay Rights / Change.org
Read all the comments on Michael’s article above. http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_pope_tells_portugal_that_gay_marriage_will_kill_their_society
Michael I hope you eat well, get enough exercise and have many good friends, why because I want you to live a long and happy life. I get pretty down at times especially with Benedict XVI’s mean unsubstantiated statements made against gay marriage, which are really hurtful to children who grow up gay. I can feel alone that is until I read your postings and you are always right on target. It makes me feel soooo… good. God love you!
I am sure I have had many more birthdays than you, but knowing that there is a kindred spirit makes me believe that differences are being made for the better. I came out in the middle 1990’s I was lucky because the people before me blazed a trail for me and many others like me. My “coming out” took place in a well facilitated “coming out support group” held for several weeks at a LGBT community center called “Affirmations” Ferndale, Michigan, just above Detroit. I had it better than people who came out 30 or 40 years earlier than I. I felt I was given so much I had to find a way to give something back. Although I never thought even in my wildest dreams that I would ever had come out as a gay Catholic priest to help protect children who grow up to be gay from the harmful influence of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings, March 1997. I am a priest and a psychologist. A great mix for a priest, pastor and educator.
By the way Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, I believe has a degree in psychology. I am speculating but I would bet it is a psychoanalytic perspective that he studied. This would mean that he would clearly understand what I am saying about early childhood psychological development growing up gay because it is from the psychoanalytic perspective, from people like Jack Drescher MD. I have posted this on the Thalamus Center… “Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the hope of love to children in early childhood essential to their development and wellbeing for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.” Benedict XVI Insidious Statement Made Against Gay Children – Marriage Equality -> Restores - Hope of Love - To Children In Early Childhood --- Fatima - AUSCHWITZ - AGAIN!!! Kids Are Being Hurt!!! Read more
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/05/benedict-xvi-insidious-statement-made_14.html
Regarding Benedict XVI's horrendous statement made against homosexuals I believe comes from growing up during the time of Hitler. During the time of Hitler’s rise to power he blamed all societal ills onto the homosexuals. This as you can imagine created a lot of hostility and violence directed against homosexuals. The social environment would have been unbearable for any adult gay person however, for a child growing up gay it would have been sheer terror, traumatizing a child for life. Even a causal look at another person of the same sex could land that person in a concentration camp.
Benedict XVI doesn’t realize that he is recreating the horror he experienced growing up, I am speculating here. In his own mind, I truly believe he is saying these things against homosexuals to protect people. He is doing this because there was no one to protect him from horrendous statements made against homosexuals that Hitler publicly kept proclaiming. To use the term “insidious” where does that come from? It is like saying someone is less than human. However, this is how a child would have heard Hitler’s words against homosexuals. So, no bonding to anyone if you were growing gay during the time of Hitler would be allowed. It would be a torturous life, unbelievably cruel for an innocent child in early childhood years growing up. It is a most severe form of implicit child abuse. I liken it to the ancient practice of “foot binding,” deforming a person’s feet for life, this is a form of explicit child abuse that was also considered socially acceptable, until it was outlawed. And as it tends to be the victims of child abuse grow up to be the abusers, until it is pointed to them.
I wrote more about this in a post on the Thalamus Center called - AUSCHWITZ -- CHRISTMAS 2008 -- A flashback far more severe than in --- BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (read more). We need to constantly speak out against these kinds of statements made by Benedict XVI against homosexuals. Never allow any such statement go unchallenged. This is why it was sooooo… good to read your post. Thank you. (Fr. Marty Kurylowicz)
Ignorance about human sexuality is harmful to children.“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.” Erik Erikson
…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6
Protect children and the entire world will be safe.Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt!!! 9315
To Be or Not to Be (1983)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s_vXZO2uUo&playnext_from=QL
The film starred Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft with Tim Matheson, Charles Durning, Christopher Lloyd, and José Ferrer.
This remake was one of the first major American films to acknowledge that homosexuals were persecuted by the Third Reich, along with other Holocaust victims. Homosexuality aside, this version was extremely faithful to the 1942 version, and in many cases dialogue was taken verbatim from the earlier film. The character of the treacherous Professor Siletsky (here spelled Siletski) was, however, made into more of a comic figure, and even into somewhat of a buffoon, whereas in the original he was the one completely serious character in the film. Siletski, played by Stanley Ridges in the 1942 film, was here played by José Ferrer, his only appearance in a Mel Brooks film…
A gag starts off the Mel Brooks version with Brooks and Bancroft performing the song "Sweet Georgia Brown" in Polish, and after the performance the two engage in a quarrel backstage—still in Polish—until an announcer calls out: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the interest of clarity and sanity the rest of this movie will not be in Polish." Read more ----- Photo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Be_or_Not_to_Be_(1983_film)
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Hi Reverend Boony,
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear from you again, hope all is well with you.
Absolutely!!! Understanding the behind the scenes makeup of a person’s actions is never an excuse for personal responsibility or social responsibility.
Why isn’t there some kind of governing mechanism to stop these kinds of reactions against innocent people? This is what I mean that there are “no checks and balances” in the Vatican. That begins to explain the why there is so much corruption at the top of the Roman Catholic Church.
Trying to understand the behavior of a person does not excuse anyone of personal responsibility. However, it should be a wake-up call for the responsibility of a social consciousness that something humanely needs to be done to protect people from the harmful effects of a misguided person.
The horror of the lack of this kind responsible social consciousness is clearly seen with the reign of Hitler’s atrocities. However, there was an implicit form to Hitler’s atrocities. I think that this is what I somehow pick unconsciously about Benedict XVI, his sinister implicit forms of retaliation that are covertly done not unlike Hitler in ways. However, here too having done research on the Holocaust (Auschwitz - Christmas 2008 - Brokeback Mountain) and with the constant revelation of the magnitude of the child sexual abuse cover-ups were being done for decades almost completely out of public view, Benedict XVI become ever more vivid to me.
This is another, eerie similarity to Hitler’s concentration camps. However, myself being a victim of this kind of implicit violent retaliation of Benedict XVI only begins to unfold even for me when you realize that you are not the only one this covert violence has happened to. Our modern communication capabilities, the Internet, are incapacitating to Benedict XVI and his accomplices because it turns the bright public light on their violent hidden tactics. With all due respect, the Internet is to Benedict XVI like bright light is to a vampire. Every time I post something revealing about Benedict XVI there always seems to be a reaction from the Vatican. Further investigation will help in this regard.