Sunday, February 13, 2011

Churches split over plans for gay marriage services – by Kate Devlin Uk Political Correspondent, 14 Feb 2011 – Herald Scotland

RELIGIOUS groups have expressed concern at plans to allow gay marriage ceremonies in church.

Proposals to allow civil partnerships to take place in religious settings are to be unveiled by the Coalition Government at Westminster later this week. Photo 

But a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said yesterday that such a ceremony “would never take place” in a Catholic church.

Others expressed fears that although churches would not be forced to offer same sex ceremonies they could be accused of discrimination and face lawsuits if they did not.

But the plans were welcomed by campaigners and politicians, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who claimed that they were long overdue…

…John Deighan, parliamentary officer for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said: “This will never happen in a Catholic church. It attempts to change our entire definition of family life.

“We are getting to the point where the argument is that it will be seen as intolerant not to marry two men in the church.

“But people have to understand that teaching is handed down – it is not something that is malleable and can be changed.”
Read complete report:


Benedict XVI UNSUBSTANTIATED Claims That
same-sex couples violates 'natural law'
Benedict XVI – MUST Provide Documentation
*
Galileo & Gay Marriage 
Pope described as …"so averse to anything intellectual that everyone has to play dense and ignorant to gain his favor"
The Trial of Galileo - by Douglas O. Linder


Benedict XVI teaches that homosexual activity is sinful is
      NOT
The Catholic Church.
*
"Authoritarian ≠ Authoritative,
Unsubstantiated Antigay Teachings ≠ Well-informed Conscience"


Jamaica's gays finding refuge by applying for U.S. asylum 
February 11, 2011 – The Washington Post

From the time he was in grade school in his native Jamaica, Andrae Bent was the target of taunts and attacks.

A classmate once stabbed him near his eye with a pencil for being effeminate. Another time, a man pulled a knife on him and asked if he was "one of them," Bent said, meaning homosexual. Fearing for his life, Bent denied his homosexuality.

"I was called faggot, gay, batty man, chichi man," he said. "This would be from classmates, from people on the streets when I was walking home. Wherever I went in Jamaica, it was a nightmare."

Five months ago, Bent, now 24, won asylum in the United States on the grounds that he had credible fear of persecution as a gay man if he were to go back to Jamaica. He joined what has become a small wave of gay Jamaicans fleeing homophobia in the Caribbean nation.

Despite its image as a laid-back island paradise for American tourists, Jamaica still criminalizes sodomy and has long been regarded by human rights activists as virulently anti-gay…
Read complete report:


The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?
April 12, 2006 – TIME

Brian wears sunglasses to hide his gray and lifeless left eye—damaged, he says, by kicks and blows with a board from Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton. Brian, 44, is gay, and Banton, 32, is an avowed homophobe whose song Boom Bye-Bye decrees that gays "haffi dead" ("have to die"). In June 2004, Brian claims, Banton and some toughs burst into his house near Banton's Kingston recording studio and viciously beat him and five other men. After complaints from international human-rights groups, Banton was finally charged last fall, but in January a judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. It was a bitter decision for Brian, who lost his landscaping business after the attack and is fearful of giving his last name. "I still go to church," he says as he sips a Red Stripe beer. "Every Sunday I ask why this happened to me."

Though familiar to Americans primarily as a laid-back beach destination, Jamaica is hardly idyllic. The country has the world's highest murder rate. And its rampant violence against gays and lesbians has prompted human-rights groups to confer another ugly distinction: the most homophobic place on earth.

In the past two years, two of the island's most prominent gay activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, have been murdered — and a crowd even celebrated over Williamson's mutilated body. Perhaps most disturbing, many anti-gay assaults have been acts of mob violence. In 2004, a teen was almost killed when his father learned his son was gay and invited a group to lynch the boy at his school. Months later, witnesses say, police egged on another mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay…
Read complete report:


Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?



Iowa’s Catholic Bishops urge legislators to Discriminate Against Adults and Children Who Are Gay – Bishops Lack Substantiating Evidence To Support Claim, February 9, 2011



Despite outrage, little progress in church scandal
By Robin Washington,
January 2, 2011, Duluth News Tribune





Sexual Orientation - Love – Attachment Theory - Internalized Homophobia

Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. Photo
  

Gay marriage -> Restoring 
"Hope of Love" 
To Children In Early Childhood 
March 23, 2010 – by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Marriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. 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 well-being 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.




“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

Kids Are Being Hurt!!!





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