Thursday, December 27, 2012

Quote of the Day

. . . On Christmas Eve, my devoutly Catholic sister attended mass with her husband and three children. They literally bowed to something bigger than they. They heard again the ancient story of the baby, the undocumented foreigner, conceived out of wedlock, child to two dads, born in a filthy shed and laid in an unclean trough, a fugitive from the law from his very first breath. They were told that this baby is God, that there's something in this world greater and more important than wealth, or political power, or the laws of birth, or even the "laws" of nature, and they found it worthy of praise. In this act, as much as church leaders would often try to deny it, lie the seeds of revolution.

To wit, Pope Benedict XVI used his annual Christmas message to denounce gay marriage, calling it a "manipulation of nature" that destroys the "essence" of human life. But the pope, like my devout sister, worships a Trinitarian God who is father to himself, conceived by a union of feminine spirit with mortal woman to become mortal flesh that was still somehow fully divine. Talk about manipulation of nature!

This religion is preternaturally odd. It's fundamentally queer. It's revolutionary at its very core. It began as the religion of women and slaves, the poor and the sick, the oppressed and the outlawed. Its message that the sick deserved healing, that the poor deserved to eat, that the suffering weren't inferior, spread across Roman civilization with such revolutionary speed that Rome feared it, until they learned to control it. Even now, this bizarre story resists (eventually) any effort to harness it to worldly power. Maybe that's why, despite the pope's rhetorical efforts, 59 percent of U.S. Catholics, like my sister, still support same-gender marriage. . . .

– Wayne Self
"Pope Benebict, Christmas Eve Is Too Queer a Night
for Bashing Gay Marriage
"
HuffPost Gay Voices
December 26, 2012


Related Off-site Links:
This Year's Vatican Christmas Gift to the Gays: You Inhabit a "Different Reality" – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, December 27, 2012).
Pope's Attack on Marriage Equality Will Backfire – Wayne Besen (HuffPost Gay Voices, December 26, 2012).
Catholic Hierarchy's Christmas Vendetta Against the Gays Captures Widespread Media Attention – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, December 27, 2012).
Accused of Crimes Against Humanity, Pope Still Treated by Media as “Spiritual” Leader – Betty Clermont (The Open Tabernacle, December 27, 2012).
Comparison of Marriage Equality to Communism is Creative – Maureen Fiedler (National Catholic Reporter, December 21, 2012).
Thousands of Dutch Catholics Look to Leave the Church After Pope’s Anti-Gay Comments – Joseph Patrick McCormick (Pink News, December 28, 2012).
Dutch Website Helping Catholics "De-Baptize" Themselves Has Soaring Hits After Benedict's Christmas Vendetta vs. the Gays – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, December 28, 2012).
The 25 Worst Anti-LGBT Villains of 2012 – JR Tungol (HuffPost Gay Voices, December 28, 2012).

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
And a Merry Christmas to You Too, Papa


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