From The New Civil Rights Movement: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pope-benedict-hurls-unhinged-assault-in-anti-gay-marriage-holy-war/news/2012/12/21/57013
by David Badash
on December 21, 2012
Pope Benedict XVI today in a Christmas address to the College of Cardinals unleashed an unhinged assault on all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, and gay marriage, from his home in the Vatican. During his reign, Benedict has become ever-increasingly hostile to LGBT people and same-sex marriage. In April, as reported, the Vatican reached out to form a coalition with other religions and called on them to join in a worldwide holy war against same-sex marriage, claiming that proliferation of equality “is not a good thing for society,” and will lead to “confusion.”
But today’s address was startling in the intensity of its anti-gay rhetoric, going so far as to state same-sex marriage threatens the “essence of the human creature,” and thus, mankind’s future.
Noting “the family is still strong and vibrant today,” Pope Benedict strongly questioned the ability of a member of “the western world” to “bind oneself for a lifetime” in marriage. And he warned when “such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost.”
“According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature,” the Pope said. “This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed.”
The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be. Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.
Pope Benedict railed against same-sex marriage as an attack on the “traditional” family, and lamented that children adopted by same-sex couples “become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain.” Benedict claimed this “creation” causes “human dignity” to disappear.
Continue reading at: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pope-benedict-hurls-unhinged-assault-in-anti-gay-marriage-holy-war/news/2012/12/21/57013
