Christine Boutin & the Other Homophobes Sullying the French Flag

During the past year I have had the displeasure to observe the most disgusting debate on gay marriage to have taken place in Western Europe in the 21st century. The French right-wing, effectively the political branch of the Christian/Catholic Right, have been all too happy to replicate the American Right’s model of promoting hatred against gays. They’ve used the same junk “science”, dragged out the same fallacious arguments, and by doing so have created an environment of hate which has endangered the lives of the French LGBT community. Just ask Wilfred de Bruijn, the victim of a recent homophobic attack in Paris.

Courtesy of the Environment Created by the French Right Wing.

Today I woke up to one of France’s Homophobes in Chief, Christine Boutin, telling the world that “…there are laws that are superior to those of the Republic“. She also mentioned that if she were a mayor she would refuse to perform gay marriages, as a conscientious objector. Boutin’s words echo those of the wing of the Catholic Church that supported Fascism and of proponents of Shariah law. They’re also in line with the American Evangelical movements attempts to make their ideology the law of the land, to the exclusion of all else. What her proposition means in practical terms is that Catholic officials would be free to deny authorizing divorces. Pacifist police officers and soldiers could renege on their duty to protect the public and Jehova’s Witness’ doctors could deny their patients blood transfusions.

I’ve always been proud to hold up my burgundy passport with the crest of the French Republic on its cover reminding me of the values of the Bleu, Blanc et Rouge: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. For a year I’ve been ashamed a sector of the French citizenry does not believe in those ideals. They are a stain on the flag, the great shame of a country which has historically been a symbol of enlightenment- evidently it was despite the reactionary sector of the populace.

Pat Buchanan: Christianity isn’t homophobic, but gays are the enemy!

Pat Buchanan has made a fool of himself (again). In his column this week he attempts to demonstrate that (his version of) Christianity is not homophobic. He starts with an attack on Dan Savage and then stumbles with:

“No true Catholic church can preach that Jesus hates gays. “Love your enemies” is the message of Christ. Hate the sin and love the sinner is taught as gospel truth in Catholic schools.

This has been Catholic doctrine for 2,000 years.” Pat Buchanan

The obvious subtext is that gays are the enemy. That sentence cannot mean anything else. I’m not in the mood to give Mr. Buchanan a history lesson, hopefully he has a great-grandchild who can show him how to use google, and he can do a bit of research regarding how, for 2000 years, the Catholic church has persecuted and marginalized any and all groups that did not submit to their ideology. Oh yes, that includes gays. Perhaps what he means is that the Catholic Church isn’t just homophobic. They’re also against women’s rights, religious freedom, they’re against people making their own decisions, they’re against the use of condoms (hence for the spread of disease), they support(ed) totalitarian states as long as they were given a role in government and subsidies… Shall I go on?

Would you leave your children with this man?

Just yesterday, Cardinal Rouco Varela, aka the Devil’s Fascist Uncle, was telling a crowd which included Spain’s Prime Minister that government should illegalize same-sex marriages and ban abortions. Do you want to know why? Because the Catholic leadership has always known that the product they sell is substandard. It doesn’t bear close inspection.  The result is that since their unfortunate inception, they’ve needed (and used) the strong arm of the law to impose their ridiculous, if not imbecilic, policies. They’ve always known that without the law on their side, mentally balanced, educated, people will sooner or later leave them. Of course I don’t mean the opportunists of the political variety. Those are religious merely for profit and power.

 

Funny Irish People & The Pope: Ex-Bendict

Our actor friend, John McAndrew, just sent us this image:

And the medal goes to… Who? Did you just say the Virgin?

In June, Fátima Báñez, Spain’s Labour Minister, went to Huelva. She went to ask the Virgin of the Rocío to create employment. I know, you think I’m being facetious, which is why I included the link to an article describing the event. It actually happened.

Today while protests were going on outside parliament in Madrid, our right wing politicians were approving honours they themselves proposed. This year’s Great Cross of Merit goes to… La Virgen del Pilar, Our Lady of the Pillar. Yes, a saint was awarded a medal of honour. I wonder if Pope Benedict gets to hold it for safekeeping as both a Pope and a Virgin himself- or do they just pin it to a statue? I know this is hard to believe, so here’s the document (or you can see the original article at EuropaPress here):

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, How About a Prayer to Stop Child Rapists In Your Church? Or at least cooperation with the police? The Bastardization of Language.

Today in Catholic churches all over France a prayer is being read. Cardinal Barbarin of Lyon has revived Louis XIII’s day of prayer ‘for the good of the country‘. A practice that fell into disuse somewhere between the two World Wars, when the population must have realized that prayer obviously doesn’t work; And it’s a good thing that it doesn’t! If it did, I can’t begin to imagine the deluge of horrors to befall the world at the request of Fanatic Evangelicals and their equally Fanatic Muslim counterparts. Should they be able to pray-in more 9/11′s and hurricanes and tsunamis to punish all of those who don’t submit to their ideology, there would be very little left of the planet as we know it. Polytheistic India and un-Christian China would be wastelands. Protestants would have destroyed Catholic Ireland and Catholic France would have destroyed Protestant Britain. The protestant north of Germany would have annihilated Bavaria and football players would be struck down by lightning on a regular basis.

Despite all the evidence that prayer is a useless, pointless and idiotic waste of time, there is one thing for which it does serve a purpose: indoctrination. For centuries it’s been used to frame messages and to shape public opinion. The church tells you what to pray for. Today the Catholic church is telling people to pray for newly elected officials “so that their sense of the common good will overcome special demands.”- they bastardize language as they have since their inception. The fraud this time comes in the form of:

We must give support to traditional families “throughout their lives, especially in painful moments.”

Translation: We must insert ourselves into the lives of gay people and force them to submit to Catholic ideology.

Oppose gay adoption, as children should “cease to be objects of the desires and conflicts of adults and fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother.”

Translation: There are 13 million orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa alone and the Catholic church feels they are better off dying of hunger and disease than in the homes of loving gay parents whose parental capabilities have been tested by relevant authorities.

“Raise the consciousness of public opinion about grave social choices.”

Translation: That we must keep anti-gay sentiment alive so the Catholic church can continue to be relevant and line its pockets  with its mafia racket of demonizing certain groups and then offering to protect the public from them.

These fraudulent manipulations of language are nothing new for religionists. We’ve all seen the signs: “You are not free unless you submit to the Lord”, “Repent and blah blah blah”- These manipulations have taken many disgusting forms throughout history, particularly in regards to oppressing women- but the most disgusting undoubtedly came from the pro-slavery crowd in the 19th century (pardon me, anti-abolitionist- see the linguistic trick?). People like George Fitzhugh (author of “Negro Slavery” Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society. Richmond: A Morris, 1854.) argued that Southern Slavery in fact represented freedom because slaves never had to be responsible for themselves, and that paid labour was the “real slavery” because there was no security. A labourer could lose his employment at any time. If you have a moment, do read his argument, it’s a fascinating study into the workings of defective logic and absurdism.

“…that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel, slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it Christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed.”

But, I digress. The point is that the Catholic church is at it again. Cardinal Barbarin is appealing to the age-old manipulations and fraud of his religion. Today’s prayer is a vile demonstration that they have not changed their ways. The only difference is that some societies have learnt that separating church from state is the best method to ensure the well being of all citizens. Were the Catholic church given its will, Spain and Italy would still be Catholic dictatorships where people were obliged to contribute money to the church, where the church could steal babies from dissenters and give them to parents that were more to their liking, and where (as new investigations revealed this week) the church could run its Preventorios. They were like concentration camps, except they were just for children. The story is quite horrendous and I’ll write more about it later as it hasn’t been picked up by the international media.

My suggestion is that if Cardinal Barbarin wants to use prayer to shape opinion, a prayer should be read in churches today to decry the rape of children by priests and for their fellow priests to take responsibility for their actions. It should be a prayer for the leadership of the Catholic church to cooperate with authorities and open their records instead of covering-up decades of little boys and girls being held down, raped in the anus or vagina and then told they’re going to hell if they tell anyone about it. In one particularly egregious case of rape a priest told a child: “This is what God’s love feels like”.

Lest we forget what the Catholic Church is really about:

Sam Bacile & Muslim Extremists. When Imbeciles Collide Innocent People Get Hurt. Egzorcysta

I’ve just wasted 13:51 minutes of my life watching the video that started the debacle. Chris Stevens, an ambassador who assisted Libya during the revolution and transition process is dead along with three other embassy employees. Religious stupidity colours all corners of the tragedy. An attention-seeking idiot named Sam Bacile (inaptly described as a writer and director) makes a rubbish movie and has it translated into Arabic- then more idiots publicize the film, fanatics attack and now innocent people are dead. All in the name of ‘my myths are better than your myths‘.

Meanwhile we’ve got our own religious imbecility going on right here in Europe. This week saw the launch of Egzorcysta in Poland. A 64 page glossy magazine with a cover that includes headlines like ‘Satan is a Reality’ and ‘Aimed at People Who Have Issues with Evil’- I find that second one quite revealing. So now for just 2.34 euros per month you too can be contaminated by ignorance and abuse other human beings (usually children) when they do not conform to your vision of the world. Apparently there’s an exorcism boom in Poland. We shouldn’t worry because “…evil spirits are chased out using a guide of ritual prayers approved by Polish-born pope John Paul II in 1999.“- and the Catholic church never, Ever, EVER gets it wrong when protecting children is at stake!

Prominent Priest Defended Child Sex Abusers, Later Apologizes

Prominent Priest Defended Child Sex Abusers, Later Apologizes - 

Spain’s Return to Franquist Fascism under Mariano Rajoy’s PP

Spain’s Return to Franquist Fascism

by E.B. de Mas

We should have seen the signs a few years ago when an inquiry was opened into one of Spain’s most renkown jurists, Baltasar Garzón.  Judge Garzón dared poke a hornet’s nest. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it. In 1998 he issued an international arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for crimes against humanity. Britain’s Home Secretary famously turned down the extradition request on health grounds, and as is the case for most dictators, Pinochet made a miraculous recovery once setting foot back in his homeland. He lived to the ripe old age of ninety one in the comfort of his private mansion. Ten years and many other important cases later Judge Garzón made a mistake that would end up costing him his career as a Spanish judge. He opened an investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the Franquist Regime. Suddenly the news was abuzz with accusations against him. Spain’s right wing party, the PP, legitimate agnatic child of the fascist regime was in a frenzy. There was an amnesty! they screamed. An amnesty was the condition of your freedom. They were right, there was a deal. It was law 46/1977 in effect from the 15^th of October of 1977, two years after the Generalísimo’s death. The agreement entailed the release of political prisoners jailed by the regime and a bi-lateral amnesty for crimes committed during the civil war. Apparently the regime also got a bonus since the amnesty also covered the multitude of crimes it committed during the dictatorship. Apologists of Franquism often tell us that both sides were equally violent during the civil war, just as often they fail to mention that the side that was in power continued to violently persecute opposition for the almost four decades that followed the war. The 1940’s alone saw the murder of between 15,000 to 50,000 opponents of the government. The number varies depending on which side you ask. The dictatorship suppressed regional dialects and even Catalunya’s national dance, the Sardana. Catholicism was re-established as Spain’s official religion. Civil marriages were outlawed as were divorce, contraceptives and abortion. Any opposition was violently crushed by the power structure or the batons of the policia armada known as los grises. Thirty seven years after the Caudillo’s death, his virtual representatives in the form of Mariano Rajoy’s party are staging a comeback of his political doctrine.

Under the current administration we have seen the repeal of the previous government’s 2006 reforms which gave journalistic independence to Spanish public television and radio, TVE and RTVE respectively. The PP has ensured the firing of all TVE journalists who dared do their job and question government policy, including the reknowned Ana Pastor and Xabier Fortes.  They have been substituted by  an Aznar era, pro-regime team which will no doubt better serve the government in delivering its propaganda. We cannot say we were not warned. In the 2011 interview PP spokeswoman Maria Dolores de Cospedal gave Ana Pastor, the message was clear. Cospedal went on television to deliver the kiss of death in person. Solemnly she announced that she spoke for the PP when she said TVE was not impartial. She said this despite the acclaim of TVE’s news programs and the reputation of the journalists in question. Nevermind the facts at hand. After all, politician’s rarely let facts get in their way.

Meanwhile, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardon has been focusing his efforts on a proposal that will criminalize forms of abortion that have been legal and socially accepted for decades. Current abortion regulations grant women abortion on demand up to the 14^th week of pregnancy and up to the 22^nd week in cases where the fetus is severely malformed. Gallardón intends to suppress malformation as legal grounds for abortion and raise the age of necessary parental consent from 15 to 18. Their Franquist tactics don’t end there, they’ve also adopted egregious persecution of dissent as outlined by a letter sent to FACUA, one of Spain’s largest consumer rights associations by the Department of Health, Social Services & Equality headed by Pilar Farjas. The letter comes in the form of a cease and desist order giving the organization fifteen days to stop its campaigns against cuts in education, health and its opposition to the hike in VAT rates. FACUA has been told these activities fall outside of the purview of associations that fight for the rights of consumers. I imagine the legal basis for Ms. Farjas’ statement is that the citizenry do not qualify as consumers because the government intends to no longer provide citizens with any services anyway. Should the association not comply, they will lose their status as an officially recognized consumer rights group.

It has taken the Rajoy administration less than 230 days to attack and attempt to dismantle the social progress it took Spain nearly thirty-seven years to achieve. If the government continues on its current track, by the time their mandate is nearing its end in three and a half years it will be 2015 in the rest of the developed world but a very Franquist March of 1976 in Spain. Now that Manuel Fraga is dead I wonder who’s going to give the order to break down the doors of the church and shoot.

Catholic Church backs ‘Kill the Gays’ bill | 76 CRIMES

In reversal, Catholic Church backs ‘Kill the Gays’ bill | 76 CRIMES.

Catholics Against Freedom of Religion (again!). The Politics of Religion – NYTimes.com

Why am I surprised ? I shouldn’t be surprised that today’s New York Times has the following editiorial:

The Politics of Religion – NYTimes.com

One of the world’s biggest companies is at it again. They’re using a trick they’ve used since their inception: The Perversion of Language. In the birth-control debacle they are asserting their freedom of religion to take away the freedom of religion of women. It goes something like this: The Catholic Church is free to ignore the constitutional rights and freedoms of American citizens and impose their dogma on society. They want the freedom of religion to take away your freedom of religion.

Early Christian writers, around the time of St. Augustine, forged the concept beautifully with (entirely illogical) statements like: “Unless you accept Christ you are not free.” With the passing of time the world has had the opportunity to see the Catholic Church meant this quite literally.

Jews had to learn this lesson first hand and repeatedly. Here are some pearls of Catholic/Jewish history:

• Jews and Saracens [Muslims] are not to be allowed to have christian servants in their houses.

The evidence of Christians is to be accepted against Jews in every case, since Jews employ their own witnesses against Christians, and that those who prefer Jews to Christians in this matter are to lie under anathema, since Jews ought to be subject to Christians and to be supported by them on grounds of humanity alone.

1179 A.D., Third Lateran Council

• Jews shall be compelled to make satisfaction to churches for tithes and offerings due to the churches, which the churches were accustomed to receive from Christians for houses and other possessions, before they passed by whatever title to the Jews.

A difference of dress distinguishes Jews or Saracens [Muslims] from Christians in some provinces, but in others a certain confusion has developed so that they are indistinguishable. Whence it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians join with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews or Saracens with christian women. In order that the offence of such a damnable mixing may not spread further, under the excuse of a mistake of this kind, we decree that such persons of either sex, in every christian province and at all times, are to be distinguished in public from other people by the character of their dress.

They [Jews and Saracens] shall not appear in public at all on the days of lamentation and on passion Sunday.

It would be too absurd for a blasphemer of Christto exercise power over Christians. We therefore renew in this canon, on account of the boldness of the offenders, what the council of Toledo providently decreed in this matter: we forbid Jews to be appointed to public offices, since under cover of them they are very hostile to Christians.

1215 A.D., Fourth Lateran Council

Is that you Mr. Goebbels, there on the right?

…Oh yes, then there was slavery…

• You have purposed with the favor of divine clemency to bring under your sway the said mainlands and islands with their residents and inhabitants and to bring them to the Catholic faith.

Papal Bull, Alexander VI, 1493, Inter Caetera

• Extended to the Catholic nations of Europe dominion over discovered lands during the Age of Discovery. Along with sanctifying the seizure of non-Christian lands, it encouraged theenslavement of native, non-Christian peoples in Africa and the New World.

• “To invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and paganswhatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons toperpetual slavery.”

Papal bull, Pope Nicholas V, 1455, Romanus Pontifex

• …Authorised Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any “Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers” to perpetual slavery. This facilitated the Portuguese slave trade from West Africa.

Papal bull, Pope Nicholas V, 1452, Dum Diversas

Then we have Pope Pius IX incredible rant written in 1864. It’s called Syllabus of Errors and in it the Pope goes on to enumerate the world’s many errors.

Here are a few amusing ones:

15. [It is an error to say that] Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.

23. [It is an error to say that] Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals.

24. [It is an error to say that] The Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect.

38. [It is an error to say that] The Roman pontiffshave, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into Eastern and Western.

55. [It is an error to say that] The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.

77. [It is an error to say that] In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.

78. Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.

Pope Pius IX, 1864, Syllabus of Errors

Thanks for the front row seats, Mein Führer! Are we going to get season tickets?

Oh but all of that is old news… it’s history. Or is it? Apparently not. Various Catholic groups in America have commenced legal action to oppose the inclusion of birth control in basic health coverage. The Catholic Church feels they have a right to force you to follow their religion. How about that as religious freedom?