But hey, then again, why worry about religious privilege and entitlement when the Vatican is busy telling the UN Human Rights Council that people who dispute its vicious homophbia are “attacking” it and interfering with its human rights? Why bother? Why not just give up, since we’re obviously outnumbered?
People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.
Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary religious fanatics who think they should have the power to tell everyone everywhere what to do down to the smallest detail.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex,” he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.
“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.
What attacks? He means criticism and disagreement. Criticism and disagreement are not violations of fundamental human rights. Furthermore, the Vatican’s concern for human rights is…let’s say incomplete, and self-regarding, and cynical, and a joke.
Tomasi also said the Vatican believed in the inherent dignity of all human beings and condemned all violence against people because of their sexual orientation or behaviour.
“But states can and must regulate behaviours, including various sexual behaviours,” he said.
“Throughout the world, there is a consensus between societies that certain kinds of sexual behaviour must be forbidden by law. Paedophilia and incest are two examples.”
Says an archbishop of a church that has shielded paedophiles from, precisely, state law, the very state law he appealed to.
Comments
34 responses to “Whited sepulchre”
But but but, the problems with pedophilia and incest have nothing to do with their sexual nature, not really. It’s the strong victimizing the weak that we are regulating. It’s not like, hey, pedophilia’s off the table, but child slavery is just fine because it’s non-sexual!
Hm. Yes and no. Mostly no. Suppose priests were compelling children to sit down for half an hour of conversation or reading poetry aloud or listening to music. That would be considered very rude and probably an abuse of authority, but way short of a crime, wouldn’t it? In fact it might well get a lot of leeway, out of sympathy for possible loneliness and/or desire to offer the child something perceived as good.
I think it’s possible to think of a lot of ways a priest could force a child to do something that would be harmless or even benign apart from the forcing itself. But sex? No. Is that wrong? I don’t think so – not in combination with force. Sex plus force is rape, and I don’t think it’s crazy to consider that an aversive combination.
Not only is the Vatican not serious about being pro-life, they’re not serious about being pro-human rights either. It is a ridiculous state of affairs, because for some reason, secular authorities actually take them seriously, as if they’re doing serious business.
It’s a bit like the mafia telling the police not to commit crimes. Secularists should either laugh or ignore Vatican ‘officials’, but to actually listen to them and take them seriously, makes authorities like the Human Rights Council look decidedly dodgy, and makes their authority questionable.
James, for people who still live in the Middle Ages, ALL sexual activity involves the strong victimizing the weak. Their only concern is that the “strong” and “weak” categories are filled according to traditional gender and social roles.
@Egbert It’s a bit like the mafia telling the police not to commit crimes.
And it’s a whole lot like organized crime ensuring that laws that criminalize the use of certain chemical compounds stay on the books and are vigorously enforced, to the point where a significant portion of the state’s resources are used trying to enforce victimless crimes and a significant portion of the population are in prison for committing these “crimes”.
In fact the distinction between organized crime and the Vatican is very blurry indeed.
Have they been silenced? Have their tongues been ripped out? Their hands cut off? Sent to the gulag?
I tell you what, the treatment even approaches what happened with that poor boy in Wyoming… When they are pistol-whipped, tortured, beaten, and left tied to a barbed-wire fence to die… I’ll be on their side when these things happen.
But when it’s ridicule and mockery for being an asshat… I’ll laugh at them and their argument that boils down to they have the ‘right to be a douche’ without social consequences…
What it is exactly like is segregationists complaining, after Brown v. Board, that their communities were now under attack. Hell, you needn’t even change the language.
Pity the poor, religious heterosexual—constantly being attacked by the gay zealots.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are … prosecuted.”
If Tomasi can back that up then surely we would agree that it is a violation of free speech rights?
Quite deservedly.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature … they are stigmatised, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted.”
Yes, indeed, Silvano Tomasi, sociologist, who hopped into Diarmuid Martin’s Vatican shoes would know all about being vilified etc, as he was widely criticised in September 2009 following a speech in which he sought to favourably compare the Church’s record on child sex abuse with that of other organisations by arguing that “Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90 per cent belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17” and “As the Catholic church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it.
The Vatican New Evangelisation spin-doctors continue on with the reverse psychology, mirroring and projection tactics. It’s alway the church who is being put down, viciously attacked, vilified and stigmatised. The same kind of language was flung in the faces of institutional and clerical child sex abuse survivors. The NE’s are going to slay anyone who dares to go against the church. This is only a foretaste of what’s on the Vatican menu. Watch this space! Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer. Their motto: If God is for us who can be against us?
Now, now. Mustn’t get strident. Else you’ll be branded as being ‘harsh’. Or right…or something.
Why does the Vatican hate Catholics? :'(
Wow, is it me or does it appear every day more obvious that the Vatican is the single most despicable institution in the history of the world? Just an observation.
they are vilified, and prosecuted
Really? People get prosecuted for being homophobic? Where?
The Vatican is, fer sher, very very despicable. I hesitate to say the worst just in case I’m overlooking something, which I usually am. But this petulant passive-aggressive entitled clueless self-absorbed bedwetting about people disliking their adamant insistent homophobia is………something to behold.
Was and still is. That New York archbishop for instance – Dolan was it? He did exactly that. A staggering display of self-pity.
But this petulant passive-aggressive entitled clueless self-absorbed bedwetting
Tell us what you really think Ophelia. Don’t hold back now. :)
Hasn’t he noticed that throwing somone in jail, for example, is an act of violence?
“In Britain, it had to close down adoption services because they refused to allow same-sex couples to adopt orphans in their care.”
“Last Catholic adoption agency faces closure after Charity Commission ruling – Telegraph”
http://t.co/jguy9Ic I wouldn’t even like to begin with the adoption history of the RC church. Think Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries to start with and you’ll be on the same wavelength. The pain and suffering that it has left and continues to leave in its wake knows no bounds. The church should be hanging its head in shame. Instead, it chooses to carry on in an autistic kind of fashion — as if it were not responsible or accountable to anybody, to grotesquely attack other vulnerable sections of society.
This is just yet another example of religious leaders being so used to special treatment that they think actual equal rights are a form a discrimination. It infuriates me when bigots try to claim that they’re being discriminated against by the people who they themselves are discriminating against.
[…] Via Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels […]
That New York archbishop for instance – Dolan
OB @ March 24, 2011 at 2:58 pm 18
New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan offering some awful anecdotal explanation to 60 Minutes about why the Roman Catholic Church will never support gay marriage.
Read more: http://www.queerty.com/ny-archbishop-timothy-dolan-gays-shouldnt-marry-1-because-theyre-not-qualified-2-i-cant-marry-my-mom-20110321/#ixzz1HZ4qiNal
I quite enjoy having the Vatican think of me as wicked. It feels kind of cool. And, strangely virtuous at the same time.
Ophelia, I read James Sweet’s comment to mean that we don’t ban paedophilia simply because it’s a non-standard sexual practice, but because it is clearly horrendously damagingly abusive. The fact that it it’s demonstrably harmful sets it apart from homosexuality, which makes the comparison irrelevant. And I think that’s a valid point.
Russell Blackford has a slightly more nuanced take on this:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2011/03/evil-and-hypocrisy-of-vatican-again.html
Andrew,
yes, paedophilia and incest (as commonly considered) are not between consenting adults or even equal partners. Good, easily articulated, reposte to that common talking point.
Vatican:
“Throughout the world, there is a consensus between societies that certain kinds of sexual behaviour must be forbidden by law. Paedophilia and incest are two examples.”
[…] Via Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels […]
Spoing!
Whoops! Sorry – wrong website
Those guys are different? I never can tell– they all wear such big rings…
Oh, Miss Ophelia–it’s hard sometimes to know what to say in a comment to your posts because you just say it better than, well, *anybody* :-) I just know I’ll be on the way to the store tomorrow, grinning and thinking “clueless, self-absorbed bedwetting”…
“There is, in my view, something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent; if they leave out an aspect of what I believe everyone is made for, which is a search for transcendental meaning – we call it god. If you say that has no place, then I feel it is a diminishment of what it is being human because to be human in the sense I believe humanity is directed, because made by god, I think if you leave that out then you are not fully human.” (Murphy-O’Connor/BBC may, 2009)
“These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” Tomasi said.
yahweh – not really the wrong website: J and M is spoken and understood here.
Amy – :- ) Always glad to oblige!
Ophelia, I tried to think of an institution more despicable and couldn’t come up with much. Scientology? The mafia? Nazi Germany (I know that’s what everyone thinks of, but was it really an institution in the same sense?) The KKK? I know, I know, they’re all horrible. But I think the Vatican trumps them all, if only that its influence is so massive and it dupes so many people. Hell, they screw their own faithful!
Anyone wanna come up with something better (or worse?)
[…] then, perhaps also Ophelia Benson has a point: Or to put it another way, gay people are increasingly being attacked and vilified by reactionary […]