Author: Ophelia Benson

We’ve encountered Archbishop Timothy Dolan before. He wrote a blog post about the Catholic church’s way with those sexy little children who keep seducing its dear innocent priests, or rather about the world’s harsh attitude to the church’s way with the tiny little harlots.

What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — but also that the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.

Italics his. Self-pity and moral obtuseness also his.

Now he’s pitying himself over gay marriage and how like North Korea it is.

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea.  In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law.  There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

And then they can force everybody to live according to the new definition of “marriage,” so if they say “marriage” is between a priest and a map of Akron, Ohio, then all priests have to marry maps of Akron, Ohio forthwith. It’s so unfair.

But back on planet earth, the archbishop sets about explaining to us what marriage actually is – which seems silly, since he is professionally sworn to have nothing to do with the thing, while millions of other people have actual experience of it, so why pick him to explain it? Who knows, but anyway, he does.

Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits:  It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children.

So true, except for the fact that it isn’t. It isn’t necessarily to procreate children, it isn’t necessarily permanent, it isn’t even necessarily loving. 0 for 3.

But never mind; he knows what he means.

Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago.  We believers worry not only about what this new intrusion will do to our common good, but also that we will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs to accommodate the newest state decree.

Meaning…what? Nothing, except that he and people like him won’t be allowed to take their revenge on gay couples. That’s all – that’s what “violating their deepest beliefs” amounts to. It doesn’t mean they’ll be forced to do anything (except shock-horror perform a marriage if that happens to be their job), it just means they won’t be allowed to persecute people.

(If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)

That they’re not being allowed to take their revenge on gay couples and, if they have jobs that involve performing marriages, they have to do that for gay couples.

Hateful man, hateful church, hateful “beliefs.” A pox on all of them.

Update: I got this partly wrong, because the Guardian article is at least misleading.

Oh.my.god. I didn’t know about this.

Marta Orellana says she was playing with friends at the orphanage when the summons sounded: “Orellana to the infirmary. Orellana to the infirmary.”

Waiting for her were several doctors she had never seen before. Tall men with fair complexions who spoke what she guessed was English, plus a Guatemalan doctor. They had syringes and little bottles.

They ordered her to lie down and open her legs. Embarrassed, she locked her knees together and shook her head. The Guatemalan medic slapped her cheek and she began to cry. “I did what I was told,” she recalls.

And they infected her with syphilis.

It was 1946 and orphans in Guatemala City, along with prisoners, military conscripts and prostitutes, had been selected for a medical experiment which would torment many, and remain secret, for more than six decades.

The US, worried about GIs returning home with sexual diseases, infected an estimated 1,500 Guatemalans with syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid to test an early antibiotic, penicillin.

Jeezis!

What is there to say?