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UNITED KINGDOM

Pope Is Wrong on “Gay Threat”, Says Tatchell

Gay sexuality is a part of human ecology
 

LONDON, December 23, 2008  –  By choosing to highlight homosexuality instead of hunger, war and homelessness, the Pope has lost his moral bearings and sense of priorities, Peter Tatchell said this afternoon.

He was responding to what he called “the Pope's bizarre claim” that saving humanity from homosexual and transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

“Free market capitalism, and its culture of greed and consumerism, is a far greater threat to the ecological survival of our planet than homosexuality or transsexuality,” added Mr Tatchell, of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender human rights group OutRage! and  the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East.

“Is the Pope ignorant or malevolent,” he asked?

“The suggestion that gay people are a threat to human survival is absurd and dangerous.  It is poisonous propaganda that will give comfort and succour to queer-bashers everywhere.

“Homosexuality is a part of human ecology.  It has existed in all cultures in all eras.

“At a time of global over-population, by not having children gay couples contribute to population stabilisation and thereby reduce pressure on over-strained natural resources.  We are an ecological asset to humanity,” he said.

Mr. Tatchell went on the say that the Vatican’s continued rejection of a modern scientific understanding of homosexuality is a throw-back to the Dark Ages.

“It defies rationality and humanitarianism.

“Why is Benedict so obsessed with gay sex?  He seems to talk about it all the time, issuing an almost weekly tirade of denunciations that borders on a compulsive disorder.

“This prejudice is par for the course.  The Vatican recently opposed a United Nations statement condemning homophobic violence and the criminalisation of same-sex relations.

“Without gay priests and bishops, the Catholic Church could barely function,” Mr. Tatchell suggested.

“At least a third of the clergy are gay, which makes this latest outburst by the Pope so hypocritical.

“If Benedict objects so strongly to homosexuality, why does he surround himself with gay advisors and Vatican officials,” he questioned?

“The Catechism, which sets out the basic doctrines of the Roman Church denounces same-sex relationships as a ‘grave depravity’ and ‘intrinsically disordered’.

“It also states that lesbian and gay relationships are ‘contrary to natural law ... and do not proceed from genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.’”

Various other Papal pronouncements condemn homosexuality as a deep-seated personality disorder and psychological flaw; variously condemning same-sex acts as ‘grave sins….objectively disordered….(and) intrinsically immoral’.

“Even people who have a gay orientation but abstain totally from sex are condemned by the Pope as possessing a ‘tendency towards an intrinsic moral evil’,” Mr. Tatchell said.

“Despite the fact that 40 million people are infected worldwide with HIV, the Pope condemns safer sex and condoms.

“He has turned his back on a proven method of stopping virus transmission, and instead promoted the lie that condoms have tiny holes that HIV can pass through.

“This irresponsible scare-mongering is tantamount to complicity with the needless deaths of millions of people who have died because they had unsafe sex,” concluded Mr Tatchell.

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