So Mad.

Occasionally I will use these pages for religious debate.  I try not to because normally you just end up pissing people off and getting lots of nasty comments.  But this morning I heard something on the radio that immediately got my blood boiling.

The Pope condemned same sex marriage as a “dangerous and insidious” challenge to society in a an address to half a million Catholic faithful.

My first reaction was, well, I can’t tell you my first reaction.  While the Catholic Church and I have our differences, I would never write down the names I called him in my mind.  I wouldn’t do that for the leader of any world religion.

I have people in my life that I love that are decidedly Catholic.  I also have people I love in my life that are decidedly gay.  I think you can guess who’s side I’m taking.

Now, it would be easy to just pull out the pedophile thing (like I did in my rage on my FB status this morning), but instead I am going to just stay on point with this one.

The Catholic Church, unfortunately, has the right to disapprove of anything they would like.  That’s kind of their gig:  telling people how to live their lives.  Trust me, you don’t join for the wild parties.

They have every right to disapprove of homosexuality.  They deal in morals, and they all gathered ’round, read the Bible and interpreted that God feels homosexuality is morally wrong.  Okay, so say that.  Say that God loves you and wants you to live your best life and that kind of includes not loving someone that shares your sex parts.   People who don’t agree have the right to leave the Church.

But when you call two consenting adults wanting to love each other within the walls of a marriage insidious and dangerous, well, you have crossed the line.  Poverty is insidious.  Despotism is dangerous.

We have a lot of same sex families in our neighborhood, and I have to say none of us cower in our homes worrying about the loving, stable families that play with their children and come to the block parties and volunteer at our schools.  Oh no!  What will we do?  They have three kids and a mortgage and love each other!  Wait a minute… that’s me.

But wait, it gets better:

In a strongly worded attack, Benedict XVI insisted that marriage should be founded on the “indissoluble” marriage between a man and a woman.

Can you hear me laughing?

Catholics get divorced at the same rate everyone else does.  They use some word play and make you get an “annulment” and then it is like *POOF* your marriage never happened.  Sorry, but you can’t just say that a 20 year marriage never happened.  You can’t pretend that this isn’t a divorce by calling it something different.  Catholic marriages are about as “indissoluble” as Elmer’s glue.

Hey, we can solve this whole mess by simply calling homosexuality a new name!  They aren’t homosexual, they’re just Fire Islanders.  Great, invite them in and let’s have a wedding.

If you think it is morally wrong, that is your right.  If you don’t want people who partake in that lifestyle to commit to one another in a legally binding monogamous relationship, so be it.  There are ways to express that without resorting to calling their desire to do so dangerous.  This level of intolerance and demonization of a group of people frankly, sucks.   And when this garbage is being strewn by the guy holding your moral compass…be watchful of where he is leading you.