By: D’Anne Witkowski*/Special for TRT–
You know, whenever I’m in the market for marriage advice, the only person I trust is an unmarried guy in a dress. It also helps if he was also once a Hitler Youth. So you can imagine that whenever Pope Benedict XVI starts dishing out the marriage talk, I am all ears.
In a new year address to a bunch of folks at the Vatican, the pope made it clear that 2012 is still the Year of the Queer, at least if we’re categorizing each year by whatever the Catholic Church considers to be the most urgently pressing issue. Which means it’s been the Year of the Queer for over a decade now. Past issues have included poverty, world hunger, abortion, and other things that have been long since resolved.
Speaking of the best place for children to be educated, the pope said that “pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman.” In other words, one penis + one vagina = happy, well-adjusted kids.
“This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,” he said.
Oh, my. “Humanity itself,” eh? Some body loves himself a little melodrama.
In case it’s not clear what exactly the pope means by “policies which undermine the family,” he’s talking about gays being allowed to marry. Each other. Granted, from what I understand that whole gay man marrying a straight woman or lesbian marrying a hetero dude thing doesn’t work out very well. But at least it doesn’t threaten all of humanity.
I love how the pope makes clear that marriage isn’t a “simple social convention,” as if anyone were saying otherwise. As if gays and lesbians just want equal marriage rights because marriage is such an inconsequential institution and wouldn’t it be fun and ironic to walk down the aisle and said, “I do.”
Nor are gay and lesbian families with kids taking that responsibility lightly. Don’t tell the pope, but there is just no evidence that kids with same-sex parents are in any way being harmed by their family structure. In fact, one week after the pope made his remarks Live Science’s top story was, “Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents.”
Granted, where the pope gets the balls to even talk about what’s best for children is beyond me. As John Aravosis put it, “(W)hy should we care about the moral pronouncements of people who aid and abet the rape of small children?” Ha. That Aravosis. He’s such a kidder. I mean, that whole child abuse scandal is so 2002, right?
Um, not so much, actually. Child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has by no means gone away and anyone who claims otherwise either hasn’t done their research or is lying.
So, yeah, I think gays and lesbians are more than entitled to be outright disgusted with the pope’s continued gay bashing and homophobia. Let’s face it, if a man with as much power and influence as the pope uses his voice to tell an audience of people representing countries worldwide that homosexuals are destroying humanity, then this is not a man who actually cares about human beings, gay or straight.
*D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world she reviews rock ‘n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.
