Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Pope Doesn't Judge Gays

I have not been very good about keeping up with the news here lately on the Vigilance blog. The local controversies that motivated the creation of this medium have mostly died down. A few years ago, the idea that some people are gay or lesbian or transgender was too controversial for a small cell of radicals in our suburban county. They put up a big fight when the public schools were going to mention sexual orientation, and the rest of us fought back. The anti-gay side lost every time, and finally stopped trying.

In the long run, the school district adopted a quite-conservative curriculum which has quietly loosened up in the intervening years -- it's not so bad now. There are families with same-sex parents, there are people who are attracted to the same sex and some who were assigned the wrong sex at birth, and that's just how it is. Kids can handle it, and at this point their parents have settled down about it. So it is not necessary to blog every day to document the battles.

At the same time, there is a lot of stuff going on in this crazy world, and it seems reasonable to comment occasionally. For instance, the Pope's incredible remarks this week demonstrate just how far civilization has advanced in its acceptance of LGBT people.

The Washington Post:
Pope Francis on Monday continued to recast the Catholic Church’s image by focusing on its inviting, merciful aspects, this time shocking a planeload of reporters by saying of homosexuality: “Who am I to judge?”

“If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics said in a remarkably candid and off-the-cuff news conference en route to Rome from Brazil. “They shouldn’t be marginalized.” Pope Francis calls for inclusion of gays in society, saying he has no right to ‘judge’
You know the Catholic Church teaches that sex is a means for procreation, and I doubt we will find that the Pope approves of sexual behavior outside of hetereosexual marriage. So on one level, this statement is an acknowledgement that sexual orientiation is not about behavior, as the Nutty Ones like to say, it is about who someone is. You can be gay and celibate, gay and virginal, the Pope didn't elaborate but I think he's all right with that. Which is, it seems to me, an improvement.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Zimmerman Acquitted