Year: 2005

In wartime, don’t our law enforcement agencies have better things to do than preventing adults from enjoying adult porn in the privacy of their own homes? Is this an attempt to soften the conservative base on Alberto Gonzales? Captain’s Quarters asks the right questions.

According to the latest Vatican leak – to a far-right news service called “Catholic World News” – the new Pope will issue an edict banning all gay men from entering seminaries and the priesthood some time next month. The edict applies to all gay men, even if they are celibate, even if they would make great priests, and even if they have been chaste for over a decade. Money quote:

It will take the form of an “Instruction,” signed by the prefect and secretary of the Congregation: Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski and Archbishop Michael Miller.
The text, which was approved by Pope Benedict at the end of August, says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate, because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.
Priests who have already been ordained, if they suffer from homosexual impulses, are strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity, and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood.

To recap: the Church’s official position (as of 1986) is that homosexual persons are not sinful; they are “made in the image and likeness of God” and the notion that they cannot control their sex lives is, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, an “unfounded and demeaning assumption.” The new position is that this “unfounded and demeaning assumption” is now the truth. All gay men are suffering from a “serious personality disorder” and constitutively unable to maintain chastity and perform their duties as priests. What, one wonders, is the nature of this “serious personality disorder”? How does it prevent gay men from being productive members of society? If all gay priests “suffer” from this, then why are any of them still allowed to serve the Church? These are questions lay Catholics must demand of their leaders, as even some arch-conservatives already are. When a group of human beings are demonized not for what they do but for who they are, then we have a right to know exactly what the Pope means.

BIGOTRY SHARPENED: We don’t have the final document yet so we don’t know whether this blast from 1940s psychology will be enshrined in the document. Let’s hope it won’t. But I’m not hopeful. This is, after all, a clarification of the new Benedict XVI position on gays: they they are moral Untermenschen, somehow sick in their very souls, disordered to commit sin, people who must be cast out to cleanse the Church of evil. (The structure of the argument is very similar to that which for so long applied to Jews in Catholic teaching.) The conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia and the equation of celibate, faithful gay priests with compulsive child-molesters is integral to this new policy. In a word, it is inconsistent with previous teaching and morally appalling. And can you imagine what this does to the morale of the thousands of gay priests now serving the faithful? It will be up to the conscience of each, but I cannot see how any moral person can still work for an institution so wedded to the demonization of a whole class of people. Especially if you’re one of them. And what does it say to the gay laity? It says: you’re so sick in the head you cannot lead moral lives. God may be able to forgive you but our job is to protect every other Catholic from your disorder. To say that this is an attack on the core meaning of Christianity – that we are all equal before God – is superfluous. To say that it is a brutal, deep wound to the psyches and souls of millions is equally obvious. But somehow, like all evil, I have a feeling it will become accepted, as Benedict’s church continues its retreat from modernity into the superstitions and bigotries of earlier times. And like all policies of stigmatization and exclusion, it may subtly flatter those left behind and attach them more firmly to the church. As every beleaguered politician has found out, bigotry works. It may indeed work for Benedict as a strategy, especially in the Third World, where hatred of homosexuals is more common. But to rebuild a church on the basis of hate is a truly odious strategy. It may be Benedict’s ultimate legacy.

I would have linked to John Tierney’s excellent NYT op-ed today on how Wal-Mart is better able to deal with natural disasters than FEMA. But only Times Select readers can read the link. So I won’t. Nyah nyah.

The blogosphere has so far been pretty quiet about the North Korean deal. From what I can glean from the MSM reports, it’s essentially a re-run of 1994: they trade one kind of nuke reactor for another; we pretend not to notice their subterranean nuke development; there’s plenty of space for this thing to fall apart; and Kim Jong Il gets more goodies from the West. Maybe China, Japan and Russia figure that NoKo is falling apart anyway and this kind of engagement makes sense. It might if we had some kind of Gorbachev figure in Pyongyang. But, ahem, we don’t. I know we don’t have many good options here, but it’s hard to avoid the impression that the Bush administration blinked. And if things weren’t going so poorly with Iraq, Iran and domestically, we might have been strong enough to say no. Prediction: this will fall apart because of NoKo’s non-compliance. Even today, according to the Washington Post, “the official North Korean news agency early today quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesman as asserting that Pyongyang would not give up its weapons program until it received nuclear reactors from the United States.” So the backpedaling is under way. Bush, alas, would rather find a way to blame Kim after the agreement falls apart than have China blame him now for recalcitrance. The fruits of weakness.

The culture goes to war over a nature documentary. My take here.

For the Republican deficits of the last four years? Bob Livingston passes the buck. Again. Mind-boggling.

Just an HIV update. I’ve been on the new meds for a couple of months now and after a week or so of torpor, have no side-effects that I can speak of. My viral load – i.e. the amount of virus in my bloodstream – went from 141,000 particles per cubic mililiter of blood in late May to 1500 after ten days on June 2 and has now come down to a grand total of 121. Still not good enough. We’re hoping for under 50 at the next count. My CD4 cell count – a sign of the strength of your immune system – has gone back into its normal range. Thank God for the evil pharmaceutical companies. One day, when the history of this period is written, I have a feeling we will look back with astonishment as we recognize that advances in medical science, particularly pharmaceuticals, were arguably one of the most significant developments of this era. And yet the people who pioneered these breakthroughs were … demonized and attacked. Baffling and bizarre. I’m merely grateful the attacks haven’t stopped the research progress. They’ve merely slowed it. Oh, and I talked my doc into giving me a pre-emptive treatment of Tamiflu. I won’t use it, unless the birdpoop hits the fan. But I’ll have it just in case. I’m not relying on president Bush. Not this time.

“The self-congratulatory letter from the resident of Mississippi you printed might have been funny were it not such a shocking distortion of the genuinely sad and tragic facts on the ground in that state. Friends of relatives of mine – middle class white people – were trapped in a small town in southern Mississippi for days – just like the people of New Orleans – without fresh supplies of food, water, and gas. They waited and waited as trucks passed their town by, residents growing more desperate over the course of three or four or five days. They pleaded for help in every way they could, and were abandoned by their government, just like nearly everyone else affected by this storm. Barbour is no saint. Their stories will eventually be told, and some already have.”

Bull Moose makes the best case yet. I’m watching Hillary. If she votes no, then it seems to me that independents should be very leery of any attempt she makes to move to the center over the next couple of years. As for the gay groups (excepting LCR), I’ve given up on them taking a fair view of things like this. Roberts is as good as you’ll get under this president. But that doesn’t make for a good direct mail pitch, does it?

The leader of Germany’s Greens has new leverage.