Catholic Church: Being Gay Is Like Missing a Foot or Losing an Eye

by Michael Jones · 2010-07-29 07:40:00 UTC
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Leaders within the Catholic Church love their comparisons, particularly when it comes to the subject of homosexuality. They've compared homosexuality to climate change, compared gay marriage to war crimes, and said that loving gay couples are akin to terrorists. That's some way to be pastoral, right?

Perhaps taking a cue that comparing people to rather violent or ugly things is distasteful, a Cardinal in Chile is taking a new direction. Gay people aren't like terrorists, according to Cardinal Jorge Medina Estévez. Instead, they're just disordered, like people who have lost an arm, a leg, or an eye.

"The Church distinguishes the homosexual tendency and homosexual practice. If a person has a homosexual tendency it is a defect, as if one lacked an eye, a hand, a foot," said Cardinal Estévez. Aww, shucks. Because it's not at all insulting to call gay people, or disabled people for that matter, defective.

The Cardinal was responding to the invasion of gay marriage in Latin America, with Argentina moving earlier this month to become the first country in the region to recognize marriage equality. A few folks are even wondering if some other Latin American countries, like Paraguay or Uruguay, may take up same-sex marriage in the coming months. I'm guessing that won't please the Cardinal none too much.

"[Gay marriage] is something in opposition to the law of God, and no human law can go against the law of God. If a human law goes against the law of God, that human law does not exist," the Cardinal concluded in a gobbledygook statement.

While that's the Cardinal's own opinion, it certainly doesn't gel with Catholics in the pews, who are increasingly and (in some cases) overwhelmingly supportive of marriage equality. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that most people, let alone most Catholics, would agree that being gay is like missing a foot or losing and eye.

But I bet you'll find quite a bit of people who think that the Church hierarchy is missing an organ -- particularly their brain, at least when it comes to engaging on issues related to homosexuality.

Photo credit: andycoan

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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