At least for me, the most progressive outcome I’d like to see in my lifetime is to make it legal in all countries of the world for gays and other not-quite-straight people to be themselves, without fearing the law makers.

Most other possible reforms that progress the rights of gay people are really not as significant as this most basic right.

In this global context, what the Pope says really is too important to be ignored.

Thanks for the interesting responses.

From Justin

The man’s irrelevant.

And thank you Helen. That is a great find and look forward to settling back to listen to the show in the next day or so.

He cuts down trees. He cruises the beats.
He hangs round the lavatory.
He promotes global warmin’
And he act quite unnaturally.
He’s a sodomite, and he’s so gay.
He uses God’s creation in a perverted way.

Review here.

My pick: Piers Ackerman, Miranda Devine and Keith Windshuttle as, in fabulous costumes…they slobber through a camp period piece complaining how the colony has gone to the dogs since Governor Howard was recalled. Although Julie Bishop is fabulous too.

Raised a Catholic, I’ve instead attended Anglican mass with a friend to help him connect with the faith he needs to get through his troubles. He assured me that he will never step into another Catholic church after hearing this news about the Pope and it prompted me to investigate the issue.

To quote a 22 December brief from the New York Times:

In an address to the Vatican hierarchy, the pope called for an “ecology of man” to protect man from “the destruction of himself.” He added, “The rain forests deserve our protection, but man as a creature indeed deserves no less.”

According to The Canberra Times (24 December), Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby defended the Pope’s analogy with environmental issues, saying that:

”Without putting other people down, we need to make sure the demands of strident minority groups don’t challenge the health of the family in the same way that greed has challenged the health of the environment.”

Mr Wallace then adds a blogging addition to the Canberra Times article, using the example of gay parenting to substantiate “the homosexual agenda”.

So keen is Mr. Wallace to impose his views on others (somehow without putting other people down) that he fails to comprehend that: (1.) the Pope doesn’t actually mention homosexuals in his recent address and (2.) the Pope isn’t specifically addressing the issue of gay civil rights.

What the Pope has done is question the very nature
of “ecology of man”, placing morally clear definitions of man and woman above all others.

In this context, the whole box and dice of homosexuality is being
addressed and it’s not being addressed fairly.

These views of the Pope don’t engage the experience of those that will be most hurt
by such comments: especially those capable of reconciling their homosexual desire and their desire to please God.

This misuse of “ecology of man” analogy, and Jim Wallace’s interpretation that defends the Pope’s speech, demonstrate a confusion of issues. That’s ironic for a group of people so determined to deny the existence of a complex world.

Yet a denial of complexity and variance is “always” going to be the outcome when you get ideologues forcing a wedge between a majority and a minority of people.

From Justin

Mark, Holland’s Persian Fire looks particularly interesting.

Good party, was it, Mark?

Wasn’t really a party, Paul … some friends and I went to the Sunshine Coast yesterday to visit rellos and have a late lunch by the beach at Mooloolaba, and then I went round to another friend’s place for some quiet beers on the back deck. But the whole blogging caper completely slipped my mind for some reason!

Finished reading Tom Holland’s Millenium. Was a good read. As some one particularly interested in history from below, really enjoyed his exposition of the origins of primogeniture and the growth of knighthood and castle-building, with its consequences of serfdom for the peasantry. His narrative on Cluny is an interesting variation on the role of monateries as agents of prot-capitalism. Not Marx,but R. W. Southern in Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, if I recall correctly. (20 years or more since I read it.)
While I recognise the first aim of the First Crusade was Pilgrimage, I also thought part of Urban’s motivation was to rid the West of brawling landless younger nobles. Holland, in his enthusiasm to prove the Crusades were some kind of Western jihad, seems to ignore this aspect. Nor am I sure medieval millenarianism and church reform at the turn of the 9th century are as closely connected as he suggests.
As some-one not inclined to label the early medieval period as a Dark Ages – just look at what was going on at Cluny and with monastascism in general,- there was a bit too much emphasis on rape and pillage for my liking, and not enough on cultural/economic aspects. I know its before the 12th century Renaissance, but still …