Because I am a militant atheist, dedicated to purging the public sphere of all things Christian and good, I’m hosting a Christmas Godless Winter Solstice party this weekend. Good host that I am, I’ve thrown myself deep into the thicket of baking Christmas Godless Winter Solstice cookies, and it’s turning into quite the ordeal: for God-knows-what reason, I haven’t actually made a proper shopping trip for this task, and so one day I’ll be all, “I need allspice!!!!!11!” and run to the store, and the next day it will be, “Good Christ! Out of vanilla!!!” and back to the store. I know the first trip that I need vanilla, but not right away. It’s annoying. And it never stops – today, for example, I’ll be buying lights for my Christmas Godless Winter Solstice tree, and brown sugar. But not molasses – I won’t be needing it until tomorrow.
The point of all this is that you, my dear faithful readers, matter less to me than gingerbread cookies, and I hope you don’t hate me for it.
But the times, they march on, and right now it looks like Pope Nosferatu has done it again. In order to save the children, the Roman Catholic Church will continue to forbid gays from joining the priesthood. My best guess is that this is an intimidation tactic: the Vatican’s way of putting all the pedophiles on notice. “You guys want a piece of this? Well shape up!” Because as the story puts it, “No link has been established between homosexuality and the abuse of children,” and that’s why I love non-American news sources.
The new policy (PDF here, in Italian. Or Latin, or some damn thing. Not English, that’s for damn sure) is deeply troubling, not because of the ban itself (old news, and anyway I can’t feel too sorry for people who want to be Catholic priests), but because of its seeming rejection of the good old “hate the sin, love the sinner” mentality. It’s not good enough to be a celibate gay man, now: basically, any homosexual thought renders you unfit for the cloth. If you can prove that you haven’t acted gay in three years, you’re good; but that’s only for younger men. If you have a history of gayness, you’re fucked. As it were.
So the theory here isn’t that homosexual is natural, and fine (the “sane” position), or that homosexuality is unnatural but innate and gays should be helped to “overcome” it (the “fucked-up evangelical” position), or that homosexuality is evil and hateful and Teh Gay must be stopped (the “batshit crazy” position), but that homosexuality is wrong, not a choice, and gays can’t do a damn thing but sit around, being sinners. Somehow, this seems to be the most odious of the four possibilities – it acknowledges that it’s nobody’s fault, but sorry, y’all are going to hell anyway. The worst thing is, I was kind of starting to like the Catholics, for coming out on the side of not-ID.