Once More, With Bigotry

It's time for another reprise of the classic showbiz tune "We're Not Bigots" by the Roman Catholic Church.  This time, in Scotland, where a frightening proportion of young people identifying as LGBT are saying they have self-harmed or attempted suicide due to the intense bullying and hostile atmosphere of homophobia in Scotland's schools.  This is particularly acute in Catholic Schools, where these young people and their peers are still being told that their nature is, well, unnatural, and disordered.  That giving children and teenagers a reason to be divided and despise one another is never a good idea doesn't really seem to gel with the far more important duty Catholic schools apparently have - getting their way all the time.

Personal anecdote time - when I was a lad at a Catholic school, the brain trust in charge were so backward in their mentality that, despite it being the early 21st century, they still insisted that girls must wear skirts.  A girl wearing trousers was an abomination, so you can imagine how a camp kid was treated and what nonsense we were taught about the grave threat of the gays.

Anyway, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, having already spent £50,000, has pledged another £100,000 in church funds to do something charitable and worthwhile for the comm--ok, no, he's actually going to spend it on a hateful advertising and lobbying campaign to try to bully the Scottish government into not allowing gay people to marry.  He even threatened an "unprecedented backlash" from Catholics if the change to the law were to go ahead.  One can't help but wonder how a threat of an unprecedented backlash from a certain other patriarchal authoritarian, homophobic religion with a historical disdain for democracy (and Jews) would go down, but somehow it's ok when a Cardinal says it.

Though, to be fair, Islam isn't quite as homophobic as the Roman Catholic Church...

O'Brien said:

Marriage is under threat and politicians need to know the Catholic Church will bear any burden and meet any cost in its defence.

And, after calling civil partnerships for same-sex couples a mistake:

 These measures were not in the best interests of our society. The empirical evidence is clear, same-sex relationships are demonstrably harmful to the medical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of those involved, no compassionate society should ever enact legislation to facilitate or promote such relationships, we have failed those who struggle with same-sex attraction.

The Cardinal is just determined to prevent homosexuals living their lives, to the point that he'd use church resources not for any kind of social good in a time of stark austerity and significant public need, but to fight tooth and nail to prevent them marrying, based on completely made up 'empirical evidence' that trots out the same old tropes that being gay is somehow bad for you, ignoring that the only way it's bad for you is that homophobic bigots might make your life unbearable.  But remember, he's not a bigot!

Now here it is, your not remotely safe for work moment of zen: