Going from conscientious objection into actively practicing that objection is a thin line.

[icymist]

(Cross-posted from a reply in GD: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027215584#post9 )

This is the conscientious objection by the Spanish Catholics in America toward those the Church condemned as sodomites in California:

"Balboa Throws the Indians Who Have Committed the Abominable Crime of Sodomy to be Torn to Bits by Dogs." Theodore de Bry, Engraving for America, 1590.10

Spanish colonizers—from royalty to soldier to padre—believed that American Indians were intellectually, physiologically, and spiritually immature, if not actual animals. In the area eventually known as California, the genocidal policies of the Spanish Crown would eventually lead to a severe population crash: numbering one million at first contact, California Indians plummeted to about ten thousand survivors in just over one hundred years. Part of this massive loss were third-gender people, who were lost not by "passive" colonizing collateral damage such as disease or starvation, but through active, conscious, violent extermination. Speaking of the Chumash people living along the southern coast (my grandmother’s tribal roots), Pedro Fages, a Spanish soldier, makes clear that the soldiers and priests colonizing Mexico and what would become California arrived with a deep abhorrence of what they viewed as homosexual relationships. In his soldier’s memoir, written in 1775, Fages reports:

I have substantial evidence that those Indian men who, both here and farther inland, are observed in the dress, clothing, and character of women—there being two or three such in each village—pass as sodomites by profession (it being confirmed that all these Indians are much addicted to this abominable vice) and permit the heathen to practice the execrable, unnatural abuse of their bodies. They are called joyas, and are held in great esteem. Let this mention suffice for a matter which could not be omitted,—on account of the bearing it may have on the discussion of the reduction of these natives,—with a promise to revert in another place to an excess so criminal that it seems even forbidden to speak its name. . . . But we place our trust in God and expect that these accursed people will disappear with the growth of the missions. The abominable vice will be eliminated to the extent that the Catholic faith and all the other virtues are firmly implanted there, for the glory of God and the benefit of those poor ignorants.

http://whenturtlesfly.blogspot.com/2009/09/weapons-of-mass-destruction-mastiffs.html

And this is the conscientious objection toward the canonization by Pope Francis of Junipero Serra, the Spanish Catholic missionary to California:

(CNN)While in Washington, Pope Francis canonized a Spanish missionary buried at a mission in California. Over the weekend, a statue of the new saint was vandalized.

Staff at the Carmel Mission Basilica found the courtyard statue of St. Junipero Serra toppled and splattered with paint. Police are investigating, the basilica said on its Facebook page.

"Apparently a person or persons broke in, splattered paint and toppled down the courtyard statue of St. Serra and other historic statues on display," the post said.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/28/us/california-carmel-saint-serra-vandalize-pope-francis/

This shows what this Pope cares about the LGBT community in that he canonizes a person connected to genocide (gendercide?) of people who permit 'sodomites' and then meets with Kim Davis. I'm sorry Mr Pope, you cannot have it both ways; the power to allow bigots space to practice discrimination while saying that you don't judge LGBTs at the same time!