General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A threat to the 1%? Are the attacks on the Pope Coordinated? [View all]theHandpuppet
(19,964 posts)Perhaps there are some folks whose comments have stepped over the line or, as you perceive it, recall for you an anti-Catholic bigotry. I can't speak to that but don't feel I have the right to dismiss your feelings, which are genuine.
However, I hope you can also understand the frustration and anger at an institutional bigotry that has been and continues to be expressed in outright persecution not only of LGBT persons but women as well.
GLBTs do not lobby to prevent Catholics or any other religious denomination from marrying or adopting, from having full, equal rights, nor do they lobby to prevent people of any stripe from making decisions regarding family planning, or deny them life-saving medical procedures. Make no mistake - the Catholic church, along with other fundamentalist Protestant churches, continues to wage war against women and LGBT persons. The American Conference of Catholic Bishops has outlined the goals quite clearly and on their website you can find insulting "commentaries" against gays, transgendered men and women, marriage equality (and should you need one, a prayer to preserve "traditional marriage" , vows to fight reproduction rights, ENDA, the HHS mandate, the ACLU et al, rebuffing the UN's inquiry with regard to child rape and abuse. The next time folks here feel insulted by the angry language in some posts regarding Pope Francis, I would entreat you to visit that website and experience for yourself the kind of incredible insults LGBT people put up with as a matter of religious policy. Not to mention the millions of dollars the church has invested in defeating gay marriage bills and reproduction rights.
Yes, words can hurt. And Pope Francis himself has said some disgusting, hateful things about gays and their families, yet remained oddly silent when it comes to the recent passage of anti-LGBT, anti-woman laws from India to the Philippines to Uganda.
Beyond the personal scope of hurt feelings, the kind of bigotry that expresses itself in actual persecution of millions of women and LGBTs around the globe, that threatens their families, their rights, their health and their very lives, is the kind of bigotry many people here are fighting. When and if Pope Francis joins that fight for equal rights for women and LGBTs he will have my full support but until that time, to see him lauded on DU as some kind of folk hero is something I find incredibly insulting, hypocritical and to be frank, inexplicable.