The Pope is coming to UK to campaign against equality: Does this make him a respectable leader of faith or a bigot?

[Strix]

What do you think?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8492597.stm

pope is illiberal and does nothing to dispel homophobia

FreddoBaggyMac
YES I would be rude whatever your faith. Gender and Sex are two completly differnt things Sex is a physical thing Gender is a construct. Please tell me exactly why oral sex between a monogamous married couple like my wife and I is a helth risk?
As for not following the Bible exactly, who decides what you do follow and what you do not? Tell me please and I am not being condescending here what EXACTLY did Jesus say about homosexuality? Not the people who wrote the Bible but Jesus? I have no problem with a persons faith Religon however is another thing all together, it is the bureaucracy of faith, somebody else telling you what to thinkl or believe, I doubt that was the intention and I would imagine that whilst nailed to a cross and suffocating to death good old Jesus would have been mighty pissed off that his message of love and peace has been so profoundly usurped.

Peace

Grimma - yes you are right. Ungodly is a better term to use as it avoids the confusion of comparing what we do to what animals do.
scottishmummy - I agree with you, but plenty of other people do lots to dispel homophobia so does the pope really need to?

FreddoBaggyMac
Sorry I have just reread my post and I cannot see anything about abuse or personal attack. I repeat SEX is Physical, you are male or female due to the genitals you are born with wheras GENDER is a social construct. You may think the 2 are the same but I am afraid they are not. Simple fact not condescending at all in fact those who know me would say i am being restrained and I thought this was a civil discussion.

Topher - I really do not want to spend my evening debating oral sex! the church has no problem with you and your wife doing that anyway (!) It's fine so long as it's part of an act between a married couple open to the creation of new life...
The church (centuries of teaching by scholars and saints etc..) decides which areas of the Bible are relevant to us. It's not that we don't follow some of it (sorry if that did not come across clearly) it's just that some of it is no longer relevant. The Catechism of the Catholic church is what talks about issues such as homosexuality and is probably more relevant to discuss than the bible.
I am a practising catholic (did you guess?)and to me the main message of my faith/ religion is love and peace so I don't think Jesus has been usurped at all. But then I don't get out much

Topher, sorry but I did find your post offensive. You are probably right about the sex/ gender definition thing - but it really has no relevance to the points I'm making!

FreddoBaggyMac
Still have not answered my question about oral sex and high risk of infections you alluded to in a previous post. I had worked out your faith a while ago and it is obviously deeply held so there is no point to us having a cyclical argument/discussion about it. My question was what do you as a person think Jesus would say about what we are discussing. Not the view of the papacy your view. If JC was standing next to you, or me, and we asked him what he thought what do YOU think that his answer would be?
Peace

Jesus would say that we should love our neighbour and not judge anyone else, and that people in glass houses should not throw stones.
He would also say that we should look to his church for moral guidance and do our best to abide by its teaching.

Sorry I forgot to answer Topher, oral sex increases the risk of contracting the HPV virus and consequently oral cancer (unless both parties have had no previous sexual partners obviously)

FreddyBaggyMac given that pope is allegedly god representative on earth - yes he should seek to dispel the prejudice and hatred that homophobia represents. if he is representing god, a liberal god wouldnt wish such prejudices to be enacted upon a specific group of people

there are many who give credence to pope opinion (and many who don't)- however he is a figure head and head of catholic church. his expressed opinion is branded as representative official voice of catholicism

FreddoBaggyMac
So back to the point. The legislation being proposed is not about forcing the Church to employ gay priests, it is about lay employees. What should a persons sexual preference have to do with that? Why should an employee in that role, not an officiating member of the cloth, be discriminated against because of their sexuality? Why should it be an issue? I would imagine, though I accept I may be wrong, that if you have children, which as you are an mumsnet you probably do, that any kids you have go to a catholic school. If there was a gay teacher there who taught exactly as required, made no attempt to push his/her view on their charges, why should their sexuality affect their ability and disbar them from their chosen role? That I believe is the nub of the argument for this equality bill. If we change Gay to Black I'm sure you would be horrified.

scottishmummy, the church teaches and has always taught that homosexual acts are wrong so the Pope cannot really champion the rights of homosexuals! However, he can (and does) promote the message that we are all sinners in one way or another (ie. no-one is perfect and lives exactly in the way Jesus would want) and that we should love our neighbour... it's just that that doesn't make such a good newspaper headline as 'Pope is anti-gay nazi who condones child abuse'!!

therein lies the flaw "teaching homosexuality is wrong" - that stance is offensive

that whole erroneous and illiberal stance does nothing to acknowledge individual differences or individual preferences.and it promotes a pernicious prejudice

Topher - as I mentioned previously regarding the teaching point, a person's sexuality should not come into their teaching at all. Teachers definitely should keep quiet about their sex lives altogether! I would have no problem with a homosexual teaching my children providing they did not openly promote thier sexuality (just as I wouldn't want a heterosexual to do so).
I think if their sexuality made absolutely no effect on their role as a teacher the pope would have no problem with it either (although the newspapers would have us think otherwise).

Actually Topher's DW is open to more health risks by having unprotected intercourse with him than allowing him to give her oral sex.

I don't think it does scottishmummy. I support the pope and I do not consider myself to be prejudiced against homosexuals, I have friends who are gay.
Hate the sin but love the sinner is what the church teaches, and we are all sinners in one way or another.

And as a catholic I have to state again that IMVHO, if Christ were here today he would be horrified and disgusted as the bigotry being practiced in his name.

at the 'I have friends who are gay' line.

It's true believe it or not!
All I'm trying to do here is present the pope in a light not consistent with the one the media have popularised so well. It's amazing how quickly I'm labelled as a nazi bigoted gay-hater for doing do

myredcardigan
Thanks for the support.

FreddoBaggyMac.
So we agree. So why are we here? The Pope has stuck his nose in where we agree that he should not. You said in your answer to scottishmummy that you support the Pope but is this not diametrically opposed to the view that a persons sexuality has nothing to do with their ability to fulfill their role, which we both agree on.

it is flawed premise.homosexuality isnt a sin

adult consensual love,respect and companionship is not wholly a heterosexual act

adults in a loving and respsctful relationships whether between same sex or different sex is not sinful

but i fear a cyclical argument of

its sinful
its not sinful

which wont resole to either of our satisfaction

myredcardigan, I really believe it's the media putting the emphasis on all this stuff that makes it seem so disgusting. the pope and the church do not promote bigotry in any form.

scottishmummy, I agree. But it's really not such a big issue is it if we all want to love our neighbour and not judge one another?
it's up to God to decide what is write or wrong and we all have to form our opinions on that based on our own belief systems.

"the pope and the church do not promote bigotry in any form." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks it's been most relaxing I'm going for a lie down.

we are all sinners in one way or another.

So why specifically try to exclude the one particular 'sin' of active homosexuality from the equality legislation? Why doesn't the church insist on the right to discriminate against cohabiting unmarried couples? As far as I can see it would be exactly the same sin.