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Just Another Anti-Gay Pope

By Melanie Nathan and Cathy Kristofferson,  March  13, 2013.

When white smoke appeared from the Sistine Chapel today, heralding a new Pope, LGBTI communities around the world were not expecting anything more than another religious leader to work actively against secular legal rights.

Choosing the name Pope Francis,  Cardinal Bergoglio, of Argentina, was adorned Pope at the Vatican today, as the Cardinals completed their secretive election process.  Catholics around the world celebrated, while LGBTI activists ran for Google to see to what extent one could expect this man to continue to advocate against LGBTI rights.

It would seem that while pundits are describing the first ever America’s Pope, as one who is progressive and into social justice, you can be assured that if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and value the rights you have been denied, you are not being factored into the “progressive” or “social justice” equation.

“The Argentinean people will have to confront, in the coming weeks, a situation whose result could gravely injure the family.  We are speaking of a bill regarding marriage between people of the same sex,” a bill that calls into question “the identity, and the survival of the family: father, mother, and children.”

 Then he added:

“At stake are the lives of many children who are discriminated against in advance by depriving them of human growth that God wanted to given with a father and a mother. At stake is a total rejection of the law of God, engraved in our hearts as well”.

The latter, warns Bergoglio, is also threatened by LGBTI adoption, which would be anything but a man who brings social justice to the fold.  But what of us who do not count as being “of the fold.” What gives him and his brethren the right to intrude on our civil rights?  In  some countries, his speech could amount to “hate speech” – like South Africa, where the Constitution, not only demands separation of Church and State, but also insists on equality for all.

Lest we forget some good news about the Argentinian Pope; in 2010 Argentina  became the first Latin American nation to legalize same-sex marriage, granting same-gender couples all the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage brings to heterosexuals in that country.  New Pope Francis, a hands-on man, actually failed  in his leadership against equality, when he led the anti-gay forces against the 2010 campaign for marriage equality. From the AP:

“The approval came despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to march on Congress and urged parents in churches and schools to work against passage. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio led the campaign, saying “children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother.” Opponents of gay marriage proposed a civil-union law instead that would have barred gays from adopting or undergoing in-vitro fertilization to have children, and enabled any civil servant to “conscientiously object” to register gay couples. In the end, parliamentary maneuvers kept the Senate from voting on civil unions as the government bet all or nothing on the more politically difficult option of marriage.”

Well LGBTI world, lets see where Pope Francis goes with anti-gay woes, because like it or not, the world is changing, with or without a new Pope.

by Melanie Nathan
and Cathy Kristofferson