Wednesday 1 April 2009

Catholic church invents a new reason to discriminate against homosexuals

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25250874-952,00.html

As part of its response to the paedophile scandal, the Vatican is *ahem* 'recommending' that it's various churches test the sexuality of all prospective priests and dismiss any that 'appear homosexual'. I'd love to know what kind of test they plan to use: as PZ Myers has pointed out, they'll probably see an increase in people signing up just to take the test.

There are three serious problems with this of course. First, tests for homosexuality are by no means conclusive and I'm especially skeptical about what kind of test the catholic church might employ. I don't think it would be too much of an exaggeration to expect that anyone with a lisp would be ruled out straight away.

Second is the fact that homosexuality is in no way akin to paedophilia. As far as I'm aware, homosexual priests are no more likely to molest children than are straight ones. This barbaric attitude is damningly typical of churches in general and catholics in particular.

Third, and most importantly is the fact that this is a clear exercises in scapegoating. In doing this, the church is saying "It's not the church's fault that all those children were assaulted, it's these damn gays that have infiltrated us."

This is beyond disgusting: it's bad enough excluding women from the priesthood as a matter of idiotic principle, but to exclude 10% of the male population as well simply as a bad public relations exercise! No other organisation could get away with this and rightly so. Meanwhile, children will continue to be abused at the hands of priests and like a murderer, the catholic church will continue to cover it up.

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