Monday, October 20, 2014

It's the same illogical argument

I've been reading articles about the aftermath of the Catholic bishops giving gays the finger last week. I mean, really. Raising gay Catholics' hopes and then stomping them into the ground is not, I'm quite sure, what Jesus would have done. But then, there never was a Jesus. So there's that.

Today I noticed that the hateful bishops who put the kibosh on the welcoming language used in the first synod draft document last week are relying on the exact same argument that nitwits use against gay marriage.

For instance, consider this article:
After an initial draft of the synod's final document was released on Monday, conservative bishops vowed to row back on the upbeat tone adopted regarding gays, cohabitation and re-marriage, saying it would create confusion among the faithful and threatened to undermine the traditional family.
There it is: the Great Anti-Gay Non Sequitur. How, precisely, does a church's welcoming language to gays undermine the traditional family? The two are utterly unrelated. If the church welcomes gays, traditional families will break up like ice floes in a warm ocean? That makes no sense.

And it's the same idiotic argument that homophobes make against gay marriage: it threatens traditional families. How, exactly? Can they offer even one example of this happening in the real world? Gay marriage has been around for quite some time. So where are the traditional families that were threatened and broken apart by the mere existence of gay marriage? They don't exist.

There is no argument against gay people that is anything but idiotic and hateful. But see, we're here, we've always been here and we're never going away -- so you'd better get used to us. And our existence and our relationships have precisely nothing to do with what goes on in "traditional families". (And btw, it's those traditional families that give birth to gays. I'm just saying. We didn't come from Mars.)

Hate is hate. And that's exactly what the Catholic bishops showed when they jumped on the synod's welcoming language and killed it. It's what Catholic bishops do, especially American Catholic bishops: they attack gay people. And you really, really have to ask yourself why. What is wrong with these bishops? Could it be their unnatural way of life, eschewing sex? Ya think?