HuffPo gets it all wrong

The headline on HuffPo's main page screams "Pope Francis takes huge step forward on gay rights". I'm surprised they didn't add three exclamation points.

When you click on the link, you arrive at a more subdued headline: "Pope Francis suggests gay civil unions may be tolerable by church". Now, isn't that just marvelous? Gay civil unions may be tolerable. The gratitude is swelling inside my heart. The Vatican could find my relationship tolerable. Praise jesus!

First of all, "giving" gay people civil unions is like the bus driver saying you can get on the bus, but you have to sit in the back. No thanks. In fact, you can stick those civil unions up your ass. We will not be tolerated -- we will be equal. And there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do to stop us.

The Catholic church is an evil joke that harms people throughout the world. It blinds them to their real lives, fills them with fear and guilt, and spends most of its mental energy wondering what penises and vaginas are doing. That's not a church, it's an illness.

We're gettin' married. Everywhere. And no one will be able to stop the gay tsunami of equality, including the two popes at the head of the Roman Catholic church. (Gives raspberry; exits stage-left.)

PS: Francis is really out of it on many issues, not just the gay stuff. Here's an outtake from the article:

"The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No-one else has done more," Francis said of sex abuse. "Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked."

Are you laughing? Crying? Oy, the blindness. It hurts.

A test for the new popeyguy

Francis, the new popeyguy, is putting on a show of friendliness. Now, it may be that he really is friendly. Who knows? The man is a stranger to most of us. We'll need time to assess his actions and words.

We do know that he's against gay marriage. On the other hand, in Argentina he tried to work out a compromise with the government, which was pushing hard for gay marriage. I've read that Bergoglio (the popeyguy's maiden name) suggested civil unions for gays, as a form of compromise.

I find this encouraging. I don't recall the popeyguy emeritus ever saying that he'd like to see civil unions established for gays. All we heard from him were his all-too-frequent comments about gays being "intrinsically disordered". Benedict never said one conciliatory thing regarding the church's war on gays. On the contrary, he stepped up the church's attacks against everything lavender. So there's this difference between the two popeyguys. It doesn't give me great hope, but it's something.

Going forward, what I want to know is how this popeyguy will treat American nuns. You may recall that Benedict launched a howitzer attack against the nuns, all but calling them whores and Jezebels. But if Francis is truly kind, we may not see this type of virulent misogyny spewing from his lips. What will he do? I really want to know.

I suspect it won't be long before we know the answer to this question. After all, if he's a kind man he won't leave the nuns hanging. And his response will tell us everything we need to know about the new popeyguy.