Some maintain that same sex attraction is a genetic predisposition. This is disputed. Even if it were the case, that does not give homosexual activity any more of a claim to being given a special civil rights status. Should we really give disordered appetites civil rights status under the law? Let's consider an absurd example. I have struggled most of my life with fighting obesity. I am on the "winning end" lately, but just give me another Holiday! A very good argument can be made that obesity also has a genetic predisposition. However, I will fight it my whole life because it is unhealthy. It is a disordered appetite. Should we as a Nation decide that fat people have a civil right to be fat? Should those who insist that they resist that "genetic predisposition" to overeat be called Fata-phobic?
I appreciate creativity in constructing an argument as much as the next intellectual snob. Part of me really wants to admire Deacon Fournier for possessing the creativity and the intellectual flexibility to make his argument in a new and different way. The problem here is that all he's really doing is regurgitating the Catholic Church's approved talking points for hating and marginalizing homosexuals...and there's absolutely nothing new- or particularly creative- in that. Haters tend to be smug, self-satisfied, and thoroughly convinced of their own brilliance. So it seems to be with Deacon Fournier, a worthy DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener...or at least he would be if I was still handing those out.
It never ceases to amaze how so many normally decent and caring people- and I'm really working to give Deacon Fournier the benefit of the doubt here- have so much energy invested in hating those they don't- and won't- understand. Never mind the fact that the whole concept of Christian charity seems to be lost on the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Then again, Catholic doctrine has never really had anything to do with charity, love, or tolerance...or Christianity, for that matter. No, the Vatican and it's drooling sycophants are far more concerned with political, ideological, and social control than with the teachings of Jesus Christ. If you doubt me, think Bill Donohue, who's as much about the teachings of Jesus Christ as I am about converting to Catholicism.
That Deacon Fournier's argument is absurd on it's face is almost beside the point. That's it's beneath contempt is not. It simply defies explanation that someone who professes to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ could equate sexual orientation to obesity. That someone holding a position of authority within the Catholic Church, as Deacon Fournier does, could so openly and actively belittle an entire class of Americans is stunning. That the Catholic Church's reaction is the dull roar of silence should offer all the proof anyone needs to understand that it's not about love or charity or tolerance. It's about hatred and the willingness to marginalize and discriminate against people who simply happen to think, believe, and love differently. That's a crime against nature? And don't even get me started on Deacon Fournier's concept of "natural law"....
Somewhere warm and beautiful, Jesus wept into his Corona....
It's as if Fournier, and those who think like him, feel unfulfilled without some "Other" upon which the can focus their considerable calumny. Without someone to hate and marginalize, are the haters worried that they'll simply disappear in a wispy puff of irrelevance and insignificance? We can only hope....
