Senate Homosexuality: the Thread

chiggity-check b-4 u riggity-wreck

 

I'm willing to bet it'll be Louisiana's same - sex marriage ban that goes up before the court, given that the Federal judge there upheld the ban, and the asinine reasoning he gave behind it.

 

Florida's was blocked by Pam Bondi, an expert on marriage considering she's on her third.

 

how can she be on her third marriage? she's like 12 years old



official photo of her in the mickey mouse club as attorney general of the great state of Flo Rida

 

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/2...lcoming_gays_into_the_life_of_the_Church.html

 

lolz

 

To be expected-- the people voting on it were almost entirely installed by extremely conservative regimes. Things have been set in motion, and future discussion of the kind that happened won't be as big a deal. It will take more time-- much more than it should, but fundamental change is inevitable.

 

well yeah, as im fond of reminding people, religions change like any other element of culture, they just change really slowly, and catholicism is even less responsive than some other religions. like, the mormons are probably going to beat catholics to this one, not gonna lie

in 30076 AD Space Pope Arcturus CXXII will declare to the remaining 23 members of Holy Interstellar Mother Church that gay people are "probably not all that bad"

 

I really hope they aren't still around by then

 

In two hundred years, Earth religions will be virtually gone. Star Trek predicts the future, folks!

 

im 99% certain humans will not exist that long. that sentence was originally gonna be a warhammer 40k microparody but i got lazy

"In Nomeni Patri Et Fili Spiritus Sancti... BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!" ~Space Anti-Pope Urban LVI The Despoiler, Betrayer of the Lamb, offering communion

 

I was tempted to post my reply in the Pope-watch thread because I think the focus is a bit too zeroed in on homosexuality, the synod also addressed issues like birth control, cohabitation, and divorce.

KW hit the nail on the head, the synod wasn't going to completely overturn decades and centuries of dogma on these issues in one fell swoop. Like KW said, too many of the Bishops and Cardinals were appointed by JPII, who picked almost exclusively social conservatives (how they ever voted for Francis is beyond me). The more important thing, I think, is the openness with which the synod was conducted, and the inclusion of so many lay voices. There's a German expression, "Der Weg ist das Ziel", in English "The way/path is the goal", and I think that really applies here. More than anything, I hope Francis has a long papacy, ideally as long aas JPII's, so that he can set about bringing in more progressive cardinals and bishops.

Also, someone brought up Francis's campaigning against gay marriage in Argentina. As KW said, I think he's had a change of heart in the interim ("Who am I to judge"). I'll be blunt, I have. If you had asked me 10-15 years ago, I would have said flat out that I was against it. I'm certainly not any longer. The change is mainly due to being around gay men and women far more. I would imagine Francis, who (unlike so many others in the Church hierarchy) spends alot of time among laypeople, may have had a similar experience.

 

Francis is basically enacting John Paul I's papacy. I think he would have set the Church on a path remarkably similar to the one Francis is charting.

Francis was voted for in part because he hadn't given much indication of being what he turned out to be, and I think the change in mindset after taking office is part of that. Would he win an election now? I really don't think so. Most of the cardinals like the status quo, in no small part because most of them benefit from it.

There's no way Francis is going to have a long papacy-- he's too old for that. He's 77 years old now. The longest anyone can reasonably hope for is maybe to 85 or so, but there's no way to know how long he'll be in the kind of shape he's been in, which has been excellent, given his age. Mentally and physically, he's sharp. No guarantee it will stay that way.

The essential aspect of Francis that sets him apart from most others (particularly in the higher echelons of the Church) is his pastoral concerns, vs. doctrine and dogma. It's not difficult to imagine him mingling with everyday people, and apparently he's done that on many occasions since becoming pope (rumors have had it that he would dress as an ordinary priest on occasion and give out alms). Conversation with people comes easily to him by most accounts. That kind of stuff matters-- maybe not as much now as in the example he sets for future priests and bishops.

Remember, Francis has to deal regularly with people (both in the clergy and otherwise) who love the ritualistic aspects of the faith and who care deeply about doctrine and dogma and all of that. That's what being Catholic is about to them, and not so much about interacting with real people.

Francis certainly has a sense of humor-- he demoted Cardinal Burke to being in charge of the Knights of Malta, which is a charity-based group.

 

lol im so happy that wasnt just a rumor about burke. Obi-Zahn Kenobi are you sure we couldnt convince you to support a burke-headed anti-papacy? what if it was based in greece? what if he agreed to do a greek accent?

 

My fear KW is that once Francis is gone that the Cardinals will deliberately elect an ultra conservative Pope in retaliation who will find it much easier to enact harsh changes to undo everything Francis has tried to do.

 

also as long as we're raising the spectre of john paul I, can we talk about how francis has managed to avoid assassination this long? dude must sleep with one eye open

 

If anyone assassinated him it would vindicate everything he has said so far and he'd be a martyr.

 

yah but that's kind of the way of popes anyways. you just replace em with the next pope. like i said, it worked with JPI

 

I say Cardinal Kasper should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Now that would be an anti-pope I would get behind.

 

Here's a fun little bit

I know Illinois is atypical but our Republican candidate for Senate flip flopped his position on Gay Marriage two weeks before the election because he knew it was political suicide to keep going down that path.

It may be disingenuous but it's fun seeing a Republican(even those in a liberal state) realize that their own self-preservation hinges on supporting gay marriage.

 

I wouldn't single out Republicans. Recall that our current president and his likely successor both "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage only when it became politically untenable to be a major Democratic politician and be against it. And that wasn't more than a few years ago.

 

To be fair, you don't really become pro-gay marriage until you hit level 16 or so.

 

Oh don't get me wrong I agree wholeheartedly and I don't think anyone properly held Obama accountable for that. I'm just saying it's even more ironic and fun when a Republican, the group that is marketed as Christ's vassal for decency on earth, is forced to do it.

 

Is that a feat requiring enough ranks in Bluff?