POPE, RABBI AND GAY REALITY

I got a comment on the post GAY FRIENDSHIP AND GAY LOVE VIA CHAT like follows:

“What matters is the source of your wisdom , knowledge and understanding.. Man must not lean unto his own understanding but in all his ways, his comings and goings, acknowledge HIM and HE will direct your path, and he is THE CREATOR OF THIS UNIVERSE. God despises homosexuality. It’s sickening and disgusting. Satan bought that sin into the world. He came to kill, maim, and destroy mankind. You have free will. You have a choice. Go to the BIBLE it’s the true source and the road map to everlasting LIFE. SATAN IS A DECEIVER…..Peace and Light…..”

Of course everyone is free to believe what in his eyes looks better, but the use of judging reality on the basis of the Bible led to the Inquisition, to the torture and to the  burning at the stake those who, following their conscience, think differently.

Already in the statutes of the city of Bologna, in 1259, citizens were urged to denounce the sodomites and the sodomites themselves were punished with exile, while those who offered hospitality to homosexuals in their home where punished with death.

Throughout the thirteenth century, laws promulgated in Germany, France and Switzerland punish homosexuals condemning them to the stake. In 1277, in Basel, Emperor Rudolph does burn a homosexual at the stake, and this practice is also attested in some regions of France. In 1293, in Italy is attested the first sentence to the stake against a homosexual, when Charles II of Anjou does impale and burn at the stake the Count of Acerra, accused of sodomy, although the reasons underlying were purely political in nature.

In Siena the constitution condemned homosexuals surprised to commit acts “against nature” to a fine of 300 pounds, and to the hanging by the genitals “in the event of non-payment.”

The Papal State punished pimps, who offered guys for money, with lashes and perpetual exile, while sodomites were burned at the stake.

Throughout the fourteenth century, the death penalty through the stake is adopted throughout Italy, and will be maintained in the fifteenth century. In Milan under the Sforza, people who denounced homosexuals were rewarded with money. In Venice in the early fifteenth century a scandal that involved in questions related to sodomy the highest offices of the “Serenissima Republic” caused a violent repression of homosexuality.

A special case is the Florentine republic, where until 1400 homosexuals were not punished with the stake, but with monetary fines joined with the “castration” and the cutting of the right hand if the offender was relapsed. However, they were burned at the stake foreigners who committed sodomitical acts during their passage in the Florentine territory. In 1430, following an unpleasant event that shook public opinion, even the law of Florence became more severe, with higher fines but burning at the stake was only required in case of recidivism.

I don’t know if these are ways to oppose against the work of Satan and comply with God’s will, frankly, I think these things are horrendous crimes of homophobia that have been masked under the guise of law, as unfortunately happens in some countries also today.

What is certain is that religions have in all this a great responsibility because contributed to incite hatred against homosexuals and continue to do so. Saints such as St. Peter Damian and theologians as the Bishop of Worms Burchard have supported and encouraged with their attitude, anticipating the Inquisition, hatred against homosexuals. I invite you to read an article of this blog dedicated to Liber Gomorrhianus of St. Peter Damian.

I quote here below the passages more interesting for Homosexual Persons of the Message of Benedict XVI for the World Day of Peace XLVI, 1 January 2013, on the theme: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

“Even the natural structure of marriage must be recognized and promoted as a union between a man and a woman, compared to attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role.

These principles are not truths of faith, or are just a tap of the right to religious freedom. They are inscribed in human nature itself, identified with reason, and therefore they are common to all mankind. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, regardless of their religious affiliation. Such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offense against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice and peace.”

After reading such statements it is natural to wonder if freedom itself constitutes “an offense against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice and peace.”

But the positions radically discriminatory against homosexuality are frequent, I quote just an example. In late 2008, the Holy See has taken a position strongly opposed to the project of a universal decriminalization of homosexuality presented at the UN on the initiative of the French Presidency of the European Union, and accepted by all 27 European Union countries. According to the Holy See it is legitimate that homosexuality is prosecuted as a crime.

But the discriminatory attitude doesn’t belong exclusively to the Catholic Church. The Chief Rabbi of France argued that the recognition of gay couples is “at the expense of the public interest and for the benefit of a tiny minority.” The speech of the Chief Rabbi was widely quoted in “Osservatore Romano” (the newspaper of the Holy See) and also the Pope quoted some excerpts of that speech.

For those who think that freedom and equality in a moral dimension but absolutely secular and independent of revealed truths of any kind, are the foundation of any civil society, the idea that someone can promote a crusade against the recognition of the rights of others is unacceptable.

Among other things, the speech of the Pope and that of Chief Rabbi are not limited to the adoption but aim immediately, in Italy and in France, to avoid the legal recognition of same-sex couples, which is really inexcusable outside a confessional logic.

At the base of the speeches of the Chief Rabbi and of the Pope there is the assumption that the Bible is the foundation of anthropology, that the world is not as it really is, but as it is described in the Bible and that the world should conform to what the Bible says, statements that to a layman are absolutely immoral.

To say that gay rights are “at the expense of the public interest and for the benefit of a tiny minority” is completely gratuitous, because homosexuality is an anthropological absolutely objective and undeniable reality (gays exist even if someone does not like them and are not a tiny minority) and if someone consider gays as a “tiny minority” he probably doesn’t even know exactly what he is talking about and simply repeats dogmatically what the Bible says as if the Bible and not the reality was the basis of anthropology and of civilized life.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=95

GAYS AND JUDGMENTS OF U.S. SUPREME COURT

This article aims to highlight how in less than twenty years the legal status of gay people in the U.S. has been radically changed. We start from the XIV Amendment.

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U.S. CONSTITUTION - AMENDMENT XIV - SECTION 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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The amendment subordinates the State’s right to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, to the condition that it takes place with due process of law. This is not easy to understand for an European like I’m because in the European Union the death penalty is prohibited by constitutional laws. But here we must deal with the legal status of gay people in the U.S.. The clause of due process under the fourteenth amendment has traditionally been relied on by gay people as a basis for the recognition of their rights in the U.S..

The judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in the process “Bowers versus Hardwick”, 478 U.S. 186, called shortly Bowers judgment, delivered on 10.06.1986

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0478_0186_ZS.html ), considered the charge made to the Statute of Georgia according to which it would violate individual rights through condemnation of sodomy between consenting adult males, concluded that:

1) The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy. None of the fundamental rights announced in this Court’s prior cases involving family relationships, marriage, or procreation bear any resemblance to the right asserted in this case. And any claim that those cases stand for the proposition that any kind of private sexual conduct between consenting adults is constitutionally insulated from state proscription is unsupportable.

2) Against a background in which many States have criminalized sodomy and still do, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” is, at best, facetious.

3) There should be great resistance to expand the reach of the Due Process Clauses to cover new fundamental rights.

4) The fact that homosexual behavior occurs in the intimacy of a private home doesn’t matter at all.

5) Sodomy laws should not be invalidated on the asserted basis that majority belief that sodomy is immoral is an inadequate rationale to support the laws.

With this judgment of June 1986, in practice the Supreme Court considers legitimate the laws of individual states that criminalize specific sexual practices or discriminate against homosexuality as such.

I reproduce below the fundamental judgment LAWRENCE versus TEXAS that in a social climate profoundly changed has radically overturned the earlier decision of 1986.

(http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZS.html)

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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

LAWRENCE et al. v. TEXAS

CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, FOURTEENTH DISTRICT

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No. 02—102. Argued March 26, 2003–Decided June 26, 2003

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Responding to a reported weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered petitioner Lawrence’s apartment and saw him and another adult man, petitioner Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Petitioners were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held, inter alia, that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court considered Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, controlling on that point.

Held: The Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. Pp. 3—18.

(a) Resolution of this case depends on whether petitioners were free as adults to engage in private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. For this inquiry the Court deems it necessary to reconsider its Bowers holding. The Bowers Court’s initial substantive statement–“The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy … ,” 478 U.S., at 190–discloses the Court’s failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it said that marriage is just about the right to have sexual intercourse. Although the laws involved in Bowers and here purport to do not more than prohibit a particular sexual act, their penalties and purposes have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. They seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. Pp. 3—6.

(b) Having misapprehended the liberty claim presented to it, the Bowers Court stated that proscriptions against sodomy have ancient roots. 478 U.S., at 192. It should be noted, however, that there is no longstanding history in this country of laws directed at homosexual conduct as a distinct matter. Early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit nonprocreative sexual activity more generally, whether between men and women or men and men. Moreover, early sodomy laws seem not to have been enforced against consenting adults acting in private. Instead, sodomy prosecutions often involved predatory acts against those who could not or did not consent: relations between men and minor girls or boys, between adults involving force, between adults implicating disparity in status, or between men and animals. The longstanding criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy upon which Bowers placed such reliance is as consistent with a general condemnation of nonprocreative sex as it is with an established tradition of prosecuting acts because of their homosexual character. Far from possessing “ancient roots,” ibid., American laws targeting same-sex couples did not develop until the last third of the 20th century. Even now, only nine States have singled out same-sex relations for criminal prosecution. Thus, the historical grounds relied upon in Bowers are more complex than the majority opinion and the concurring opinion by Chief Justice Burger there indicated. They are not without doubt and, at the very least, are overstated. The Bowers Court was, of course, making the broader point that for centuries there have been powerful voices to condemn homosexual conduct as immoral, but this Court’s obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate its own moral code, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 850. The Nation’s laws and traditions in the past half century are most relevant here. They show an emerging awareness that liberty gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 857. Pp. 6—12.

(c) Bowers’ deficiencies became even more apparent in the years following its announcement. The 25 States with laws prohibiting the conduct referenced in Bowers are reduced now to 13, of which 4 enforce their laws only against homosexual conduct. In those States, including Texas, that still proscribe sodomy (whether for same-sex or heterosexual conduct), there is a pattern of nonenforcement with respect to consenting adults acting in private. Casey, supra, at 851–which confirmed that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education–and Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 624–which struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals–cast Bowers’ holding into even more doubt. The stigma the Texas criminal statute imposes, moreover, is not trivial. Although the offense is but a minor misdemeanor, it remains a criminal offense with all that imports for the dignity of the persons charged, including notation of convictions on their records and on job application forms, and registration as sex offenders under state law. Where a case’s foundations have sustained serious erosion, criticism from other sources is of greater significance. In the United States, criticism of Bowers has been substantial and continuing, disapproving of its reasoning in all respects, not just as to its historical assumptions. And, to the extent Bowers relied on values shared with a wider civilization, the case’s reasoning and holding have been rejected by the European Court of Human Rights, and that other nations have taken action consistent with an affirmation of the protected right of homosexual adults to engage in intimate, consensual conduct. There has been no showing that in this country the governmental interest in circumscribing personal choice is somehow more legitimate or urgent. Stare decisis is not an inexorable command. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 828. Bowers’ holding has not induced detrimental reliance of the sort that could counsel against overturning it once there are compelling reasons to do so. Casey, supra, at 855—856. Bowers causes uncertainty, for the precedents before and after it contradict its central holding. Pp. 12—17.

(d) Bowers’ rationale does not withstand careful analysis. In his dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice Stevens concluded that (1) the fact a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice, and (2) individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of “liberty” protected by due process. That analysis should have controlled Bowers, and it controls here. Bowers was not correct when it was decided, is not correct today, and is hereby overruled. This case does not involve minors, persons who might be injured or coerced, those who might not easily refuse consent, or public conduct or prostitution. It does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. Petitioners’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention. Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the individual’s personal and private life. Pp. 17—18.

41 S. W. 3d 349, reversed and remanded.

    Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. O’Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Thomas, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=79