Vatican: Gays Better Dead than Wed

In more than 85 nations around the globe homosexuality is still criminalized. In many of these countries - Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Yemen, to name a few -  gays and lesbians face execution if their sexual orientation is discovered.  Even in U.S. occupied Iraq, gays are frequently targeted by roaming death squads while government officials look the other way. The Los Angeles Times reports that in October of 2005, Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, issued a fatwa on his website forbidding homosexuality and declaring that gays and lesbians should "be killed in the worst, most severe way." And in January of this year a special U.N. report cited the existence of "religious courts, supervised by clerics, where homosexuals allegedly would be tried, sentenced to death and then executed." 

Recognizing that so many countries are still hostile toward their LGBT citizens, France's State Secretary for Human Rights Rama Yada has presented a U.N. resolution calling on governments worldwide to decriminalize homosexuality.  The resolution was promptly denounced by Middle Eastern potentates, Islamic extremists, and...  the Holy See in Rome!  From Reuters News:  Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would "add new categories of those protected from discrimination" and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage. "If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations," Migliore said. "For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure," Migliore said.  So, the Pope is so worried about the possibility of same-sex marriage (which has hardly taken the world by storm) that he would rather have gays and lesbians executed than get hitched?  It should be noted that the French resolution, supported by all 27 members of the European Union, has nothing to do with gay marriage. It merely strives to eradicate jail time and the death penalty for people based on their real or perceived sexual orientation. As one ProPup commenter pointed out in an earlier post, the Catholic Church isn't exactly known for standing up for human rights, as evidenced by its la-de-dah attitude when Hitler was busy gassing the Jews.