Saturday, January 13, 2007

Masculinity, Femininity, and the Pope

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - About 150 Italian gays demonstrated in the Vatican on Saturday against Pope Benedict's opposition to gay marriage, on the anniversary of the protest suicide of a gay man in St Peter's Square nine years ago.

Men and women from the Italian gay association Arcigay and other groups waved rainbow flags and banners saying "No to the Taliban! No to the Vatican!," according to a Reuters witness.

Other banners urged Italy to offer legal recognition to gay and unmarried couples, an issue dividing the current centre-left government and stoking tension between leftists and the Vatican.

Pope Benedict has said in recent addresses that such changes would support "those ruinous theories that strip all relevance from the masculinity and femininity of the human being."

Some Arcigay members laid flowers at the spot in St Peter's Square where writer Alfredo Ormando doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in 1998, in protest at the Vatican's stance against gays. He died of his burns nine days later. ~End Article

Commentary: It sounds to me like the Pope stops just short of saying that women should behave feminine, and men should behave masculine. Is it just me that sees his statement that way? Now I already know where the Catholic Church stands with the gay community, but what about all those people who are crossing those gender behavior lines and are straight? Should society still frown on them and try to get them to act more like their own sex? Oh, to be infallible...

2 comments:

Ryan said...

Of course that's what he implied - and how a lot of people feel. They think that if they let their boys play with dolls and girls with Tonka Trucks, they're going to have a bunch of nancies and butch lesbians. Of course, it's horribly flawed thinking, but some people haven't quite grasped the fact that you can't turn people gay, or de-gay-ify them for that matter.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your work for equality and for popping your head in on the "Defend [Dominate] The Faith" blog and for blogging about this topic. I'm going to add you to my bookmarks. Please see the Equality Loudoun piece "Abstract Model of Gender Bipolarity". It elaborates a bit more than you have here.