A Vatican representative to the United Nations spoke out Tuesday against “attacks” on freedom of conscience and religion directed against Catholics and others who hold traditional beliefs about sexual morality and human nature.
Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, spoke out in a March 22 meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling attention to what he described as a “disturbing trend” in debates over social life and human rights.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behavior between people of the same sex,” Archbishop Tomasi told the council. “When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature, which may also be expressions of religious convictions, or state opinions about scientific claims, they are stigmatized, and worse ”“ they are vilified, and prosecuted.”
“But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behaviour to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.” From the Pastoral letter to the Bishops of the United States on the Care of Homosexual person.
The article doesn’t give any instances of what the archbishop has in mind. Stigmatized and vilified — yes, and that’s terrible. But I don’t know of any cases in the West where someone has been prosecuted for expressing an orthodox Christian opinion. There may be, but I don’t know of any.
Jon,
There a very recent case in the U.K. concerning a devoutly
Christian couple who were not allowed to provide a foster home
for children because they refused to teach their charges that
homosexuality is a good thing. Here’s the link :
http://www.thetrumpet.com/?q=8053.6679.0.0
This is a de facto prosecution for expressing orthodox
Christian beliefs.
There was also a couple in New Mexico who declined to have their business hired to photograph the union ceremony of a lesbian couple who were ordered by the state Human Rights Commission to pay a penalty of roughly $6K. The link is [url=http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=75547]here[/url]. Then there are these: [i]Yeshiva University, a conservative Jewish university in New York City, which was ordered to allow same-sex couples to live in its married student housing. Catholic Charities decided to discontinue adoption services in Massachusetts after they were ordered to place children with same-sex couples. A lesbian couple prevailed in their complaint against a psychologist in Mississippi who refused to counsel them. A Methodist retreat center in New Jersey lost the tax exemption on a building when they declined to allow a lesbian couple to hold their “marriage” ceremony at the facility[/i], which is from [url=http://www.opposingviews.com/i/same-sex-marriage-laws-jeopardize-religious-freedom-experts-say]here[/url]. There certainly are others, as well. Jon – I think there are a number of notable cases, if you look for them – they just don’t make a lot of headlines – whether that’s “liberal media bias”, a “conspiracy of the left” or it’s just deemed that the public isn’t interested, I don’t really know.
First Things had an article a few months ago about the kangaroo courts that are the Canadian provincial human rights commission. The author was a professor at Magill University. Scary reading.
My feeling is that it’s always a bad thing to use language in a way that implies one thing when that thing is not actually the case.
The archbishop seems to be saying that individual Christians are expressing opinions (with an orthodox Christian content) and then are, in some cases, being prosecuted for the crime of expressing those opinions. That is, arrested and put on trial for simply expressing the opinion.
Does anybody know of cases where that is happening? There actually may be cases of it in the EU (where silencing minority speech is constitutional) — so my question is an honest one.