Cardinal: Gays "Will Never Enter The Kingdom Of God"

In direct violation of Catholic doctrine, a leading cardinal has insisted that being gay is a choice and that those who choose to be gay are thereby excluded from God's kingdom. Benedict's church is slowly reversing the reforms of the 1970s that saw gay persons as made in the image of God and inherently not sinful, as long as they remained celibate and lived alone their entire lives. It began with Benedict's own policy of insisting that even celibate gays cannot become priests because they are mentally or psychologically "disordered." The creation of a class of sub-human humans - the early medieval Catholic approach to Jews and sodomites - is making a comeback.

One also notes that the new Ugandan bill that would begin to treat gays as sub-human threats to be identified, informed on, jailed and executed has met no resistance from Pope Benedict XVI. Since the largest religious group in Uganda is Catholic, one has to take Benedict's silence in the face of this proposed Nazi-style law against homosexuals to be consent. The Ugandan Anglican church - closely allied with American Christianists - has this position:

The Anglican Church of Uganda on Nov. 6 issued a press release saying that it is studying the bill and does not yet have an official position on the proposed legislation. However, the release restated the Ugandan church's position that "homosexual behavior is immoral and should not be promoted, supported, or condoned in any way as an 'alternative lifestyle.'"

And AllAfrica.com reported Oct. 29 that the church's provincial secretary told the Monitor newspaper in Kampala, Uganda, that jailing homosexuals was preferable to executing them. "If you kill the people, to whom will the message go? We need to have imprisonment for life if the person is still alive," said the Rev. Canon Aaron Mwesigye, according to the website.

The origin of this law came from American Christianists as much as Ugandans:

Both opponents and supporters agree that the impetus for the bill came in March during a seminar in Kampala to 'expose the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda'.

The main speakers were three US evangelists: Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge....

The seminar was organised by Stephen Langa, a Ugandan electrician turned pastor who runs the Family Life Network in Kampala and has been spreading the message that gays are targeting schoolchildren for 'conversion'. 'They give money to children to recruit schoolmates – once you have two children, the whole school is gone,' he said in an interview. Asked if there had been any court case to prove this was happening, he replied: 'No, that's why this law is needed.'

(Scott Lively is the author of a book claiming that Nazism itself was a homosexual plot. But he insists that he believes the Ugandan law is too punitive and opposes it, which gives him more moral authority than Rick Warren.)

In the West, core constitutional protections prevent the rounding up, jailing and execution of a tiny minority simply for being public or for mere touching of one another. In a country like Uganda, no such protections exist. And so you see what many Christianists really believe: the terrorization of a minority that offends religious authority and majority prejudice.