Posthuman Blues

Pope Calls Gay Marriage Part of 'Ideology of Evil'

"Homosexual marriages are part of 'a new ideology of evil' that is insidiously threatening society, Pope John Paul says in a new book published Tuesday." (Via CP.)

Boy, I must be missing something. It seems to me that if there's an "ideology of evil" at work in the world, it's behind our unheeding destruction of our atmosphere.

Or the mentality that allows corporations to fling their pollutants into the water supply without fear of reprisal.

Or the thoughtless use of depleted uranium that threatens to haunt war survivors with generations of deformed offspring.

Take your goddamned pick.

Our planet is experiencing a near-exponential rise in temperature due to anthropogenic climate change. Whole communities are being uprooted as the environment inexorably worsens.

The United States, while lambasting the use of fictional weapons of mass destruction in the Persian Gulf, stealthily upgrades its bioweapons arsenal with a genetically altered smallpox virus.

Mass extinction, genocide . . . and John Paul has the gall to pick on gay marriage?

It probably goes without saying that I don't find any fault whatsoever with gay marriage. I don't think there's anything vaguely objectionable about it, and suspect those who do harbor issues they'd rather not discuss (openly, at least). So when an "authority" like the Pope regurgitates this xenophobic shit, words like "senility" and even "delusional" come to mind.

I've never been a fan of religion; the Vatican is no exception. I'm reminded of Timothy Leary's observation that the Catholic Church arguably kills more human beings than it saves through its missionary work in Africa: What good is coming to the aid of victims of famine and grinding poverty if you preach the evils of birth control, thereby ensuring a new crop of the homeless and starving?

The Pope is trafficking memes just like everyone else. But there's no wisdom here, no empathy, no attempt to address the psychopathology of imminent cataclysm. His condemnation of gay marriage is a feeble bit of nastiness from an old man who doesn't seem to realize our time is running out. If we're to make the evolutionary cut, we need to dispense with our adoration for leaders -- religious, political and otherwise -- and to hell with offending others with inconvenient truths.