Phobe probe

‘Thank God!’  This was the fervent reaction, not to prayers answered or a religious miracle, or even divine intervention.  Rather, it was the response to the Pope’s resignation by a Facebook site called Homophobia Kills.

Why was the site so happy with the church leader’s resignation, contrary to the dismay and shock expressed by the rest of the Catholic world? Simple.  Because it is its thesis that the Pope (now ex) is homophobic.  This may be a revelation to some, but Pope Benedict’s many pronouncements on gays and lesbians have been reviewed and scrutinized, and the conclusion derived was, he is a homophobe.

So how did they arrive at this? Consider his pronouncements in December 2008, where he pontificated that homosexuality was as much a threat to humanity as was environmental degradation.  In this same year, the United Nations had wanted to approve a resolution condemning countries which still had criminal laws punishing homosexuality.  Guess which political entity opposed that resolution? The Vatican.

Even before he became the Pope, Joseph Ratzinger had already aired his view that homosexuality was ‘intrinsically evil’.  So it wasn’t a big surprise for him to have stuck to his view when he became this much closer to God.

That wasn’t all of it.  In May 2010, the Pope was in Portugal when he reportedly proclaimed that marriage between persons of the same sex were one of the ‘most dangerous threats to the common good’.  Even in Christmas 2012, just last year, his cheery Christmas message was that gay marriage was a threat to world peace, much like euthanasia and abortion.

Not content with spreading Christmas goodwill, the Pope also met with Ugandan leader Rebecca Kadaga, whose most endearing achievement as a member of parliament has been to propose that gay men should be put to death.  (This was her promised Christmas present to the people of Uganda).  The Vatican later denied that the Pope endorsed the views of Kadaga, although the denial came too late, as media in Uganda had already reported that Kadaga had received the Pope’s blessing.

All of these incidents were fertile ground for the site’s thesis that the Pope is indeed homophobic, to the extent even that the logo the site uses is Pope Benedict’s picture.  Now that the Pope has come and gone, what does the site now intend to do?  Well, they’ve been scrutinizing, much like the rest of the world has, the credentials of the cardinal candidates, and trying to see where this or that candidate falls in the scheme of things.

That landed me in hot water, because I was asked, what’s the position of Cardinal Tagle, the Philippine candidate to the papacy, to homosexuality?  Is he pro, con, friendly, anti, phobic or rabid?  Well, frankly, I do not know.  I don’t keep tabs on the Philippine Catholic church.  I rely on media to tell me the latest scandals on the church, which seem to come year in and year out, with seemingly clockwork regularity.

(So, before this, there was that Bishop Broderick Pabillo who pronounced the startling verdict that the flash floods that killed, hundreds, if not thousands in Mindanao was God’s way of showing his displeasure over the Reproductive Health bill.  Then before that, there was that Monsignor that had a healthy appetite for smuggled ivory, and who gleefully recounted his tale to a National Geographic reporter, in  what can only be characterized as aiding and abetting.  Then before that, there were the Roman Catholic nuns who thwarted a judge’s order to let some students march during graduation by deploying a tactic called a ‘gatepass’.)

Is it time then to examine where Cardinal Tagle lies on the spectrum?  Even as of now, other candidates have been sized up, with black candidate Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson found by publication The Sunday Guardian to be both anti-gay and anti-Islam.  Let’s see what the investigative journalists come up with on Tagle.  Hopefully Tagle isn’t the next poster boy for Homophobia Kills.