The Pope Said What!?

The Pope recently said that gay marriage is, "an insidious and dangerous threat to the common good."

Seriously?

I'm tempted to bring up the fact that the Pope continues to judge others when he can't prevent his own employees from abusing children in the most vile of manners.

Not; he can't prevent his employees from stealing paper clips from the supply room, rather he can't prevent his employees from abusing children in the most vile of manners.

Look, if you want to make the argument that a child is better off being raised by a man and a woman, I will respectfully listen to your reasoning and then present my own brilliant contradictory point of view. I'll fully detail the flaws in your argument, but it's a debate worth having.

But, saying gay marriage is a, "dangerous threat to the common good," basically claims that an inherent attraction is evil. So the Catholic Church would like all homosexuals to know that their feelings, which, when acted upon, don't harm a single soul, are equivalent to constantly having the desire to spill the warm blood of stranger.

Would god really want you to deny feelings he gave you?

And the basis the Catholic Church uses to convince homosexuals to repress their feelings is an ancient book written by someone who supposedly had a direct pathway to god. "I read that someone who was really close to god, a few thousand years ago, said that god told him he wasn't a fan of homosexuality, so don't be gay, and if you are, don't get married. Seriously, live a life of misery in case the Bible happens to be factually accurate."

True, some inherent instincts shouldn't be acted upon, but only those that lead to action which results in harmed souls.

Otherwise it makes absolutely no sense to deny your desires.

The following is the conclusion to which the Vatican would like skeptical homosexuals to come... "Maybe the authors of the Bible were correct in saying that god declared homosexuality a sin. It's impossible to say for certain and makes no logical sense that following my desire to spend my life with a member of the same sex is morally unjust. But, I suppose I should go with what my forefathers claimed to be the word of god, based on a claim by their forefathers, based on a claim by their forefathers, based on a claim by their forefathers, etc,."

Discipline can be a very good thing, but only when the result of exhibiting discipline is positive. If you don't eat that extra piece of cake you'll have a wardrobe full of pants you can button without breaking a sweat. Don't purchase that $500 pair of shoes and you'll have enough money to pay the phone bill. Don't have a lasting relationship with a member of the same sex and... um, well...

Though heterosexual sex can also lead to disease, many Christians claim AIDS was god's way of proving that he despises homosexuality.

But what if AIDS was god's way of pointing out the bad Christians?

Of course I believe there is no god, but for the sake of this piece, I will take on the point of view of a deist.

If there were a single god, he or she would not be the god of a specific religion and therefore choose to honor only those who abided by the common sense version of good versus evil, as opposed to a (man-written) holy book version of good versus evil.

He would favor those who couldn't fathom a horrible disease being punishment for following ones inherent desires.

Those who said, "Yes, that homosexual died a horrible death as a result of acting upon the true love he felt for a member of the same sex," would be judged as the worst of the worst.

Let's discuss the three types of people listed below...

Tier One: People who don't believe in god and therefore claim any activity that does not harm a fellow human being is acceptable.

Tier Two: People who believe in god but don't argue that he or she would punish homosexuals in such a way, or that god would ever declare spending a lifetime with a person to whom you're attracted, regardless of sex, to be a sin.

Tier Three: People who believe god would punish homosexuals with horrendous deaths simply due to the fact that they acted upon attractions to members of the same sex.

The tier three individual spends a lifetime thinking the tier one and two people are in trouble, when, in reality, the tier three person's intolerance would cause a truly just god to frown down upon them with great vengeance.

Being an atheist, I think no one will suffer a horrible fate. That's both comforting and sad. To the disappointment of Christians; a homosexual will not burn in hell for his or her supposed sins. To the disappointment of me; Adolf Hitler is not burning in hell for his egregious sins.

But that's the beauty of the earth. Humanity is given the chance to prevent madmen like Hitler from achieving their goals. We must stand up for each other in the name of universal good, because every religion waiting for their god to make things right hasn't exactly been working out.

The truth is; homosexuality is not an insidious and dangerous threat to the common good.

People who believe in god are not insidious and dangerous threats to the common good.

Organized religion on the other hand...