I'm sorry, Mark, but I have to make a citizen's arrest on behalf of the metaphor police.
Imagine Don Knotts' voice:
"Citizen's Arrest! Citizen's Arrest!"
Mark: just stop the madness. 
The Belgian bishops' conference said Cardinal Joos was speaking in a private capacity and that it did not have the power to reprimand the cardinal because he was answerable directly to the Vatican.
So are we to assume that if they could slap him down, they would? Great.
Joos' remarks were "impolitic". I can imagine other bureaucrats cringing at the bluntness because bureaucrats have an allergy to bluntness. The point, however, is that his speech was not a hate crime, however, acoustically discomforting it was.
The real tragedy here is that the good cardinal is too old to vote for the next pope.
Cases like this have caused me to re-consider the "tolerance" with which I have, for years, addressed this issue. Obviously, since their response to tolerance is to demand "acceptance", then to quash any dissent from their new orthodoxy, the original position of tolerance must be flawed.
I cannot imagine what form "intolerance" would take. Obviously, violence is absolutely not an option. And it isn't the homosexual who is not to be tolerated, but the "homosexualist", who may well be heterosexual.
Amazing, isn't it, how the revealed truth of the Catholic Faith are whole and entire? How there are connections between the truth about human character and how the sequence of deviations from the truth unfold in society? I certainly never discerned many of these connection. But there they are, and they show up every time we are unfortunate enough to be living in a society that is running the experiment of rejecting the wholeness of the Truth.
As the saying among counterrevolutionaries goes: "The worse, the better."
The more insane the brownshirt tactics get, the easier it is for rational folk to see them for what they are.
It's just too bad that so many heroes like Joos have to get lynched in the process.
And being Flemish and 80 years old, he's probably old enough to remember what happened the last time the Nazis rolled through Flanders... it's too bad no one else in Belgium is.
I don't get it: 5 - 10 percent of people who identify as lesbian and gay are effectively lesbian and gay, and the *the rest* are sexual perverts?
I realize it's not kind to label all people who struggle with SSA sexual perverts, but I still don't get it. By "sexual perverts", does he mean people who are just playing at SSA?
I read a newspaper article about this cardinal a week or so ago. My husband and I were both confused and wondered if the cardinal was pro-homosexuality (condemning people who aren't *real* lesbians/gays). I guess he's not, but I'm still confused.
I think he means that a majority are doing it as a fashion statment. Some for one reason or another have a genuine attraction to the same sex and others, like my husbands friend at work, do not. In case your wondering, he claims that he became gay after an encounter with a woman from a bar and a (mmhhmm)noise. And so he became gay. its not really an attraction its just a hole for him.
I think the cardinal is simply stating that if someone had SSA why does that have to translate into overly flamboyant behavior? He has presumably seen such behavor from a large number of individuals who claim to be gay.
Interestingly enough, I saw an interview with Gene Robinson last night and if I understood correctly he was trying to claim that homosexual behavior as a perversion is what the Bible explicitly condemns, while loving homosexual relationships, stemming from homosexuality as an *orientation*, are just as beautiful in God's eyes as heterosexual relationships.
'Course the cardinal is stating that both of these situations would be morally wrong-- plus he makes a good point about flamboyant sexual behavior. I still think it may be a little more complicated than calling them 'perverts', but I would agree that they have a serious problem.
At any rate, I'm just wondering when this latest Euro-fad of oppresion of free speech is going to make it across the ocean.
I wonder about the statement in the article that cardinal "repeated the Church's teaching that...homesexuality is a sin...." I imagine it's a mistake on the reporter's part, but that's not an accurate reflection of Church doctrine.
ON the bright side (there is one?), I look at all these social shenanigans the way pharmaceutical companies test their drugs on third world countries (not that I approve what they do). Let these poisonous ideas wreak havoc in another society before we try them out here. Funny how when it is a drug company pushing drugs in the 3rd world, the left is all up in arms. My fear is that many will see the "havoc" as "progress" and the lesson will not be learned. We already have "hate crime" laws in this country which are absolutely nothing more than thought police. Even the Left Wing, not the most conservative show on earth, had one lucid moment when president Bartlett Pear questioned the validity of such laws. Even some of the left see it.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes clear that, through judicial activism and many of its other activities, the left has completely abandoned any notion that the end cannot justify the means.
Hate the sin, love the sinner is a little too nuanced for most media types.
Don't imagine Don Knotts, It was Jim Nabors, playing the character Gomer Pyle. As deputy, Barney Fife, wouldn't have needed to make a citizen's arrest.
Just a quick note to Adam M: the suppression of free speech regarding this topic has already made it to Canada, where a teacher has already been accused of violating anti-discrimination laws for openly disapproving of Canada's decision on same-sex unions.
First of all, the "good" Cardinal is a jerk: he can read the souls of those 90-95% of gays he says aren't gays (nice trick), he seems to have an aversion to democracy (all too common amongst superannuated Euro-clerics) and a trip or two to the brothel seems ok to him. (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/22/
1074732539474.html) ...thanks to web.morons.org
But even jerks have rights, and I believe suing anyone over an expression of opinion is wrong and oppressive.
Of course, as member of a recognized religious organization, tax dollars go to support Joos, making him a government employee. So, while I re-write the Belgian Constitution, I’ll get rid of any suppression of free speech, any establishment of religion, that silly monarchy.... or (radical idea) perhaps we should let the Belgians deal with Belgian problems.
After all, they aren't getting their knickers in a twist over our supression of speech (and common sense) by banning evolution in the schools.(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/
education/30GEOR.html?pagewanted=2&th)
Gotta love those Brownshirts - gay or Christian.
Brian:
I agree actually. I think the Cardinal's comments were dumb. I don't think they were criminal. And the attempt to criminalize them is far more serious than the comments themselves.
And I've not read the evolution piece. Is anybody really trying to "ban" the teaching? Or are they merely trying to say that there are other views of the origins of the universe and life?
Mark,
The article implies that no one is trying to outright ban the teaching of evolution but to remove the word from the curriculum and de-emphasize the age of the earth.
Opponents of this move (and scientists in general) tend to agree that there are other possibilities to the origins of life and the universe. However, most alternative evidence comes from Biblical texts which have no place in a biology classroom. If creationism could stand the test of the scientific method then a science class should teach it.
I also think it's a misconception of the term "evolution" which the proponent of the ban calls "a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction." The scientific community shies away from anything definitive about man evolving from apes (although it's generally accepted). But evolution, molecular and macromolecular, most definitely occurs. And the earth is most definitely older than 7000yrs; two facts they are trying to de-emphasize. Scary, if you ask me.
God help us all if being or saying anything dumb is allowed to stand as a crime!
Here is a quote from the article,
"A handful of states already omit the word "evolution" from their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it "a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction." She added that people often associate it with "that monkeys-to-man sort of thing."
Still, Ms. Cox, who was elected to the post in 2002, said the concept would be taught, as well as "emerging models of change" that challenge Darwin's theories. "Galileo was not considered reputable when he came out with his theory," she said.
Much of the state's 800-page curriculum was adopted verbatim from the "Standards for Excellence in Education," an academic framework produced by the Council for Basic Education, a nonprofit group. But when it came to science, the Georgia Education Department omitted large chunks of material, including references to Earth's age and the concept that all organisms on Earth are related through common ancestry. "Evolution" was replaced with "changes over time," and in another phrase that referred to the "long history of the Earth," the authors removed the word "long." Many proponents of creationism say Earth is at most several thousand years old, based on a literal reading of the Bible."
My (public school) biology teacher did acknowledge that some people felt the theory of evolution was incorrect, a point affirmed by some of the students. But he maintained control of the class so that the discussion didn't spin off into theology or metaphysics and, when he told us that we weren't required to believe in evolution but we were required to know it for the test, he gave most of us all the information we needed to know 
If that's the case, then these people are silly. The earth is not 7000 years old, for cryin' out loud.
What's the hubbub? The suit hasn't even been taken up by a court yet, much less tried and won.
Um, the point, Larry, is that there's a suit at all.
A frivolous suit without legal merit is not exactly a threat to civilization. I anticipate even the loopy Belgian courts will dismiss it. Also, it's a civil suit, so in the very remote possibility that it's won, it won't have much impact.
Why would you assume that a state which has legalised euthanasia and 'gay marriage' is unlikely to prosecute and punish Cardinal Joos?
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