I still get emails from change.org, even though they banned me a long time ago. Sometimes their petitions amuse me. Sometimes I actually agree with them. I did find the following petition rather curious:
My name is Nicholas Coppola. I’m a Catholic. And I’m gay. For more than 5 years, this wasn’t a problem. I taught Sunday school; I helped people grieve at funerals; I served Communion; I gave readings at Mass. Members of my parish knew that I was gay, and they accepted me.
Then after a Mass in January, I was told that, at the direction of my Bishop, I was no longer welcome to help with or volunteer in the church in any way. Just because I had married my partner, David.
But Cardinal Timothy Dolan — the highest ranking Catholic in America — recently spoke out to say that the Church needs to do better at listening to and supporting gay people. I don’t want to turn my back on the community I love, so I’m inviting Cardinal Dolan to break bread with my family and set an example for other Catholic leaders — including my Bishop — that they must be tolerant and accepting of gay families.
I started a petition on Change.org asking Cardinal Timothy Dolan to break bread with my family so that he can see we’re just like any other American Catholics, and shouldn’t be excluded from helping the Church. Click here to sign my petition.
I first came to the Catholic Church after an injury prevented me from continuing my job as a construction worker. Participating in the ministries at St. Anthony’s gave my life a purpose and connected me to an incredibly caring community.
I have always been open and honest about my relationship with my now-husband David, and many of our church’s parishioners even attended our wedding. Just the other day, an elderly woman came over and sat by me during Mass. She held my hand the entire time.
I’m 47, and I’d like to think I have pretty thick skin. But what if I was 15 years old and still questioning who I was? What if I saw the church treating others this way, or worse, what if I was publicly rejected by my faith community? That’s why I felt like I needed to speak out, for those young people, and with the help of GLAAD, I’m doing that with my petition.
As for the Catholic church, I’m certain that if enough change.org members sign a petition, it will abandon its belief in the Bible and embrace sexual diversity instead. In the face of all those signatures, God will surely change his mind – and so should the Catholics. If they don’t do so willingly, we can always have an inquisition, right?
But in all seriousness, perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but I was under the impression that religion is supposed to be about believing, not about democracy or consensus. Last time I checked, Christianity (including Catholicism) placed a lot of emphasis on the Bible, even to the point of believing it – at least in theory. The Bible is very clear on what it thinks of homosexual relations. In the book of Leviticus, such relations are described as an “abomination.”
I don’t think that homosexuals are that way by choice and I’m fairly certain that most religious people would not condemn a person for having those urges. But there’s a big difference between having those urges and acting upon them. And then there’s another big difference between acting upon them and actually sanctifying such a union. It’s almost as if a Jew were to complain that his synagogue rejected him because he opened a restaurant next door that specialized in pig products. I don’t blame the Catholic church for kicking him out. I would suggest that Mr. Cappola join a Buddhist temple. Or perhaps he can found his own religion.
This is like going into an Italian restaurant and demanding fried chicken nuggets and a free children’s toy. If you wanted a happy meal, why didn’t you go to the McDonald’s down the way?
I think part of this mania for things like gay marriage stems from an overpowering fear of rejection. Ditto diversity-mongering, “check your privilege,” feminism, etc. As society gets larger and more complex, people lose their traditional connections to other people. This makes many people feel “free” to behave in ways they never would have before (or would only have done in secret), but it also makes them more vulnerable since they can be “shunned” from multiple social networks for relatively trivial reasons.
If you’re a subnormal in this situation, it makes a lot of sense to agitate for non-discrimination since that may be the only way of securing yourself a place in the world. This is especially true if you can’t or won’t regulate your behavior.
Discrimination just means “recognizing a distinction or difference.” If you’re a subnormal and too many people notice how different you are from them, that will limit your opportunities in any society. But it seems like large-scale societies are more conducive to this kind of sentimentality and agitation, probably because it’s not apparent in large/complex societies how the bad behavior of one person affects other people, whereas in a small group that’s easier to see.
Look at this picture, for example. Does this strike you as a normal family? What about in this picture? These photos are part of a series called “Traditional families – who just happen to be gay” but that’s pretty much the opposite impression they actually convey. When you can’t make yourself acceptable, the next best thing is to prevent other people from not accepting you!
These pictures look to me downright artificial and scary.
My thoughts exactly! The whole photo series is probably the best argument against gay marriage/adoption that I’ve ever seen. People who look at these photos and say “Oh how lovely and normal” are either brainwashed or brain damaged.
If you click through, you’ll see the first sentence is: “Is it more difficult to discriminate against someone when you’re forced to really see them?”
No. No, it isn’t.
Kind of odd for the clergy to tell you that you cannot teach because you’re gay, when they’ve been victimizing kids for decades.
But in reality, I am rather sick of the whole gay thing. We all get discriminated against for various reasons. I am not the boss’ son or nephew, I am not connected, someone doesn’t like my hair, I am not the same alumnae as the boss, whatever. So people exclude us for various reasons. Yes, it isn’t fair in your situation, but how is it fair in mine? You could argue you have “no choice” in your gender slant, but then I can’t control all of the variables in life either. The victim thing has to go.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Dalai-Lama-Speaks-on-Gay-Sex-He-says-it-s-wrong-2836591.php
Dalai Lama Speaks on Gay Sex – “He says it’s wrong for Buddhists but not for society”
Actually, Judaism values orthopraxy over orthodoxy, if I remember right. You can be atheist but as long as you keep all 613 of those commandments, you’re still a good Jew. I knew quite a few people who said they no longer believed but keeping the traditions gave them a sense of continuity and tradition.
According to traditional Judaism you have no share in the world to come if you don’t believe in God or if you believe in more than one god. One who denies the belief in one God is called a “denier of the main thing”. This is all according to Maimonides in his famous “13 principles of faith.”
Thanks for the correction…so there is an afterlife? Do bad people go to hell and good people go to heaven just like Christianity? What about really bad people like Hitler and Stalin?
I have always been open and honest about my relationship — Nicholas Coppola
That’s the problem. He’s too “open and honest” about it. I’m sure everyone already knows. If he didn’t go around waving a flag then most people wouldn’t care.
The thing that makes me livid is radicals playing the victim card to emotionally blackmail others the way Coppola did. It’s sneaky and manipulative. I support everyone’s right to be secure in their person and property. But no one owes another person their approval or endorsement.
I have serious but simple standards. I oppose promiscuity and womanizing from heteros. And I oppose the equivalent from homos. I won’t tell homos they have to marry a woman or remain celibate. But the promiscuity has to go. If they take a room mate then it needs to be for life not months. And they shouldn’t give intimate details or show PDA’s. That’s the same standards I have for myself. I won’t criticize homos who can do that. I’ll even accept a homo who has traditional conservative values. I’m talking about serious conservative values as per Dr Haidt’s moral foundations theory. The only thing is I’d prefer they show some discretion and use first names or say “my friend” instead of “my husband”. As for these radicals, I’ve no use for them other than fertilizer.
I hope I didn’t place a pall over the discussion with my comment. It wasn’t my intention. I assure you I’d never try to force anyone to endorse it. I don’t consider it normal”. Its likely a mental condition — whether genetic or developmental I couldn’t say. I’m not exactly a fan of the practice. But I generally don’t bother others about such things unless they’re becoming a public nuisance. Which some are. As you know, I’m very much against open sexuality. But if they’re not waving the flag I generally overlook it.
Looking at twin studies, it seems like it’s mostly genetic with a small environmental factor. This factor may even be something like womb conditions, not traditional environmental factors that we may think of.
Of course it’s not normal as only about 5% of the population is homosexual. But since we can assume that there has always been this 5% gay population since the human race began, it is obviously not detrimental to our survival.
I think that many people on the left and the right blow the homosexual issue way out of proportion. It’s only 5% of the population for crying out loud. Organizations should have the right to discriminate, but unfortunately the civil rights movement stripped us of that right.
According to Greg Cochran, the most likely explanation for homosexuality is a pathogen (the germ theory) as it is highly fitness reducing. There’s a fair bit of discussion over at the West Hunter blog.
I find this “love me and everything about me” attitude disgusting. I have nothing particular against homosexuals, but no one should have to celebrate that behavior if they don’t approve.
According to Greg Cochran at
http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/biological-determinism/
large twin studies have generally shown low concordance on homosexuality between MZ twins, indicating a low level of heritability. My guess is that it probably happens in the womb, or in early development. I really don’t understand why so many on the left are obsessed with claiming that homosexuality is genetic. On the face of it, it would seem that being exclusively homosexual would be severely maladaptive, and thus unlikely to survive as a genetic condition.
The only way I can see it surviving as a genetic condition is if the “gay gene” only causes homosexuality in a small percentage of carriers (perhaps in response to specific environmental factors) and confers on evolutionary advantage on all other carrier, such as higher IQ, better health, or perhaps higher femininity in female carriers (here we restrict our view to genes that would cause male homosexuality). Still, the data suggest that genes play much less of a role in homosexuality than in IQ or personality.
They may be only 5% of the population, but they do half of the world’s child molesting.
Every year roughly equal numbers of boys and girls get sexually molested by men. (Women don’t tend to sexually molest, but to mutilate and murder instead, and often their own children.)
The men who do boys and the men who do girls are mostly gender exclusive, they rarely do both.
Half the kids (boys) get molested by a percentage of the 5%, while the other half (girls) get molested by a percentage of the 95%. The percentages (and the percentages of the percentages) are damning, and demand to be addressed.
In my opinion queer teachers are a greater danger to a boys’ healthy maturation than the “anti gay bullies” of SPLC creation.
Of my own experience, there are few crueler bullies than a cowardly effeminate 17 year old sex pervert forcing himself on a 12 year old at knifepoint.
“Homosexualism is a missionary religion, and children are their sacramentum.” (church bathroom graffiti)
That’s kind of disturbing church bathroom graffiti. It sounds like an evil religion in a White Wolf game supplement.
I could be mistaken, but don’t they usually tend to work by manipulation?