royaled waters

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 11, 2006

Writing in the NCR, Robert Royal of the Faith & Reason Institute puts the Levitical cat amongst the progressive pigeons.

I see that when Elton John and his longtime male companion formed a "civil union" in England a few weeks ago, the pop singer took the opportunity to let fly at the Catholic church in general and the pope in particular for Christian teaching on homosexuality. He, like most celebrities and the media, calls this teaching homophobia, a pseudo-medical term with less scientific credibility than astrology. Yet this gratuitous swipe at a faith to which neither party to the "civil union" belonged was presented in the press as a cry for tolerance. In fact, it is the most obvious evidence of -- and journalistic complicity in -- intolerance as you are likely to find in allegedly respectable company.

Exploiting anti-Catholicism is an old and ugly tradition. Even Catholics have been sucked into this unfortunate stance. Imagine if instead of repeating the usual pop culture charges, the press had explained the historical truth: "Mr. John was demonizing the Mosaic prohibition against same-sex relations that has a 3,000-year tradition in Judaism and was universally adopted in the West by the Catholic, Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches. His remarks might be read as implicitly criticizing Orthodox Jews in particular for their role in creating and maintaining an exclusively pro-heterosexual, sex-only-within-marriage ethic."

Any guesses as to the content of Royal's mail bag next week? I hope the Kansas City Post Office has sniffer dogs.