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Pope John Paul II is Objectively DisorderedBy Jack Nichols
"The parade went off without a hint of violence or confrontation," the Stonewall-era transgender pioneer, Sylvia Rivera, told me "but it was an expression of seven hours of joy and love that, because of its size and exultation, could scarcely keep moving against the sunlit background of the ancient Ruins of Rome. Regimentation disappeared, with no marshals, no police. Only the beauty of our community remained." Rivera, a New Yorker, traveled to Italy with her lover, Julia Murray-Rivera, as a guest of MIT, a major transgendered organization. She rode atop a float that carried "dozens of beautiful Queens and their admirers." She could find nothing positive to say, however, about Pope John Paul II’s sudden Sunday condemnation of World Pride 2000 as "an offense to Christian values," or of same-sex love-making as "against natural law." The Pope’s widely publicized remarks, nevertheless, drew a immediate rebuke from Italy’s gay activists who charged that the Vatican’s hostile stance is fueling Roman Catholics’ hateful homophobia everywhere. In his St. Peter’s Square address to Catholic pilgrims and tourists, the Pope calledsame-sex lovemaking a condition that is "objectively disordered." Rob Morse, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, explained to His Holiness that while other animals behave homosexually, he knows of no animal that practice celibacy as priests do. Perhaps papal celibacy is the real disorder, he thinks. Condemning the gay pride celebrants, the 80-year old Pope said: Most distressing to some about Pope John Paul’s negative references to same-sex love was his perception: his seeing a moral battle between Roman Catholics (good guys) and gays and lesbians (the forces of evil.) He insisted that the Roman Catholic Church must "not keep quiet about the truth" and that Roman Catholics are duty-bound to "distinguish between good and evil." The Roman Catholic Church has condemned homosexuality as "intrinsically evil." Arcigay, Italy’s outspoken activist organization, issued a statement
rebutting the Pope’s public attacks on the worldwide gay and lesbian
community: Bob Kunst, Miami’s veteran activist for gay and Jewish causes, and a
long-time AIDS activist, called me from a cell phone to get in his two
cents: Kunst had met briefly with the Pope in the late 1980s at the first Vatican AIDS Conference and had given him a "Cure AIDS Now" button printed in Italian. Kunst was quoted by the New York Times: "This has been the worst AIDS conference I’ve ever attended. It’s been three days of gay bashing." ___________________________________________________ Jack Nichols is Senior Editor at GayToday www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com and author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books) JN is Senior Editor at GayToday: www.gaytoday.badpuppy.comHis latest book is The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books)
READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)
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richard e. schiff,
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ays from around the
world filled the streets of Rome during the first second weekend in July
in a happy festival estimated by U.S. participants to be a half million
dancing in the streets, openly celebrating lives of joy and besting the
forces of neo-fascism and a furious Roman Catholic Pope.
