The Cool Pope may not be so cool after all.
Pope Francis, who has been lauded as pushing the church toward a more accepting view of the LGBT community, appeared to back off from that stance during a Sunday interview with reporters. While aboard the papal plane, the Associated Press reports Francis referred to teaching gender theory, or trans acceptance, in schools as “ideological colonization.” “It’s one thing if a person has this tendency and also changes sex,” said Francis. “It’s another thing to teach this in school to change mentalities.” The previous day he claimed that transgender people are launching a “world war against marriage.” [...]
These harsh words aren’t all that different than those of the right-wing extremists who have sought to prevent trans people from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Micah Clark of the American Family Association, the group which led a boycott against Target’s trans-inclusive bathroom policy, has referred to Gay-Straight Alliances and equal access for transgender students as “homosexual indoctrination programs.” Sen. Ted Cruz, who Clark endorsed in the Republican presidential primaries, added that trans people “don’t have a right to impose [their] lifestyle on others.” Cruz advised trans people to use the bathroom at home. [...]
Attacking the LGBT community used to be de rigueur for the Vatican, even as recently as a few years ago. In a 2003 letter entitled “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,” the Church stated its clear and emphatic opposition to same-sex marriage.
“The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,” read the letter, which was issued under the tenure of Pope John Paul II. “The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.”
The resolution also states that “homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon,” adding that the legal recognition of same-sex unions poses a particular danger to the church because these couples may have “the possibility of adopting children.” [...]
That’s also true globally: Many of the countries that are the most accepting of homosexuality are heavily Catholic. Whereas just 60 percent of the U.S. population said in a 2013 survey that relationships between people of the same-sex are morally acceptable, homosexuality was OK with 88 percent of Spaniards. The Iberian country is estimated to be 70-75 Catholic. Argentina is 71 percent Catholic, and an estimated 74 percent of its population believes there’s nothing immoral about homosexuality. The same was true for the Philippines (80 percent Catholic), France (77 percent) and Italy (74 percent), countries in which over 70 percent of the public stated the same.
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