Orson Scott Card isn't the only homophobic, wackjob sci fi writer out there

Sometimes a person's talent can transcend their bigotry and ignorance. There are plenty of talented people out there who are jerks.

You too can be saved by the blog! www.savedbytheblog14.blogspot.com 

I may be straight, but I'm not narrow.

For a homophobe, he sure loves to write about little boys naked.

Seriously, go through Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow and highlight every time Card starts writing about pubescent boys naked.  You'll end up with a list of passages in the hundreds.

when it wants us to give ourselves up.

I was raised as a Catholic but "lost my faith" (ie. pulled the wool away from my eyes) at confirmation. I knew what those priests were up to -- and it wasn't pretty.

What can one say of a religion that at heart is little more than the world's largest, wealthiest and most thoroughly lawyered pedophile cult?

It's like musical that died in Boston: Great sets. Fabulous costumes. The score is gorgeous.

 The Book needs work.

as telling gay people they are loved but "disordered", that they can't marry, can't adopt, and then fighting all laws to protect them because that is a slippery slope is about as far from "respect and dignity" as you can get.

Sure, Catholic priests don't call gay people names, but they then use their influence to get legislation blocked and/or passed that discriminates against people. Sorry, but I'll take the bully on the street who is honest about his hate rather than the disingenuous institution working to deprive of my rights. 

As for the church "only" being 20% bigoted, too bad that 20% has helped caused the deaths of millions of people from HIV/AIDS by working against birth control and condom use around the world or kept hundreds of thousands of gay people from the benefits and protections of marriage that straight Catholics enjoy every day and who knows how many kids stuck in foster care and orphanages rather than being adopted by gay people. 

And it's not as if the Catholics are the only folks out there doing charity work (often done by the way simply to recruit more Catholics)but without the homophobic and sexist bigotry.

The last two popes (and their curias) have done their level best to roll back all the gains achieved by the laity in the Second Vatican Council. From the heady days of the 1960s in which Pope John XXII and Pope Paul VI actively sought out the views of the lay people in the Catholic Church, Popes JPII and Benedict the Whatever have spent the last 30 years removing the voice of the laity from consideration.

There isn't a polite conversation to be had with the Catholic Church because the heads of the church have rigorously removed any effective channels of communication with its own laity. Instead, they have adopted a clearly articulated and preached doctrine of the congregation being the sheep and the priests, bishops, cardinals and popes being the shepherds.

Add to this the papally-encouraged rise of hard-line, authoritarian, fundamentalist nutters like Opus Dei against such established orders as the Jesuits, Carmelites, Benedictines, Donimicans, et al and you have a situation in which a comparatively small number of men (and the're overwhelmingly men) control the direction of the Church.

One of the results of this (as you've pointed out) is that the vast majority of lay Catholics and a tremendous number low-level priests just ignore the Vatican as far as possible.

So, we recently had the glorious situation of Tony Blair, who made a very public conversion to Catholicism as soon as he'd stopped being Prime Minister and went off to meet the Pope in Rome. His next act was to go to a gay magazine and say very publicly that he thought the Church's teaching on homosexuality is wrong and doesn't acknowledge the real world.

The irony of this is that because the Curia had denigrated the importance of the laity, they can no longer respond to high-level lay Catholics to slap them down, because that would acknowledge that the laity is still important.

So, Jay, you and I are both in Britain - let's have a quick shufti at how the Catholic Church has tried to operate recently in our country. Two things spring immediately to mind on LGBT rights.

The first is the Catholic Church's opposition to anti-homophobic bullying legislation. The Church's position is that it already has anti-bullying policies in its schools and doesn't see the need to have any more. It's a poor argument on their part because the church's own anti-bullying policies aren't working that well anyway and as they refuse to contemplate teaching homosexuality except in terms of condemnation, they just can't tackle it if left to their own devices.

Now, bear in mind that suicide is the second highest cause of teen deaths in Britain after car accidents. Slightly over one third of those teens seem to be LGBT, which is a vast statistical anomaly if you work on the accepted wisdom that LGBT people make up a tenth of the population. By refusing to do anything to prevent anti-homophobic bullying, those Cardinals in the House of Lords trying to prevent legislation aren't even paying lip-service to their own oft-repeated mantra of 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. There is no ther way to read their actions other than to think they feel the life of an LGBT child is worth less than that of a 'straight' child.

This is casuistry and hypocracy on a colossal scale. Even within the teachings of the Catholic Church, suicide is a massively greater sin than homosexuality.

The second thing that springs to mind is the decision (taken at the highest levels) to shut down the country's largest Catholic adoption agency because they wouldn't follow the equality laws and treat LGBT prospective parents just as they would anyone else.

There was a great PR barrage of kerfuffle put up about how PC was ruining religious obligations and why should children be deprived homes because the queers wanted to be treated just like anyone else.

The moment you look behind the press releases, you can see what staggering hogwash the Catholic Church was putting out. The agencies were still prepared to meet other equalities legislation and put children with non-Catholic families - it was only the poofters and dykes they objected to.

In terms of basic Catholic dogma this is utter bullshit. It is an essential, fundamental, vital, cornerstone of Catholic theology that if you do not accept the seven Catholic dogmas, you are going to hell. That Catholic adoption agency was prepared to consign the souls of its children to hell by placing them in the homes of non-Catholics, but couldn't conceive of the idea placing the children with gay or lesbian couples who regularly repented their sins in confession in a Catholic church every Saturday.

And, briefly, on the Catholic Church's teaching on HIV and AIDS in Africa, it's not just motivated by their own doctrinal and religious policies. Although the teaching against condoms is cnsistent with Catholic teachings on birth control, the documented cases of Catholic clergy preaching that not only do condoms not help prevent HIV but in fact helps spread it is plain wicked. That is a deliberate evil.

Oh, and while we're at it, the connivance of the Catholic authorities in the active oppression - to the point of death - of gays and lesbians in African countries such as Uganda, Nigeria, Senegal and other places is nothing short of waging war on gays and lesbians.

I agree with you that there are many wonderful - even great - Catholics who will put their own lives on the line to save others. But to confuse them with the hard-line leaders of the Catholic Church is a mistake. These days, the Catholic Church doesn't have polite conversations with anyone. Benedict the Whatever has managed to piss off the Jews, the Muslims and the Church of England thus far and has shown no inclination to pay any attention to his own laity.

Enjoy as much discourse as you like with local priests, but don't fool yourself that it's making any difference.