Kenilworth, 14 May 2010 — Following the Pope’s latest attack in Portugal on gay marriage, the UK gay humanist charity the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has branded this, and previous attacks, as clear evidence of a paranoid obsession about what he perceives as the evil of homosexuality.
The PTT’s secretary, George Broadhead, pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI made his first official attack on gay marriage in 2005 following years of condemning same-sex couples whilst working for the last Pope. He told a meeting of the Diocese of Rome that same-sex unions are only “pseudo-marriage” born of “an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom of man”. Before he became Pope, Benedict repeatedly attacked same-sex marriage. As Cardinal Ratzinger he issued an edict calling on all Catholic priests to resist government reforms that might lead to gay weddings. In his 2008 Christmas message he declared that saving humanity from homosexual behaviour was as important as saving the rainforest from destruction. Now, in his address to the faithful in Portugal, he has described gay marriage as an insidious and dangerous threat to the common good.
Mr Broadhead said: “These repeated attacks on gay rights, and in particular the right to marriage, amount to a paranoid obsession about what the Pope clearly perceives as an intrinsic moral evil.
“Given that the stance of all three main UK political parties is supportive of gay rights, are their leaders going to have the guts to condemn this overt hostility and will the new coalition Government think twice about welcoming this ghastly bigot to the UK next September?”