It is no secret that I am an atheist, and a gay one to boot, so there's no news in me having little time or patience for Christianity, Islam and whatever other religious this-n-that that has been invented by humans many centuries ago. I would not mind if god people went about their own business, praised their god in their houses of worship or at home and left it at that, but they don't seem to be able to stay out of OTHER people's lives. They just can't. It's not how they roll!
What truly drives me against the wall at the moment is aggressive campaigning by the Roman Catholic Church against marriage equality in the US and also the UK. In the UK, the Roman Catholic Church is now taking its campaign into its schools (taxpayer funded, that goes without saying, the Catholic Church wants maximum ideological influence in state affairs, but it hates paying for the privilege). Faith schools, of course, are a contradiction in terms. It's a bit like suggesting that there could be communist, capitalist, scientologist or any other ideological schools, as if there was more than one empirical reality to be taught. Now, IF that organisation was a beacon of morality and its senior management staff were known to abide by the Church's teachings all the time, I would still disagree with them, but there would be at least some begrudging respect from me for their consistency. The thing is, not a day goes by without further revelations of Cardinals (ie very senior Church management folks running around in usually wonderfully camp dresses - well, if you're into that sort of thing) protecting pedophiles amongst their staff (priests and upward) from state prosecution. They didn't even bother warning parents who mistakenly left their children in Church hands about the impending danger. Really, I kid you not, they did not!
These same people think nothing of it to tell secular societies today how they should legislate in matters marriage. Old guys who never managed to hold a stable relationship with another human being in their lives - really? Old guys who count large numbers of pedophiles among their ranks lecture us - really? Do you, Roman Catholic Church, really have no shame at all? On what grounds - really - do you claim competence in matters ethics or actual worldly life?
If you think, by the way, this was just a Catholic phenomenon... here's a Baptist preacher advising his congregation to beat up their kids, crack their wrists even, if they are suspicious the kids might be gay.
If you feel like reading up on Christianity's crimes throughout its history, you might want to take a closer look at learning German and reading Karlheinz Deschner's 10 (!) volume Criminal History of Christianity. It'll be well worth your time, and you likely will be even more reluctant to listen to Catholic clergy going on about morality.
