Yesterday, I was shocked to hear such comments from the Pope, a well known bastion of equality, supporter of human rights, and devoted to promoting tolerance towards every human being -having been created after all by God himself in his image.

So, as the BBC reported:

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK’s Equality Bill with “missionary zeal”. Pope Benedict XVI said the legislation “violates natural law”.

Let’s not even get started on why the heck do religious leaders get involved in politics, legislation, or… well, or pretty much anything that has to do with reality? What sort of expertise do they bring on the table?

Second, and as always, the Catholic Church is once again publicly advertising its intolerant characteristics, by labelling anything that has the word “equal” as a “violation of nature“, the “decadence of morality“, the “end of society” and other such ponderous bull****.

In response to these comments, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, said that this (and similar legislations) have been driving religious belief and practice into “the sphere of the private only”. Not quite there yet, are we? But that should in fact be the sphere of action for fairy tales, religions, unsubstantiated irrational beliefs that fall squarely outside reality.

Private only.

Keep it to yourselves.

You can do anything you like in private, and I will not complain so long as you don’t try to push your beliefs to defenceless people;

so long as you don’t try to influence society and legislation based on your beliefs;

so long as you don’t try to teach your beliefs in schools as science (!);

and so long as you don’t go around discriminating against or killing other people, merely because they happen to believe in some other imaginary guy in the sky or even (gasp!) believe in none!

[Slowly trying to get back to normal blogging after my moving into a new place, in a new area... And the DIY stuff are not even close to finished]