Oh, the Groom Grinds a 360!

Sharp-eyed Ezra (so much free time now that finals are over ) spots a new speech from our new Pope.

Pope Benedict, in his first clear pronouncement on gay marriages since his election, on Monday condemned same-sex unions as fake and expressions of "anarchic freedom" that threatened the future of the family.

The Pope, who was elected in April, also condemned divorce, artificial birth control, trial marriages and free-style unions, saying all of these practices were dangerous for the family.

"Today's various forms of dissolution of marriage, free unions, trial marriages as well as the pseudo-matrimonies between people of the same sex are instead expressions of anarchic freedom which falsely tries to pass itself off as the true liberation of man," he said.

"Anarchic freedom". Someone's still verrrrry angry over the '60's.

This, of course, should surprise no one. He's the Pope who was the head of the frikkin' Inquisition. But it's interesting, in the context of the Southern Baptist article below, that he used "anarchic freedom" where "anarchy" would have done just fine. Freedom's just another word for something you gotta lose.

First off, anyone who gets up on their high horse about abortion or gay marriage but who's divorced -- fuck you. Seriously. Shut. The hell. Up. This is the greatest hypocrisy of American Christianity, and I'm sick of it. Jesus mentions divorce several times, homosexuality -- eh. Abortion -- don't even get me started. A gay man who gets married is just as Catholic as you are if you're divorced. I'm for both divorce and gay marriage. At least my argument's consistent.

This is one of the things progressives should hit with a hammer again and again and again. America's supposed to be the place where you make the decisions affecting your family. But the Texas Reps and Religionistas, they're going to decide if you can get access to birth control, by faking it up as a moral stand by pharmacists. It doesn't matter what husband and wife have decided, what you've decided between yourselves and your doctors -- that guy's precious moral choice trumps your moral choice, and now the gubmint's on his side. They're going to decide what a marriage is, what love is more valid than others. The anti-same sex marriage laws have already been used to let guys who beat their live-in girlfriends off the hook, and I assure you some people are not at all unhappy about that.

They're going to decide how your kids learn about God -- in school, according to their definition, not from you. You in favor of school prayer*? Fine. You happy your kid's going to be praying from the selection made up by some real angry Southern Evangelicals who think your church, be it mainstream Protestant or even Catholic, is a false church? Ahhh, not so much fun now, is it ... They're going to decide if you live or die despite your wishes or your family's, they're going to let their poor understanding of science inflame their morality to the point where your kid dies of a disease that could've been stopped by stem cell research.

The government does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation. Nor in its living rooms. Nor in its churches. The bitch about the opening the door so faith can get into the government is that the door swings both ways, my religious-moderate-but-still-inexplicably-voting-Republican-pals. The problem with electing people to turn your moral beliefs into policy is that once they get to Washington, they'll turn their moral beliefs into policy.

You often wonder where the fulcrums of history are. Well, folks, this is one. The next twenty years. We either march forward under a banner of equal rights into the future, or we fall back to the 1950's. Which I assure all you young conservatives, were nowhere near as spiffy as you've heard.

Once again: Everybody who wants to live in the 21st Century over here. Everybody who misses the 1800's over there. Good, thanks. Good luck with that.

And "free-style unions" should only be practiced by those who've been married for more than ten years and have worked the committment half-pipe for many hours of practice.

* It may surprise you that I'm all for "a moment of silence" in schools in the morning. If you've read the history of school prayer, by the way, you'll dicover that the only reason the Supreme Court killed the moment of silence idea was that one of the people suing for it admitted it was a backdoor way to get prayer in school. See, a perfectly good compromise ruined by the "give- 'em an inch" idiots.