Once again, religious leaders are suddenly experts in science! FAIL. We just saw how the research that supported the theory that being gay is a choice, which can be changed through therapy, is a giant bungle or horsecrap. But now New York’s newly installed Archbishop Timothy Dolan finds himself turning to the very science that’s responsible for disproving creationism as a legitimate excuse for denying gays and lesbians the right to marry.
“There’s an in-built code of right and wrong that’s embedded in the human DNA,” Dolan tells the New York Post. “Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life. And if we begin to tamper with the very definition of marriage, then we’re going to be in big trouble. We’re not anti-gay — we’re pro the most basic definition of marriage.”
Haha. Dolan is pro-marriage, everyone!
Remember when the dictionary that was hard-wired into us told us to use marriage as a means of property transfer? And then later, when that hard-wired dictionary was updated with v3.445b to make interracial marriage no longer some big ethical dilemma? And is it the uber-conservative Muslim world that is operating by a different dictionary — maybe they prefer Merriam-Webster to American Heritage — when they say wives must submit to their husbands sexual advances no matter what?
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Oh, and this we love: “We’re not against gays. The Catholic Church would defend the human dignity of gay people. If gay people were being persecuted or their basic rights taken away—”
Well let us stop you there, Timothy. BECAUSE IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. Where’s your statement about Iraq’s gays? Where is Pope Benedict’s?
Listen to Dolan’s entire bungled argument (around the 3:15 mark):
Mickey's mouse :P
Dolan is a CUNT!!!!!!! The religious always backtrack on their word…oh, we don’t hate homosexuals….we just like to pick on them because there’s more of us than them…we didn’t force Black and Hispanic people to convert to Christianity on pain of death, they chose to convert. Religion is an old term for political tool…It’s the first recorded cult of organized crime.
InExile
Religion is the root of ALL evil on our planet and the cause of most of our wars! Why won’t they all just go away?
ZJ
And how is marriage between same-sex couples going to stop men and women from marrying? He can take his imaginary DNA dictionary and shove it. Religion needs to quit cherry-picking science.
Alexa
@ZJ: yeah that. What a load of horse shit this man and others like him talk.
Alec
That’s quite the statement:
“We’re not against gays. The Catholic Church would defend the human dignity of gay people. If gay people were being persecuted or their basic rights taken away—”
Then why is the Vatican actively campaigning against a UN resolution calling for the abolishment of criminal laws targeting gays?
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/12/08/7136
What nonsense.
LE DAUPHIN
So which “dictionary” are the “catholics” reading that tells them that allowing 1000s of “priest” to repeatedly molest children? BOTTOM LINE: Gays most likely will not attend a “catholic” church, and the church is under some weird impression that gays cannot reproduce (last time I check, my body was still producing sperm and sex really is no longer needed for procreation.) ANYWAYS they hate gays because in the “catholic mind” GAY = LESS CHILDREN TO MOLEST! END OF STORY
Anthony
1. I believe religion is a psychiatric illness.
2. It’s a sin to bear flase witness.
Ha,ha,ha!
rogue dandelion
goddamn! this is getting ridiculous! You’d think the amount of priests struck with the gay by god would convince them by now-to shut the fuck up with their pseudo-science and bible thumping.
William
Religion is very anciently and closely tuned to energy. They do know many things that science is now discovering.
Caring about things is important. Caring about truth is important. Maintaining a good species and good DNA is a valuable skill and function that I will never abandon.
Truth [.]
mb00
If their so pro-straight marriage and for procreation. Why aren’t THEY (catholic priests) married and having children and leave us the fuck be. There are enough unwanted children in this planet to go around that are waiting for a good loving home. I don’t think they’d (the children) care much as to whom adopts them.
They need to ask themselves if the planet can really handle millions upon millions of unwanted children, or children that can’t be afforded by their parents. They should be preaching about contraceptives instead.
Attmay
They love us. They love us TO DEATH.
Pragmatist
A dictionary in our DNA? Defining what marriage is? GROAN.
drdanfee
Well, the good archbishop Dolan is just doing with his readings of hypothesis testing and science data, what he more or less is doing with his application of general reason and common sense, what he is doing with his readings of his scriptures: Pick and choose, dance, selectively. Problem is, he talks as if the same body of data which strongly suggests that being heterosexual is to some extent hard wired into various human brains did not also clearly show pretty much the same thing happening to other various human brains which seem hard wired to some extent for homosexuality. Hardly surprising, if we pause to remember that the whole simple new notion of sexual orientation period is only just over a century and a half or so, old. 1869 say the very first recorded publication of any mention of that coherent phenomenon, homosexuality, in a public pamphlet. Still, a lot of data and hypothesis testing have been published in peer reviewed journals since way back then. Surely, if the archbishop is so engaged with data about what is or is not hard wired into human nature, he would be more informed and conversant. Nor, one suspects, has the archbishop bothered to read through much of the accompanying evolutionary theory which puzzles over how a seeming nonreproductive sexual orientation like same sex pairbonding should manage to survive, even thrive, in the gene pools of large populations in which the majority of people (or animals, for that matter) do reproduce. These explorations in evolutionary theory and modesl are not nearly as one-dimensional and simplistic as the archbishop encourages us to think; nor so one-sided in defense of heterosexuality alone. I am not at all against religion as such, but I do dearly wish religious leaders who wish to quote science would stop repeating picky-choosing redactions of the data or the range of theories consistent with the data. It’s way too much pick and choose, in all that religion thinking.
Andrew
@William:
[img]http://www.sangrea.net/free-cartoons/relig_v-spirituality.jpg[/img]