The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland will “meet any cost” to fight marriage equality, declared Cardinal Keith O’Brien in the Sunday Times.
O’Brien, the most senior Catholic in Scotland, is pledging to spend another £100,000 (about $154,000) to campaign against same-sex marriage in the country, including bus ads, billboards and commercials. That’s on top of the £50,000 it’s already spent.
“Marriage is under threat and politicians need to know the Catholic Church will bear any burden and meet any cost in its defense,” fumed O’Brien, who once called marriage equality a “grotesque subversion.” He further claimed the Scottish government would face an “unprecedented backlash” for backing the measure.
More than 70 members of Scottish Parliament have said they’ll vote for equal marriage, compared to 9 are against it.
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In the past, O’Brien called same-sex relationships “demonstrably harmful” and claimed introducing gay marriage is akin to legalizing slavery.
The pro-equal-marriage group Equality Network called O’Brien’s announcement “aggressive, undemocratic and unchristian,” and said the church “should have better things to do,” what with the global economy in such shambles. “We know that two-thirds of Scots, and a majority of Scottish Catholics, support same-sex marriage,” said Tom French, the nonprofit’s policy coordinator. “We trust that the Scottish Government will make its decision based on democratic principles and the evidence, and not who can spend the most money.”
Only if the Scottish government doesn’t work like the American government, Tom.
Photo: Gavin Scott
Snownova
“Quick! Spend all our money so that we don’t have to give it to those kids we raped!”
QJ201
Because fighting the gays is more important than carrying out Jesus’s directive to care for the poor and the sick.
Chad
@QJ201: That’s because caring for the poor and sick is considered socialist, which is even more taboo in our society.
Chad
Your comment is awaiting moderation. Our system might have erroneously auto-flagged your comment as spam; if so, we’ll fix it quickly. Or maybe you previously abused your commenting privileges, violated our Comments Policy, included a link to a known SPAM/harmful site, posted comments that detracted from the conversation, or have been repeatedly flagged by other users for being a jerk — in which case we won’t publish your comment.
Thanks for censoring my post QUEERTY.
1equalityUSA
Queerty never slams Mormons. One hundred and a half M’s “declared their independence” from this spurious cult last week and we never saw it covered on this site. Strap-the-family-dog-to-the-roof-of-the-car (until he blows diarrhea and vomits) pin-a-gay-kid-down-with-the-help-of-cruel-friends-and-cut-his-hair-off-Romney is being slammed by his own party in the news and we don’t hear a word about it. Has Gay Cities vowed not to report on these fantastic stories? (Will this post be moderated?)
Chad
QJ201 caring for the sick and poor is considered s-o-c-i-a-l-i-s-t
Daez
Scotland is a socialist country. Also, religious organizations helping the deserving poor is pretty well supported in America. What is not supported in America and never should be is the government taxing the hardworking people of this country to the money to those that can work but choose not to for whatever reason.
Callum
The Roman Catholic Cardinal Keith O’Brien is a Bigot
Mark
@Chad: Isn’t funny how all these xtians scream calling President Obama a socialist but hey, wait just a cotton pickin’ minute – their jebux was a socialist! Oh My God!!!!! (best Home Alone face slap)
Mark
What’s with the comments flags? Sheesh — what did I say that caused it to be flagged? This site gets worse every day.
Robert Edwards
Cardinal Keith O’Brien obviously doesn’t know it’s dangerous to throw stones when you live in a glass-house.
Robert in NYC
O’Brien doesn’t stand a chance of winning this war. A bit rich for a minority catholic cult in Scotland and in the UK as a whole, issuing threats to an overhwelmingly non-catholic government and people. A man who is taking orders from a foreign potentate in Rome no less. In another time in history, O’Brien’s meddling would have been construed as treason and we all know what the penalty for that was. If there’s going to be any backlash in any part of the UK, it will be against the Roman cult, deservedly so. Bring it on, bigot O’Brien!
Alexi3
@Robert in NYC: you know, that was my first thought: How much clout could the Roman Catholic Church possibly have in Scotland? I mean it’s been quite some time since Mary Queen of Scots sat on the Throne and she ended rather poorly. All of that money could be doing so much good and he chooses to spend it on a subject upon which the Roman Church has certainly lost any and all authority to speak.
Gm
If he is trying to get into Papa Ratzi’s good books, who doesn’t he just offer to suck his c### ?
Robert in NYC
@Alexi3: Alexi3, it also begs the question, where do these cults acquire vast sums of money from, if not from the Vatican directly? Maybe NOM and their fellow brothers and sisters in hate, the Mormons are involved??
Global Traveler
Just incredible. Still reeling from the scandal of having raped thousands of young boys, and he is trying to claim the moral high ground?
Robert in NYC
The roman cult, given it’s millenia old tradition of misogyny and pedophilia is hardly in a position to make moral pronouncements or judgements. In my view, it’s morally bankrupt and should be ignored. It’s a great pity that the Catholic Emancipation Act in the UK was ever enacted. The hierarchy including the Pope should be arrested for crimes against humanity. Their properties and investment confiscated, sold and the proceeds distributed to the poor. It doesn’t deserve to exist and is far removed from the christian message.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
when will the catholic church REALLY put their money were their mouth is — by offering to compensate us.
if homosexuality is so abhorrent to civilisation and the baby jesus, well then make us an offer: an amount that will equal a lifetimes loss of close human companionship, a whole lifetime devoid of the incomparable joy of love and sexual intimacy.
start stripping the gold from st. peters.
(well, don’t they sometimes offer money to women not to abort? )
B
O’Brien seems to be doing his best to convince us that we should bring back Nero. Maybe he fiddled while Rome burned, but at least he kept Christians from interfering in politics.
B
No. 7 · Mark wrote, “What’s with the comments flags? Sheesh”
Queerty seems to have some filtering rules that reject substrings that match some “offensive” words. Once I tried to post something containing a word that included
a sequence of four letters, starting with ‘c’ and ending in ‘k’ that matched a slang term for either a rooster or a male sex organ (sorry for the description but I don’t want this to be rejected). The actual word I used had no such meaning and in fact was simply in a quote from Queerty’s article. When I eliminated that, the post went through. It’s not definitive though as I did not simply remove one syllable from a word.
Steve
The Catholic Church is rapidly making itself completely irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of people, not just gays.
The actual, important work of the church is “ministry”. The most important question for any priest is, “How should I minister to the person who is sitting in the room with me now, and who came to me for help?” That question does not change if the person happens to be gay.
So, how does the Catholic Church minister to those actual human beings? So far, it flatly orders the priests to condemn them, and to tell them that they are going to hell.
How would you expect people to respond to that kind of ministry? Condemnation is not effective ministry, by any stretch of the imagination. There was a time, hundreds of years ago, when that condemnation would result in the person giving all of his money to the priest. That is how the Catholic church became so enormously wealthy. No more. That time has passed.
Now, the vast majority of people respond to that kind of ministry by leaving the church. The only question, really, is whether or not the spit on the priest on the way out. It is widely accepted among gay people that the “Christian” church is entirely filled with hateful bigots. I don’t think that is true. But, clearly, the senior Catholic clergy do seem to be entirely comprised of hateful bigots. Many of them deserve to be spat upon.
Other churches are trying to answer that most important question honestly. The question remains, “How should I minister to the person who is sitting in the room with me now, and who came to me for help?” It is not really hard question. However, it might lead a priest into uncomfortable ideas, and cause him to grow.
Here is a clue to the right answer: When the Centurion ask Jesus to heal his lover, did Jesus condemn the Centurion, or was the man healed?
kozmic queen
“In the past, O’Brien called same-sex relationships “demonstrably harmful” and claimed introducing gay marriage is akin to legalizing slavery.”
excuse me, but I think that the sort of hetero patriarchal marriage that the church has always promoted would better be described as legalized slavery, with wives being nothing less than their husband’s property.
Robert in NYC
@Daez: What has socialism havet to do with anything in Scotland? FYI, British and that includes Scottish people who refuse to work aren’t allowed to remain indefinitely on the dole anywhere in the UK. I lived there 28 years so I know a thing or two about it. Those who refuse to work are given jobs they must take or face denial of future benefits and in some cases can be prosecuted. Socialism isn’t a dirty word. Aren’t you aware that the military, public school education, public libraries, public transportation, the police, DMV, FCC, FAA, Homeland Security, you name it, are all social programs. If you don’t like “socialism”, then I hope you decline social security and medicare when the time comes assuming you will be well off and can do without both. I perish the thought if you lost your job, your health insurance, everything you owned as well as your home, life-savings, investments, everything wiped out. Who would you turn to for help?