In a year that has seen increasing support for legalizing marriage equality, the Pope dedicated his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy–one of his most important speeches of the year–to traditional family values. And with a majority of Americans now believing that same-sex marriage should be legal, the Vatican newspaper emphasized the Church’s marriage stance by publishing an editorial describing same-sex marriage as a socialist plot that deceives “humanity as socialism did in the past.”
Published on Christmas Eve, the editorial says same-sex couples are fundamentally different because they cannot biologically reproduce. But msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell points out that “the Vatican sees nothing wrong with heterosexual couples who cannot biologically reproduce getting married.”
Pope Benedict XVI’s new line of attack against marriage equality now involves viewing socialism as a threat, but O’Donnell found the fault in the Vatican’s logic. O’Donnell reminded the Vatican of the person to whom Roman Catholics pray to daily: Jesus Christ.
“Never mind that Jesus Christ was the original socialist, feeding the poor, railing against the money changers in the temple–and never mind that the most hardcore socialist of all time was also harshly anti-gay.”
Then there’s Fidel Castro, who began his life as a Roman Catholic and “became the world’s most extreme practitioner of socialism when he led a rebellion in Cuba to overthrow a cruel dictator,” only to become a cruel dictator himself.
“In Fidel Castro’s socialist Utopia, gay sex was a criminal act. Castro rounded up gays and lesbians and sent them to ‘re-education camps.’ Castro believed he could rid his country of homosexuality and he did everything in his power to achieve that. So no, socialism has not been a special friend to gay people around the world.” The Catholic Church continues its attack against socialism, but also forgets that the home of Pope Benedict XVI–Italy–“is a socialist country as is every other country in Europe as is every country in the world to varying degrees,” said O’Donnell in his rewrite. “The United States of America where the movement toward marriage equality is gaining support everyday is actually far lest socialistic than many countries where marriage equality is making little to no progress.” This week, “the Catholic Church…seems to want to pretend it is threatened by socialism, [but] has thrived in socialist countries around the world, including the one where the Vatican is located.” O’Donnell states that the Vatican, full of “guys who have taken a lifetime vow to remain tragically ignorant about marriage” is wrong again, not only on gay marriage, but also about socialism.
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