I just wrote,
American Catholics have miles and miles to go if they ever want to make those nice headlines about loving the gays more than window dressing in the real life of the American Catholic community.
Here's a case in point. A few weeks ago, I reported about a comment that had been published at the website of a leading U.S. Catholic newspaper, National Catholic Reporter, by a reader with the username Purgatrix Ineptiae, whose commentary at Catholic blog sites I've followed for some time now, because she once spent months leaving observations here at my own blog, and I became thoroughly familiar with--and concerned about--her toxic anti-gay agenda as she exposed it in comments here.
As I also noted in the posting to which I've just pointed, I'm exceptionally concerned about this blogger's comments at Catholic sites, because they often cross a line between free speech and hate discourse whose intent is to spread damaging lies about a minority group, exposing that group of human beings to further violence. I pointed out that Purgatrix Ineptiae has, in fact, been banned by several other Catholic blog sites when she persisted (using other usernames) in crossing lines in this way.
Because of my concern about what I have seen this blogger doing for some time now, I'm sorry to have to report that Purgatrix Ineptiae left the following comment at an NCR thread yesterday defending the draconian anti-gay laws in Russia, Uganda, and other African nations, which have exposed gay people to violence and are resulting in the murder of gay people:
Russia, Nigeria and Uganda are poor countries. Their children and young people are terrifyingly vulnerable to exploitation by privileged Western ephebophiles. It is not unreasonable for them to want to enact legislation to protect them.
Though I flagged that comment when I read it--because it's hate speech, pure and simple--it's still standing as I type this posting. What Purgatrix says here is consistent with a toxic meme she has worked hard to replicate at one Catholic blog site after another: gay men are a rich, privileged group who abuse children. Gay men are after children in Russia and Africa.
Russia and African nations are repressing gay men because they are child abusers. Russia and African nations need to repress gay men because they are child molesters.
As I said in my previous critique of Purgatrix Ineptiae's toxic, hate-oriented memes about gay men, the lies she seeks to spread about the privilege of gay men, about gay men as dirty and diseased, about gay men as child molesters, are essentially not different at all from the blood libel lie that Christians once spread about the Jews, to justify violent repression and even murder of Jewish people.
Lies like this--hate speech like this--has no business whatsoever being allowed to stand for even a moment at any Catholic blog site anywhere. I seriously doubt that NCR would allow someone to publish statements echoing the ancient blood libel claims about the Jewish people. I suspect NCR would take immediate action if anyone stated, on an NCR thread, "Well, you know that Jews abduct Christian children, ritually murder them, and then mix their blood with bread baked for Passover."
And so I have to keep asking, and I intend not to stop asking, why does NCR continue to give people like Purgatrix Ineptiae room to spread toxic, hate-oriented lies that foster violence against her fellow human beings who happen to be gay? It's not as if we American Catholics don't have every reason to know that the hate speech justifying ruthless, violent repression of LGBT people in Africa--and that hate speech includes the lie that gay men are seeking to molest African children--originates with right-wing American Christians like Scott Lively, whose agenda is all about exporting hatred of gay and lesbian people overseas?
Scott Lively has been identified by Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate-monger with good reason, and NCR has to know about this SPLC decision. Surely NCR has also listened carefully to the powerful testimony of Anglican priest Kapya Kaoma from right on the ground in Uganda, which makes crystal clear the hate-oriented agenda of the American religious right in Uganda and other African nations, and which exposes the lies of that agenda, including the lie that gay people are molesting children in Africa, and that such molestation warrants their ruthless repression and murder.
Why are people like Purgatrix Ineptiae allowed to use a Catholic blog site to further this hate agenda that results in terrible suffering for some of their fellow human beings? I'd very much like to know.