The writer doesn't show his hand, he's a dead ringer for the holy rollers, all his posts and mercatornet are running parallel with the opinion of supernatural believers on modern issues, well if they didn't whine about our society's enlightenment, their pet "issues" wouldn't actually be issues at all.

When he says humans are rational and speaks of himself and his fellow travellers, thats a paradox to be reckoned with. Supernatural believers or worshippers are inherently irrational.

Inner-Sydney based transsexual, indigent outcast progeny of merchant family:

"When he says humans are rational and speaks of himself and his fellow travellers, thats a paradox to be reckoned with. Supernatural believers or worshippers are inherently irrational."

Feel free to make an attempt at rationally showing this. I'm all ears.

The blind ignorance is shown once again by religous fundamentalists, in equating homosexuality with paedophillia.
Gibo one can only hope that there is some salvation for you, and your god will redeem you for denigrating innocent fellow human beings.

I read the english translation which unfortunately wasn't put out by the Vatican but by a British Catholic Diocese. The Pope defends marriage and somehow we've got him attacking gays. Our local newspaper had the quote allegedly from the Pope which said "homosexuality is as great a threat as rainforest destruction." Try and find that one in the Papal text along with the word homosexual or gay.
Basically the media stories were crap - designed to attack the Church around the holiest of days.
I'm not Catholic and my personal views are often contrary to their beliefs but this is one area where the media were deliberately wrong.

Clearly there's something very faulty with Cook's sarcasm detector, because David Marr's article is dripping with it.

And when Cook attempts to put himself in the position of gays and lesbians, he gets that utterly wrong too: "Admittedly, this will not be easy for supporters of homosexuality to accept. What they feel is that biology is less important than the longings of the heart." The entire lived experience of most homosexuals is that attraction to members of the same sex *is* their biology. A tiny proportion of homosexuals claim that they have chosen their sexuality - the rest know with absolute certainty that it was never in their ability to choose.

And why would anyone choose it, when everywhere ignorant polemicists claim that homosexuality is unnatural, therefore bad?

It is the height of absurdity to claim that unnatural equals bad, as the pope is doing when he says:

"When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God."

http://www.zenit.org/article-24682?l=english

Computers, rubella vaccinations and chocolate soufflés are 'unnatural,' outside "the nature of the human being." Are they disrespectful of the "order of creation?" Of course not. "We can no more defy the laws of nature than [beetles and sea-gulls] can," says Cook, but he does precisely that every time he opens the fridge or puts on his reading glasses.

Others here have pointed out the inconsistency in condemning human homosexuality as unnatural, when it occurs naturally in other species.

The pope's address was demeaning and mean-spirited, and Cook's defence of it is shallow, ignorant and self-serving. The only truthful sentence in Cook's article came from someone else: "As always, this sort of religious homophobia will be an alibi for all those who would do gay people harm."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1101052/Pope-accused-spreading-fear-homosexuals.html

Many of you obviously have not carefully read the speech by the Pope before going off half-cocked.

Having read Cook’s article and the full text of the Pope’s address through the link Cook provided, I’m inclined to agree with Tommy Boy. There is no reference to homosexuality, either explicitly or implicitly, in the Pope’s speech. The Pope makes some key theological statements that I consider to be basically flawed, but there is no reasonable way that we could take it as commenting on homosexuals or their sexuality. If that was Benedict’s intention, then his address was very poorly written.

Yes, homosexuality is an aspect of nature; it should not be condemned, and should even perhaps be celebrated as much as heterosexuality. But Cook, some other journalists and some contributors to this forum should be condemned for mis-representing Benedict’s speech in order to air their grievances against the Roman Catholic Church or Christianity in general.

And, by the way, like Tommy Boy I am not a Roman Catholic.