A Stitch in Haste

A post over at the Social Affairs Unit connects some interesting dots:

Homosexuals are being vilified in much of Africa -- by Robert Mugabe, the Anglican Church, and Islamic leaders. Yet Christie Davies argues, Africa owes a huge debt to the Western gay community. It is because of lobbying by gay men in the West, that sufficient funding has been provided to make the development, by Western pharmaceutical companies, of a vaccine to fight the spread of Aids a real possibility.

Now of course, if we're going to talk about externalities and hidden costs, there are a few more layers of depth to the analysis, like how the AIDS crisis diverted resources, both human and financial, from cancer research.  But Davies' basic point is a valid one. 

And of course one has to be somewhat patient with the African people's ignorance regarding homosexuality and AIDS.  After all, the continent is dominated on the one hand by petty dictators and sham "democracies" that are not very concerned with the health, welfare and education of their citizens, and on the other hand by the two most hateful, bigoted, homophobic religious sects on the planet -- Islam and Catholicism (and let's not forget the Anglicans).

Hat tip to the Adam Smith Institute.

Need a reminder of how bass-ackward the Vatican is? Read this:

The Vatican on Saturday denounced feminism for trying to blur differences between men and women and threatening the institution of families based on a mother and a father.
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The concerns, raised in a 37-page document written by one of Pope John Paul II's closest aides, broke no new ground, maintaining the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests, for example.
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The document also took issue with a "certain type of feminist rhetoric" that makes "demands 'for ourselves.'"
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The Rev. Thomas Reese, a commentator on the Catholic church, said in an e-mailed statement that "although most American feminists would express their theology differently from the Vatican, on the practical level, they are on the same page (in terms of equality in education, politics, workplace) except on abortion and women priests." [Details, details...]
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The document also expressed the Vatican's concern that blurring of differences between sexes could pose a challenge to church teaching..."

Really? What a surprise...

P.S. Don't understand the title? Read here.

From the "We're all God's children" files:

The Anglican Church has urged US church leaders to apologise for ordaining a gay priest as bishop.

The call was made by the Lambeth Commission, set up after the ordination of Gene Robinson threatened to split the worldwide Anglican church. Commission chairman Irish Anglican leader Robin Eames concluded: "There remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together."

The report called for a moratorium on the consecration of gay candidates. It demanded an explanation from the Anglican Church in the US, known as Episcopalian, about "how a person living in a same gender union may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ".

Scripture must be used to back up the explanation, it added.

Maybe these folks can help the Episcopalians out with that apology...

UPDATE #1: The Episcopalians have expressed "regret" not for their action but for the impact it is having on Anglicans outside the U.S. They expressly refused to apologize, however. Good for them.

UPDATE #2: The African Anlgicans have responded by stating the Episcopalians are "following another religion" and by demanding that the American bishops who voted to ordain Robinson repent. There's a lot of politics going on here, not to mention bigotry. As one African Anglican, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, put it: being gay is "unbiblical, unnatural and definitely un-African."

Related Posts:
"Positive" Externalities
Kerry, Catholics, Catechisms, Kooks, Etc.

Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England (a.k.a. Episcopalians in the U.S.; Anglicans in the rest of the world) have ratcheted up their anti-gay histrionics over the past several days:

ITEM: The head of the global Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, issued an Advent letter to worldwide Anglican and Episcopalian bishops "warning" that gay and gay-friendly laity are in essence "writing off" the Church of England. Some gay activists, however, are reading between the lines and interpreting the letter as meaning that, since gay Anglicans are leaving the Church anyway, that Anglicans needn't worry about appeasing them and should feel free to cater to more conservative elements within the Church.

Recall that the worldwide Anglican Church is facing a global schism regarding the recent ordination of an openly gay Episcopalian bishop (who, incidentally, has graciously offered to forego participation in, or even attendance at, an upcoming decennial global Anglican conference where the subject of his ordination is at the top of the agenda-- even though it is longstanding Church tradition to invite all bishops to such meetings).

ITEM: Meanwhile, the Supreme Bigot, Pope John Paul II, continues his war against gays and warns that gays may destroy the very fabric of society:

In his strongest words on the subject yet the 84-year old pontiff's pre-Christmas message called on Catholics around the world to step up their opposition to gay marriage. "Attacks on marriage and the family, from an ideological and legal aspect, are becoming stronger and more radical every day," his statement said. "Who destroys this fundamental fabric causes a profound injury to society and provokes often irreparable damage."

Of course, what can get easily lost in the indignation at these alleged "Christians" who prioritize hate and false blame over love and inclusiveness is that these acts are not unrelated. It is not just "Anglican versus Gay" or "Catholic versus Gay." The real battle is in fact "Anglican versus Catholic" -- with gays merely finding themselves caught in the crossfire.

The reason, as I have blogged before (twice in fact), is Africa. The Anglican and Catholic Churches are in a rather fierce contest to win the hearts and minds of African Christians. Whichever sect wins Africa wins Christianity for a century or more. Since Africa has a long, deep and wide homophobia that transcends its more recent Christian ties, the anti-gay pandering by Catholic and Anglican leaders is nothing more than "preaching to the choir." And no amount of protesting by the "uppity American gay" laity in either sect is going to change that -- the two Churches' American members are simply not part of the calculus right now.

On the Anglican side, the likely outcome is a formal break by (or banishment of) the U.S. Episcopal Church. As for American Catholics, they have their own problems right now and generally don't take the Pope seriously anyway.

For more details and reactions, see Ramblings.

It is my longstanding thesis that the reason both the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches have become increasingly reactionary and conservative, especially regarding homophobic bigotry, is because they are competing to win the hearts and minds of their shared base, namely Africa. It's a classic race to the bottom.

Here's the latest data point:

Africa's two most important archbishops joined to criticize a new Church of England policy on gays and lesbians.

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola and Ugandan Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi each assailed a July 25 announcement from England's bishops that said gay priests who register same-sex partnerships under a new civil law will remain in good standing so long as they promise to remain celibate. The English bishops also said that lay Anglicans who register civil unions will not be denied the sacraments.
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[Akinola] further suggested that world Anglicanism must now discipline the Church of England along similar lines that Anglican bodies worldwide have taken against liberal actions by the U.S. and Canadian churches.
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The continent of Africa, whose Anglican council is chaired by Akinola, is home to half of world Anglicans.

As I've said before, gays and straights of good will in America or any other civilized country can rant and protest all we want against global church bureaucracies, but it won't do any good. We're not even on their radar screens. It's all about Africa (and other third-world regions such as the Caribbean and South America). And if that means that global Anglicanism, or even global Catholicism, ends up devolving into a collection of detached factions, then so be it.

You can expect schisms, but don't expect change.

Another quick data point reaffirming my thesis that the anti-gay policies of the world's two dominant bureaucratic religions, Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, are driven by pandering to African homophobia:

Nigeria's Anglican church has deleted all references to the mother church in Britain from its constitution, deepening a rift over homosexuality but stopping short of a feared schism.

The Nigeria and Ugandan Anglican churches broke ties with the U.S. Episcopal Church over its 2003 consecration of a gay bishop living with a partner. A new dispute over same-sex unions in England has deepened divisions.

On Tuesday, a statement on the Nigerian church's Web site said that "all former references to 'communion with the see of Canterbury' were deleted" at a meeting last week. Instead, the constitution affirms ties with all churches that maintain the "faith, doctrine, sacrament and discipline of the one holy, Catholic and apostolic church."

The Anglican Church, being somewhat more decentralized than the Roman Catholic Church, faces greater internal discord like this, and will probably succumb to schism before the Catholic Church will. The Vatican, by contrast, has chosen not to accommodate the developed world, but rather to write it off wholesale. As the Great Boy-Rape Crisis illustrates, the Vatican simply doesn't care all that much what happens in America.

Two responses to the increasingly stark line between gay rights modernity and barbarism being drawn around the world, but in the end the same result is inevitable -- the collapse of authoritarian religion, at least in the Western world.

It can't happen fast enough.

Another data point defending my longstanding thesis that the two main authoritarian branches of Christianity -- Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism -- set their policies based solely on a drive to pander to their third-world congregations even if it comes at the expense of membership in the developed West:

An international panel of Anglican bishops called upon a gathering of their conservative American counterparts Friday to split from the rest of the U.S. Episcopal Church.
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The seven bishops from Africa, the West Indies, and Asia spoke at the Hope and a Future Conference organized by the Anglican Communion Network.

The network is headed by Pittsburgh's Episcopal Bishop Robert W. Duncan. He helped form the group in 2003 after the Episcopal Church in the United States consecrated an openly gay priest, Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire and gave tacit approval to blessing services for same-sex couples.

So the bishops of the third-world would rather see the U.S. Episcopal Church break into two, and lose perhaps millions of members, just because of one gay bishop. And all "in God's name."

Perhaps a schism would be for the best. And for the next hundred years or so, when someone says that they're "Episcopalian," people will have to follow-up with "Which kind of Episcopalian: the bigot kind or the Christian kind?"

Slowly but surely, Christians are increasingly going to start taking back Christ from the hateful authoritarians.

No, not the merger of XM Radio and Sirius Satellite, but the merger of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches:

Issues surrounding a possible reuniting of the Catholic and Anglican churches under the pope are discussed in a 42-page statement currently being prepared, church leaders said on Tuesday.
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[Archbishop of Brisbane John Bathersby] said the discussion on reuniting the churches under a universal primate, the Pope, has been going on for 35 years.
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If the Catholics and Anglicans could agree on the issue of a universal primate, Bathersby believed that the Pope would become the head of a united church.

"That would seem to be the idea because the Pope is the leader of a billion Roman Catholic Christians and the Anglican community ... is a much smaller church, I think it's about 80 million," he said.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

I can't imagine such a reunification actually occurring. The Anglican Communion can't keep its own house in order, so the thought of the global Anglicans achieving consensus -- and prostrating themselves to the Pope -- seems wishful thinking at best and downright delusional at worst.

Still, this is a good opportunity to review what the two great branches of Western canonical Christianity have in common:

--Unrestrained, unlimited and unrepentant antipathy toward gays.

--The elevation of blind faith and ritualistic dogma over reason and science (one example here).

--An ongoing preference for the spread of AIDS in Africa over a re-evaluation of their views on contraception. (Though the Anglicans have admittedly started to budge -- slightly -- on their longstanding "AIDS is God's punishment" madness.)

Is that enough to warrant unification? Probably not.

Is that enough to warrant condemnation? Definitely.

We pause briefly from blogging about Islam to blog about -- well, about Islam et al:

Hundreds of people held an anti-gay protest in Uganda's capital Tuesday, denouncing what they called an "immoral" lifestyle and demanding the deportation of an American journalist writing about gay rights in the deeply conservative country.
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Last week, [Katherine] Roubos covered a news conference in Kampala where Uganda's gay community spoke out publicly for the first time. The participants wore masks to hide their identities for fear of recrimination, but asked for Ugandans to respect their rights and allow them to live in dignity.

Demonstrators at Tuesday's event, organized by a coalition of Christian, Muslim and Bahai groups, accused Roubos of advocating for gay rights in the country.

Look on the bright side, at least this female deportee won't have to pay $330,000 in ransom.

More:

The Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Nsaba Buturo, also attended the protest and said the government supported the enforcement of existing anti-gay laws.

"We people of Uganda have values. If this lady cannot respect them then she had better be deported," said Eddie Semakula, a member of the coalition. "She is advocating for the rights of homosexuals in a paper that is read by children even. We must protect our children."

Of course, you could have stopped reading after "Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity." That tells you everything you need to know about which side of the civilized-barbarian demarcation line Uganda lies on.

On the other hand, Uganda is exactly the kind of "values-driven" society (minus the hellbound Muslim and Bahai populations, that is) that many theocrats seek to replicate here in the U.S. To radical social conservatives in America, the Ugandans aren't behind us -- they've lapped us! Go figure.