I am so tired of the whole "cool pope" thing with Francis. It's 100% PR.
And I think an organisation covering for pedophiles and murdering kids in their schools have no moral high ground and it is definitely unfit to lecture anyone on human dignity.
Eat a bag of dicks Francis
Francis,
Calamari is just the tips.
Exactly. There people are a threat, not role models.
The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved the document, which also reaffirms its condemnation of surrogacy, saying the practice represents “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”.
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” the document says. “Every human life, beginning with that of the unborn child in its mother’s womb, cannot be suppressed, nor become an object of commodity.”
The ethical problems with surrogacy are real, but they're not about the child. They're about income inequality and putting adult women through a physically traumatic, dangerous, and possibly life-changing experience for money. If we were able to use artificial wombs for "surrogacy" (I know, it's technically not the same thing), I think people would see it as nothing but a new type of fertility medicine.
My cousin did it because she wanted to help someone have a child. She didn’t do it for the money.
When it’s a financial transaction, I see the issue.
It also helps LBGT couples who can't have children get them. I don't see an issue even if there is money involved if it is clearly not coerced.
The issue is ensuring its clearly not coerced, which is effectively impossible in practice. Unfortunately it's one of those things where once you allow people to be paid for it, it's gets really, really dark, really, really quickly.
I don't think it's impossible at all. If the surrogate knows the person or people who want the child personally, it's almost certainly not coerced even if money changes hands.
Exactly. My cousin liked being pregnant but they already had five kids. Yes; she was paid but the money was token. It paid for medical care, food, etc. to her it was about helping someone.
Im not sure I can be so confident just because the surrogate knows the couple. If anything that would make me more worried about coercion. That could easily add MORE pressure for a surrogate to take on the pregnancy if that surrogate knows how important it is to the couple.
My coworker had to use a surrogate to have a kid because of her infertility issues. I promise you, there was no coercion. When you regulate things it’s much easier to ensure everyone is consenting. The problems happen when you ban shit and drive it underground.
That's amazing, I'm glad your coworker was able to find someone and get to be a parent.
I'm sorry if I came across as advocating against surrogacy. I don't nearly know enough to have that strong of an opinion on it in either direction. All I wanted to get across was that making sure there's no coercion is hard. Not impossible, but hard. There were some really sweeping statements under this post that felt like they were oversimplifications and I wanted to consider the nuance.
I don't know how I feel about it overall (surrogacy, not gay people getting to have children, that's beautiful), but it's hard to be confident there's no coercion when money is involved. The money itself can be coercive especially if the surrogate is particularly in need of the money. I'm not sure it can always be "clear" it's not coerced.
In the U.S., where medical care is expensive, I think money to cover that should be expected.
Absolutely! And more to cover other expenses like maternity clothing, any comfort items to manage the pregnancy, additional dietary needs, and probably some more to help account for how traumatic a pregnancy can be and the body changes it causes.
I'm absolutely not advocating that a surrogate shouldn't get paid. Just that it's hard to separate payment from coercion in even the best situations.
plenty of unwanted people out there to adopt, no need to make more
Do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt in the U.S.?
Separate from any discussion about surrogacy, that's fucked and our adoption system should be way more accepting of gay couples than it is. There's no reason it should be so hard.
Espically since religious groups run the show to facilitate a sort of human trafficking
LBGT
Lesbian, Bay, Guysexual, Trans
Believe it or not, the letters can go in any order.
Not appreciating utterly hilarious 'guysexul' pun and going "well ackchully" instead
Believe it or not, there are women in this world who love being pregnant and want to help couples have kids. There are laws around it and reputable clinics make sure everyone is consenting.
So the vatican can fuck off with this outdated way of looking at the world. In fact, if you consensually want to sell your body in any way, we should be allowing it with regulations, be it surrogacy, egg donation, or sex work. Make it safe and make it a choice.
How about you work on your age-of-concent-fluidity problems first.
Then there's spreading HIV in Africa (and other parts of the world) by preaching against using condoms. How many millions have died of AIDS because the Catholic church told them or their partner not to wear a condom?
It's insane at how influential the Catholic Church is with their followers considering how far spread out their followers are. They have to be the most influential organization ever, right?
Tbh the problem is not not wearing condoms, is allowing the virus to still exist. I say we need some purge by fire to get rid of that dangerous virus. /S just in case
There wouldn’t be many people left if all the pedos got removed.
The Vatican is still covering up little boy rape, right?
They're definitely covering for little girl rape too
I say diddling kids is a threat to human dignity.
That's where you and the pope will just have to agree to disagree.
idk, seems like forced birth and pedophilia are bigger threats to the dignity of the woman and the child than surrogacy
The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”
Better update the bible in English to refer to god as "they" instead of always using male pronouns, then.
I mean, no update needed:
Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
This passage uses a plural for God and refers to the image of God as male and female (likely a remnant of when it was a divine couple before the reforms, but still).
This "dominition over other living beings" thing is an antique mindset that caused so much damage to the environment.
True, but Genesis also says that humans were made to tend the Garden of Eden, so others argue, based on that and a few other passages, that humans are supposed to care for the Earth.
As usual, the Bible can be interpreted any way you want it to. You can use it to defend murder and use it to condemn murder. The same book.
Or it can be interpreted as the royal "we." Regardless, he's called "he" pretty much everywhere else afterwards.
The royal 'we' develops later on, likely in part because of the Bible.
And yes, there are references to 'he' or 'Father' but it's important to keep in mind (a) Hebrew is a binary gendered language with no neutral 'Parent' as an option, and (b) there's extensive evidence of revisionist misogyny in the Old Testament where you go from a woman prophet leading the Israelites to a "Queen Mother" being deposed and major religious reforms that include banning the worship of the women for their goddess who was evidenced as married to Yahweh before those reforms.
This is pretty academic in my opinion. Modern Jews and Christians view their god as a 'he' regardless of what it says in an archaic version of Hebrew.
It reminds me of the 'was there a real Jesus' debate. It doesn't matter beyond an academic discussion. The Jesus Christians worship was a literal god who performed miracles and came back from the dead. He was a fiction.
The academic matters.
Arguably more than the fiction.
Yes, it's true that many, many people believe very strongly in the fictions that arose around the realities that the academic cuts closer to.
But reality matters.
I'm sure we might agree that it would be absurd to say that the stories of Homer, because of how they are treasured by audiences in their own right, should invalidate the importance of better learning the historical realities on which they drew.
There was a history. That history is not what was canonized in the Torah. It was not what was canonized in the New Testament.
And at least to me, that history is much, much more interesting than the fantasies and propaganda which eroded it.
It will not change anyone's beliefs. Faith is belief in the face of evidence, not because of it. Telling believers that "actually, in Genesis, God is referred to as both male and female" will not matter one bit to them because that's not the god they believe in and it will never be the god they believe in.
It's not necessarily for them. They aren't the center of the universe, even if they believe it to be so.
Other people who care about evidence and history and reality might be interested in the fact that originally there was a claimed prophet and leader of the Israelites who was a woman named 'bee' around the time there was an apiary in Tel Rehov importing queen bees from Anatolia as the only honey production in "the land of milk and honey" where inside the apiary was one of the earliest four horned altars (later appearing as an Israelite altar feature) dedicated to a goddess for example.
I could care less if an Orthodox conservative religious person believes that's true or not. Archeology tells us unequivocally that the apiary and altar were true, and that's valuable context for untangling the folk history that was being reshaped by later hands.
Yes, that's what I was saying, it's academic.
And as I said, the academic matters.
It matters to other people interested in the academics. It has no significant impact on the world.
That simply isn't true. If a group of people make claims about history that are provably false, not just about supernatural stuff but about actual events which feed into their attitudes towards modernity, then the availability of accurate information about what really did or didn't happen is quite relevant to people that deconvert, or oppose that group and their positions, etc.
The idea that there's a dichotomy of either "believe in BS" or "don't care" cedes the claims over history to the fanatical.
Personally, I care about knowing my real ancestral history. I care about knowing my real cultural history. To me, the historical reality of the book of Joshua being anachronistic BS that flies in the face of the archeological reality of the Israelites cohabitating peacefully with Philistines and Canaanites has quite profound implications for a major modern world news topic, and recontextualizes phrases like Leviticus's "love thy neighbor as yourself" and "love the alien residing among you as yourself."
A historical reality of an early history of cohabitation with ethnically different neighbors as opposed to the claimed history of conquering those neighbors is relevant in opposing the dogmatic claims of justified oppression of others and in interpreting the tradition that history left behind. Even if it gets ignored by the 'faithful' it's a useful context for those standing in opposition to their claims and dogma.
Let this be a reminder to you that organized religion only accepts social progress when they get dragged to do it under risk of becoming irrelevant. This Pope's previous winks to the LGBT community were the bare minimum that the Catholic Church has to do in order to not to continue losing followers (and their wallets) in some countries such as Spain and Ireland. The moment a much less mainstream concept, such as gender fluidity, gets brought into the table, it's free game for them again.
Aaaaand…. Human dignity calls the Vatican archaic and obsolete.
Wouldn't depriving someone of their right to their preferred identity be considered a threat to human dignity?
It's not their "preferred identity." It's their identity.
They are not their "preferred pronouns." They are their pronouns.
It's not their "chosen name." It's their name.
They don't "identify as." They are.
(I know you're an ally, just wanted to point these things out for all the allies to use slightly better wording.)
I get what you are saying
but for chosen name I have to disagree. I, a cishet man, have a chosen name that my friends call me. it goes beyond a nickname, if I get called my birthname by friends I get weirded out and feel on edge. However, family and coworkers call me by my birth name and thats perfectly fine for me
My family is southern; everyone has a different name than their birth name. It is either picked or assigned by others.
That Is what I tell people about trans people. Just call them what they want to be called, just as you want to be called what you want to be called. It's not that hard.
And that is fine for you, and for anyone who refers to it as their chosen name, whether they are trans or cis.
But when someone else mentions that Name is a trans person's "chosen name", what a bigot's brain says is "well, I choose to call [them] Deadname which their mom gave [them]."
[with incorrect pronouns here]
I know that I'm 9 days late but thank you for the tip.
In Vatican it wouldn't.
Right to preferred identity?
Does that mean people have to see me the way I want them to?
Frank, if you want to find threats to human dignity, look at your child molesting priests and your bishops covering for them. Until then, you're in no place to judge.
All top level religious leaders are generally awful. Especially if it's Abrahamic.
If you think Buddhists are exempt, read about the Tibetan Buddhist monarchies.
Also, theocracy needs to die.
Ah yes, recknognizing that human beings come in many different forms is the "threat to human dignity", and definitely not the practice of trying to aggressively (even violently) shoehorn others into neat, convenient categories. 🙄
You know what the real threat to human dignity is? Not respecting other peoples choices.
The only threat to human dignity here is child-rapists being considered the experts on morality.
Conservatism is a vile plague and religion a tool of conservatism. There is no greater threat to humanity than conservative religious people.
Yes, because living your desires as your true self is no way to find dignity. And surrogacy?! Like…what.
Ah yes, it is uniquely dignified to hate your body and feel like an alien inside it.
there's the catholic church that I knew and hated.
I wonder why multiple adults beating the shit out of 6 year old me with yardsticks wasn't a threat to human dignity.
What didn't kill you made you stronger
Fuck all the way off trauma has no reward. It took me a long time to grapple with that with my own childhood traumas. I used to think that after going through my own personal Hell, there'd be a Heaven waiting for me, but there wasn't.
Don't be like this, it's so exhausting. Even if you struggle with sarcasm, all you need to do is take half a second to ask yourself if it's possible it could be a joke. For an obviously flippant comment like this—obvious because it has no other value—you will literally never go wrong interpreting it as a joke. If it is a bit more complex, ask: "Sorry, I just want to confirm, did you mean this sincerely?"
if only we had a convenient indicator to indicate sarcasm from assholery. /s
consider that I've had to hear this exact phrase in complete earnestness from anyone I've ever talked to about my abuse for three and a half decades and that it's never been anything other than a way for other people to comfort themselves about their involvement and/or lack of involvement
Consider that it is almost certainly a snide comment aimed at the people who would do what you are describing and excuse it with a bullshit phrase like the one in question.
As long as you are thinking strictly in terms of what you have suffered, you are virtually guaranteed to misinterpret the information in front of you.
I am not indifferent to your struggle, but being 50+ and still so easily triggered... that seems miserable. Not saying it's easy, but when I find myself spontaneously experiencing undesirable emotions, I like to lean into it and try to understand what's going on.
The past isn't real, and we get one chance at this. Your story can be what you want. Maybe some pages weren't great, or maybe the entire book got lost in a house fire - that's ok.
I hope you find your way through very soon.
outta here with that shit. we don't "look on the bright side" of child abuse. What didn't kill me made me terrified and angry.
Agreed. Being slightly less of an asshole than one”s predecessor is definitely not the same as being “cool”.
Fuck the vatican
The woke pope got lame.
He never was, it was all PR to deflect from the child molesting
And speaking of the child molesting-
"Pope mandates reporting of sex abuse to church, not police"
Slightly disingenuous, the new church law requires reporting sexual abuse to higher-ups, it doesn't say "don't go to the police". It's also a rule that only covers clergy and not average parishioners. Should it mandate reporting to the police? Absolutely, but at least it requires clergy to tell someone about abuse, which will hopefully spur them to also tell law enforcement.
Wait wait wait....you mean to tell me they're just NOW saying the clergy has to report abuse? I assumed it's been something they're ignoring or not enforcing, but it literally hasn't been a rule...this whole time?
He never was. He's just a Pope John Paul II who hasn't had a photoshoot with a brutal dictator yet.
Boo!
Boo, again I say!
It makes life so much harder for Trans living in parts of the world where Catholicism is still relevant.
s/relevant/prominent
Get Fucked Pedo Leader!!!
Human dignity has been a nonarguement for 100,000 years
Human dignity is certainly not something the world's leading sponsor of institutional child rape should have any opinion on
Indeed
I feel like that's a bit of a conservative estimate honestly.
Probably. the further back you look, the less dignified humanity appears. dignity drops hard in the face of reality
The universe was a mistake and all that jazz.
And thr vatican can fuck right off with their outdated world view.
Wonder why they’re losing so many followers
LOL, every single surrogate I've ever met personally, with the exception of one, has been a staunch Christian.
I hope you don't think your anecdotal experience indicates anything.
There are a ton of resources for LGBT people looking for surrogates and how to find them.
Edit: Sorry, I thought this was a reply to something else. Ignore.
Interesting. My cousin is a staunch Christian. She did it for a gay couple. She’s the only one I’ve known. So no idea if that’s universally true or not.
It's important to note that all the times he's been the "cool pope" he's prefaced all his statements with the phrase "ex cathedra", which means he's speaking as himself, not "the Pope". Because anything he says as "the Pope" is the official church position.
Gotta hand it to all the folks who warned me that "cool pope" was just paying lip service to progressive ideals and didn't actually fundamentally change how shitty the actual Catholic church is. They were right all along and I owe them all an apology.
He's kind of a wimp, then. I'm sure his progressive views are genuine, he has no reason to lie, but I'd think he would know that Canon Law is geared towards papal supremacy, the Cardinals can denounce him all they like, but they can't kick him out. Sure, he could start a schism, but the world was overdue for one, anyway.
Pretty ironic considering what they have done to human dignity for centuries
There are a couple of institutions that keep trying to bring us back to the middle ages. I suggest we get rid of them for good before they declare the next holy crusade. Dear Pope, you suck!
Vatican should shut the fuck up and pay attention to their own bullshit before casting their stone. The glass house they live in is barely held together. How many children at this point now?
Who the fuck do these Vatican people think they are, to lecture others on morality? The previous pope instructed all of Catholosism that they were not to report pedophile priests to the police on pain of excommunication. And this is apparently fine by the current pope.
They are a bunch of idiots with no coherent concept of morality. All morality is based on personal responsibility, but most Christians seem to think they can ask their imaginary friend - rather than the one they have wronged - for forgiveness, and be granted it! It is absolutely absurd. I'm not saying that Christians in general are bad people, I'm just saying we shouldn't be looking towards Christianity or any of its leaders for moral guidance.
Incidentally - do you know which World War 2 nazis were excommunicated for their crimes by the Catholic church? You'd probably be surprised to know that it was only one. One! And who was it? It was Joseph Goebbels. Among all the heinous crimes commited by the nazis, what was it that Goebbels specifically did that caused the Catholic church to say "enough is enough"? I'll tell you what he did: He married a divorced protestant. "That's it," the Catholic church said, "you no longer get to go to heaven with your fellow nazi war criminals. Killing 13 million people in the Holocaust alone we can live with, but marrying a divorced protestant? No, we can't have that, that would be, like, totally immoral dude."
But surely, I hear you say, the Catholic church was against the nazis? No. No, they were not. Hitler's birthday was celebrated in German Catholic churces all throughout the war. Only in 1960's did the Catholic church apologize for its silence during the Holocaust, and revert the hitherto established doctrine that all currently living Jews - including children - are personally responsible for killing Jesus. That's why they didn't oppose the Holocaust - because the Jews (never mind that they weren't the only victims) had it coming, since they were all (some-fucking-how) personally responsible for "killing Jesus".
So, yeah. I'm not going to let these morons lecture me or anyone else on morality.
Who the fuck do these Vatican people think they are
The most powerful government in the world.
so the vatican is running the same fuckin narratives as the american GOP??? Surrogacy?!
Human dignity? That was a lost cause a long time ago.
... because a jesuit taking the name after S.Francis wasn't already a clue strong enough?
You would think, but the "Cool Pope" label persists.
Who asked Vatican? Don't they fuck kids? I'm not asking my local child molester what they think about my wife pegging me, let's stop giving fucktards a platform.
(◠‿・)🖕
The surrogacy debate is one of those things where I think leftists and feminists across the world don't realize how far apart they are. Over here it's a very mainstream left-wing, feminist position to agree with the Pope on that one. Hardcore feminists, and increasingly moderates as well will refer to surrogacy as "human trafficking" and have been lobbying to illegalize it outright for a while.
I'm not super aware of the mainstream stance among feminism in the US, but from the comments here I'm gonna say... not that?
From the US: I'm over 30 and this is the first time I've heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.
It's always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I've also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I'm starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts....?
But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.
I'm curious, where's "over here" for you? I'm not super involved in politics here in the US, but I don't think surrogacy is really talked about much here? There's the people who vehemently oppose it (from my experience that's mostly the religious right), but almost any interaction I've had discussing it just lists it as an option people can consider.
I should mention that I'm Bi and don't have a kid, so I mostly hear about it from the context of same sex couples.
I get the feeling this person is probably talking about commercial surrogacy from a European perspective.
Look, if I wanted to say that I'd have just come out and said it. You could probably figure it out by digging through my replies and mentions, but... that'd be kinda rude?
We can leave it at "not in the US", maybe?
In any case, it is interesting how that divide has not made it over. Along with the different positions on sex work it seems like one of the most notorious differences in position within feminism (TERFs exempted because I don't think they count at all in the first place).
I think we all have a tendency to try to paper over these regional differences to present a unified front, but these are significant differences in perspective.
And for the record, I know plenty of same sex couples here that will tell you outright that having babies is not a right and you don't get to pay for a woman's body under any circumstances. Like you, I feel like I don't have a horse in the race, so I abstain from opining in any direction on this one. You need at least one more uterus than I'm rocking to get a vote on this one.
But I can still notice the difference of opinion and how little it's mentioned.
I guess not. I'm also guessing it's a lot easier for same-gendered couples to adopt in your country. It's not easy at all in the U.S.
I don't know, I've never tried. The one person I know who did adopted abroad, so I'm gonna guess not super easy?
Extremely difficult. Courts have essentially ruled that adoption agencies can turn down whoever they want based on their religious views, and not just queer people, this was a case over a Jewish couple trying to adopt from a Christian agency because that was the only one available in their area. And, of course, that's true in a lot of places. All the adoption agencies are Christian and will only let other Christians adopt.
Which is pretty fucking ironic considering they kept saying adoption was an alternative to abortion.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”, as it released an updated declaration of what the Catholic church regards as threats to human dignity.
The new Dignitas infinita (Infinite Dignity) declaration released by the Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday after five years in the making reiterates Pope Francis’s previous criticism of what he has called an “ugly ideology of our time”.
Reiterating opposition to gender reassignment surgery, it adds: “It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
The Holy See distinguished between these sorts of surgeries and procedures to resolve “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or develop later.
The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved the document, which also reaffirms its condemnation of surrogacy, saying the practice represents “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”.
Fernández, a liberal theologian who was appointed to the DDF role – one of the Vatican’s most powerful positions – by Francis last year, said punishing homosexuality was “a big problem” and that it was “painful” to see some Catholics support anti-homosexuality laws.
The original article contains 417 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Lol.
Yeah go read all about it! It's in their book!...oh wait, could we just burn the book and the nightmare will be over like in the movies?
And I think an organisation covering for pedophiles and murdering kids in their schools have no moral high ground and it is definitely unfit to lecture anyone on human dignity.
Eat a bag of dicks Francis
Francis,
Calamari is just the tips.
Exactly. There people are a threat, not role models.
The ethical problems with surrogacy are real, but they're not about the child. They're about income inequality and putting adult women through a physically traumatic, dangerous, and possibly life-changing experience for money. If we were able to use artificial wombs for "surrogacy" (I know, it's technically not the same thing), I think people would see it as nothing but a new type of fertility medicine.
My cousin did it because she wanted to help someone have a child. She didn’t do it for the money. When it’s a financial transaction, I see the issue.
It also helps LBGT couples who can't have children get them. I don't see an issue even if there is money involved if it is clearly not coerced.
The issue is ensuring its clearly not coerced, which is effectively impossible in practice. Unfortunately it's one of those things where once you allow people to be paid for it, it's gets really, really dark, really, really quickly.
I don't think it's impossible at all. If the surrogate knows the person or people who want the child personally, it's almost certainly not coerced even if money changes hands.
Exactly. My cousin liked being pregnant but they already had five kids. Yes; she was paid but the money was token. It paid for medical care, food, etc. to her it was about helping someone.
Im not sure I can be so confident just because the surrogate knows the couple. If anything that would make me more worried about coercion. That could easily add MORE pressure for a surrogate to take on the pregnancy if that surrogate knows how important it is to the couple.
My coworker had to use a surrogate to have a kid because of her infertility issues. I promise you, there was no coercion. When you regulate things it’s much easier to ensure everyone is consenting. The problems happen when you ban shit and drive it underground.
That's amazing, I'm glad your coworker was able to find someone and get to be a parent.
I'm sorry if I came across as advocating against surrogacy. I don't nearly know enough to have that strong of an opinion on it in either direction. All I wanted to get across was that making sure there's no coercion is hard. Not impossible, but hard. There were some really sweeping statements under this post that felt like they were oversimplifications and I wanted to consider the nuance.
I don't know how I feel about it overall (surrogacy, not gay people getting to have children, that's beautiful), but it's hard to be confident there's no coercion when money is involved. The money itself can be coercive especially if the surrogate is particularly in need of the money. I'm not sure it can always be "clear" it's not coerced.
In the U.S., where medical care is expensive, I think money to cover that should be expected.
Absolutely! And more to cover other expenses like maternity clothing, any comfort items to manage the pregnancy, additional dietary needs, and probably some more to help account for how traumatic a pregnancy can be and the body changes it causes.
I'm absolutely not advocating that a surrogate shouldn't get paid. Just that it's hard to separate payment from coercion in even the best situations.
plenty of unwanted people out there to adopt, no need to make more
Do you know how hard it is for a gay couple to adopt in the U.S.?
Separate from any discussion about surrogacy, that's fucked and our adoption system should be way more accepting of gay couples than it is. There's no reason it should be so hard.
Espically since religious groups run the show to facilitate a sort of human trafficking
Lesbian, Bay, Guysexual, Trans
Believe it or not, the letters can go in any order.
Not appreciating utterly hilarious 'guysexul' pun and going "well ackchully" instead
Believe it or not, there are women in this world who love being pregnant and want to help couples have kids. There are laws around it and reputable clinics make sure everyone is consenting.
So the vatican can fuck off with this outdated way of looking at the world. In fact, if you consensually want to sell your body in any way, we should be allowing it with regulations, be it surrogacy, egg donation, or sex work. Make it safe and make it a choice.
How about you work on your age-of-concent-fluidity problems first.
Let's not forget the racism as well.
Then there's spreading HIV in Africa (and other parts of the world) by preaching against using condoms. How many millions have died of AIDS because the Catholic church told them or their partner not to wear a condom?
It's insane at how influential the Catholic Church is with their followers considering how far spread out their followers are. They have to be the most influential organization ever, right?
Tbh the problem is not not wearing condoms, is allowing the virus to still exist. I say we need some purge by fire to get rid of that dangerous virus. /S just in case
There wouldn’t be many people left if all the pedos got removed.
The Vatican is still covering up little boy rape, right?
They're definitely covering for little girl rape too
I say diddling kids is a threat to human dignity.
That's where you and the pope will just have to agree to disagree.
idk, seems like forced birth and pedophilia are bigger threats to the dignity of the woman and the child than surrogacy
Better update the bible in English to refer to god as "they" instead of always using male pronouns, then.
I mean, no update needed:
This passage uses a plural for God and refers to the image of God as male and female (likely a remnant of when it was a divine couple before the reforms, but still).
This "dominition over other living beings" thing is an antique mindset that caused so much damage to the environment.
True, but Genesis also says that humans were made to tend the Garden of Eden, so others argue, based on that and a few other passages, that humans are supposed to care for the Earth.
As usual, the Bible can be interpreted any way you want it to. You can use it to defend murder and use it to condemn murder. The same book.
Or it can be interpreted as the royal "we." Regardless, he's called "he" pretty much everywhere else afterwards.
The royal 'we' develops later on, likely in part because of the Bible.
And yes, there are references to 'he' or 'Father' but it's important to keep in mind (a) Hebrew is a binary gendered language with no neutral 'Parent' as an option, and (b) there's extensive evidence of revisionist misogyny in the Old Testament where you go from a woman prophet leading the Israelites to a "Queen Mother" being deposed and major religious reforms that include banning the worship of the women for their goddess who was evidenced as married to Yahweh before those reforms.
This is pretty academic in my opinion. Modern Jews and Christians view their god as a 'he' regardless of what it says in an archaic version of Hebrew.
It reminds me of the 'was there a real Jesus' debate. It doesn't matter beyond an academic discussion. The Jesus Christians worship was a literal god who performed miracles and came back from the dead. He was a fiction.
The academic matters.
Arguably more than the fiction.
Yes, it's true that many, many people believe very strongly in the fictions that arose around the realities that the academic cuts closer to.
But reality matters.
I'm sure we might agree that it would be absurd to say that the stories of Homer, because of how they are treasured by audiences in their own right, should invalidate the importance of better learning the historical realities on which they drew.
There was a history. That history is not what was canonized in the Torah. It was not what was canonized in the New Testament.
And at least to me, that history is much, much more interesting than the fantasies and propaganda which eroded it.
It will not change anyone's beliefs. Faith is belief in the face of evidence, not because of it. Telling believers that "actually, in Genesis, God is referred to as both male and female" will not matter one bit to them because that's not the god they believe in and it will never be the god they believe in.
It's not necessarily for them. They aren't the center of the universe, even if they believe it to be so.
Other people who care about evidence and history and reality might be interested in the fact that originally there was a claimed prophet and leader of the Israelites who was a woman named 'bee' around the time there was an apiary in Tel Rehov importing queen bees from Anatolia as the only honey production in "the land of milk and honey" where inside the apiary was one of the earliest four horned altars (later appearing as an Israelite altar feature) dedicated to a goddess for example.
I could care less if an Orthodox conservative religious person believes that's true or not. Archeology tells us unequivocally that the apiary and altar were true, and that's valuable context for untangling the folk history that was being reshaped by later hands.
Yes, that's what I was saying, it's academic.
And as I said, the academic matters.
It matters to other people interested in the academics. It has no significant impact on the world.
That simply isn't true. If a group of people make claims about history that are provably false, not just about supernatural stuff but about actual events which feed into their attitudes towards modernity, then the availability of accurate information about what really did or didn't happen is quite relevant to people that deconvert, or oppose that group and their positions, etc.
The idea that there's a dichotomy of either "believe in BS" or "don't care" cedes the claims over history to the fanatical.
Personally, I care about knowing my real ancestral history. I care about knowing my real cultural history. To me, the historical reality of the book of Joshua being anachronistic BS that flies in the face of the archeological reality of the Israelites cohabitating peacefully with Philistines and Canaanites has quite profound implications for a major modern world news topic, and recontextualizes phrases like Leviticus's "love thy neighbor as yourself" and "love the alien residing among you as yourself."
A historical reality of an early history of cohabitation with ethnically different neighbors as opposed to the claimed history of conquering those neighbors is relevant in opposing the dogmatic claims of justified oppression of others and in interpreting the tradition that history left behind. Even if it gets ignored by the 'faithful' it's a useful context for those standing in opposition to their claims and dogma.
Attack and dethrone god
Lucifer tried!
Let this be a reminder to you that organized religion only accepts social progress when they get dragged to do it under risk of becoming irrelevant. This Pope's previous winks to the LGBT community were the bare minimum that the Catholic Church has to do in order to not to continue losing followers (and their wallets) in some countries such as Spain and Ireland. The moment a much less mainstream concept, such as gender fluidity, gets brought into the table, it's free game for them again.
Aaaaand…. Human dignity calls the Vatican archaic and obsolete.
Wouldn't depriving someone of their right to their preferred identity be considered a threat to human dignity?
It's not their "preferred identity." It's their identity.
They are not their "preferred pronouns." They are their pronouns.
It's not their "chosen name." It's their name.
They don't "identify as." They are.
(I know you're an ally, just wanted to point these things out for all the allies to use slightly better wording.)
I get what you are saying
but for chosen name I have to disagree. I, a cishet man, have a chosen name that my friends call me. it goes beyond a nickname, if I get called my birthname by friends I get weirded out and feel on edge. However, family and coworkers call me by my birth name and thats perfectly fine for me
My family is southern; everyone has a different name than their birth name. It is either picked or assigned by others.
That Is what I tell people about trans people. Just call them what they want to be called, just as you want to be called what you want to be called. It's not that hard.
And that is fine for you, and for anyone who refers to it as their chosen name, whether they are trans or cis.
But when someone else mentions that Name is a trans person's "chosen name", what a bigot's brain says is "well, I choose to call [them] Deadname which their mom gave [them]."
[with incorrect pronouns here]
I know that I'm 9 days late but thank you for the tip.
In Vatican it wouldn't.
Right to preferred identity?
Does that mean people have to see me the way I want them to?
Frank, if you want to find threats to human dignity, look at your child molesting priests and your bishops covering for them. Until then, you're in no place to judge.
All top level religious leaders are generally awful. Especially if it's Abrahamic.
If you think Buddhists are exempt, read about the Tibetan Buddhist monarchies.
Also, theocracy needs to die.
Ah yes, recknognizing that human beings come in many different forms is the "threat to human dignity", and definitely not the practice of trying to aggressively (even violently) shoehorn others into neat, convenient categories. 🙄
You know what the real threat to human dignity is? Not respecting other peoples choices.
The only threat to human dignity here is child-rapists being considered the experts on morality.
Conservatism is a vile plague and religion a tool of conservatism. There is no greater threat to humanity than conservative religious people.
Yes, because living your desires as your true self is no way to find dignity. And surrogacy?! Like…what.
Ah yes, it is uniquely dignified to hate your body and feel like an alien inside it.
there's the catholic church that I knew and hated.
I wonder why multiple adults beating the shit out of 6 year old me with yardsticks wasn't a threat to human dignity.
What didn't kill you made you stronger
Fuck all the way off trauma has no reward. It took me a long time to grapple with that with my own childhood traumas. I used to think that after going through my own personal Hell, there'd be a Heaven waiting for me, but there wasn't.
Don't be like this, it's so exhausting. Even if you struggle with sarcasm, all you need to do is take half a second to ask yourself if it's possible it could be a joke. For an obviously flippant comment like this—obvious because it has no other value—you will literally never go wrong interpreting it as a joke. If it is a bit more complex, ask: "Sorry, I just want to confirm, did you mean this sincerely?"
if only we had a convenient indicator to indicate sarcasm from assholery. /s
consider that I've had to hear this exact phrase in complete earnestness from anyone I've ever talked to about my abuse for three and a half decades and that it's never been anything other than a way for other people to comfort themselves about their involvement and/or lack of involvement
Consider that it is almost certainly a snide comment aimed at the people who would do what you are describing and excuse it with a bullshit phrase like the one in question.
As long as you are thinking strictly in terms of what you have suffered, you are virtually guaranteed to misinterpret the information in front of you.
I am not indifferent to your struggle, but being 50+ and still so easily triggered... that seems miserable. Not saying it's easy, but when I find myself spontaneously experiencing undesirable emotions, I like to lean into it and try to understand what's going on.
The past isn't real, and we get one chance at this. Your story can be what you want. Maybe some pages weren't great, or maybe the entire book got lost in a house fire - that's ok.
I hope you find your way through very soon.
outta here with that shit. we don't "look on the bright side" of child abuse. What didn't kill me made me terrified and angry.
Agreed. Being slightly less of an asshole than one”s predecessor is definitely not the same as being “cool”.
Fuck the vatican
The woke pope got lame.
He never was, it was all PR to deflect from the child molesting
And speaking of the child molesting-
"Pope mandates reporting of sex abuse to church, not police"
https://apnews.com/article/ae64aa69d90043caaa38e52ee58eae2c
Slightly disingenuous, the new church law requires reporting sexual abuse to higher-ups, it doesn't say "don't go to the police". It's also a rule that only covers clergy and not average parishioners. Should it mandate reporting to the police? Absolutely, but at least it requires clergy to tell someone about abuse, which will hopefully spur them to also tell law enforcement.
Wait wait wait....you mean to tell me they're just NOW saying the clergy has to report abuse? I assumed it's been something they're ignoring or not enforcing, but it literally hasn't been a rule...this whole time?
He never was. He's just a Pope John Paul II who hasn't had a photoshoot with a brutal dictator yet.
Boo!
Boo, again I say!
It makes life so much harder for Trans living in parts of the world where Catholicism is still relevant.
s/relevant/prominent
Get Fucked Pedo Leader!!!
Human dignity has been a nonarguement for 100,000 years
Human dignity is certainly not something the world's leading sponsor of institutional child rape should have any opinion on
Indeed
I feel like that's a bit of a conservative estimate honestly.
Probably. the further back you look, the less dignified humanity appears. dignity drops hard in the face of reality
The universe was a mistake and all that jazz.
And thr vatican can fuck right off with their outdated world view.
Wonder why they’re losing so many followers
LOL, every single surrogate I've ever met personally, with the exception of one, has been a staunch Christian.
I hope you don't think your anecdotal experience indicates anything.
There are a ton of resources for LGBT people looking for surrogates and how to find them.
Edit: Sorry, I thought this was a reply to something else. Ignore.
Interesting. My cousin is a staunch Christian. She did it for a gay couple. She’s the only one I’ve known. So no idea if that’s universally true or not.
It's important to note that all the times he's been the "cool pope" he's prefaced all his statements with the phrase "ex cathedra", which means he's speaking as himself, not "the Pope". Because anything he says as "the Pope" is the official church position.
Gotta hand it to all the folks who warned me that "cool pope" was just paying lip service to progressive ideals and didn't actually fundamentally change how shitty the actual Catholic church is. They were right all along and I owe them all an apology.
He's kind of a wimp, then. I'm sure his progressive views are genuine, he has no reason to lie, but I'd think he would know that Canon Law is geared towards papal supremacy, the Cardinals can denounce him all they like, but they can't kick him out. Sure, he could start a schism, but the world was overdue for one, anyway.
Pretty ironic considering what they have done to human dignity for centuries
There are a couple of institutions that keep trying to bring us back to the middle ages. I suggest we get rid of them for good before they declare the next holy crusade. Dear Pope, you suck!
Vatican should shut the fuck up and pay attention to their own bullshit before casting their stone. The glass house they live in is barely held together. How many children at this point now?
Who the fuck do these Vatican people think they are, to lecture others on morality? The previous pope instructed all of Catholosism that they were not to report pedophile priests to the police on pain of excommunication. And this is apparently fine by the current pope.
They are a bunch of idiots with no coherent concept of morality. All morality is based on personal responsibility, but most Christians seem to think they can ask their imaginary friend - rather than the one they have wronged - for forgiveness, and be granted it! It is absolutely absurd. I'm not saying that Christians in general are bad people, I'm just saying we shouldn't be looking towards Christianity or any of its leaders for moral guidance.
Incidentally - do you know which World War 2 nazis were excommunicated for their crimes by the Catholic church? You'd probably be surprised to know that it was only one. One! And who was it? It was Joseph Goebbels. Among all the heinous crimes commited by the nazis, what was it that Goebbels specifically did that caused the Catholic church to say "enough is enough"? I'll tell you what he did: He married a divorced protestant. "That's it," the Catholic church said, "you no longer get to go to heaven with your fellow nazi war criminals. Killing 13 million people in the Holocaust alone we can live with, but marrying a divorced protestant? No, we can't have that, that would be, like, totally immoral dude."
But surely, I hear you say, the Catholic church was against the nazis? No. No, they were not. Hitler's birthday was celebrated in German Catholic churces all throughout the war. Only in 1960's did the Catholic church apologize for its silence during the Holocaust, and revert the hitherto established doctrine that all currently living Jews - including children - are personally responsible for killing Jesus. That's why they didn't oppose the Holocaust - because the Jews (never mind that they weren't the only victims) had it coming, since they were all (some-fucking-how) personally responsible for "killing Jesus".
So, yeah. I'm not going to let these morons lecture me or anyone else on morality.
The most powerful government in the world.
so the vatican is running the same fuckin narratives as the american GOP??? Surrogacy?!
meanwhile the GOP hates it when the catholics don't kowtow to their culture wars.
Human dignity? That was a lost cause a long time ago.
... because a jesuit taking the name after S.Francis wasn't already a clue strong enough?
You would think, but the "Cool Pope" label persists.
Who asked Vatican? Don't they fuck kids? I'm not asking my local child molester what they think about my wife pegging me, let's stop giving fucktards a platform.
(◠‿・)🖕
The surrogacy debate is one of those things where I think leftists and feminists across the world don't realize how far apart they are. Over here it's a very mainstream left-wing, feminist position to agree with the Pope on that one. Hardcore feminists, and increasingly moderates as well will refer to surrogacy as "human trafficking" and have been lobbying to illegalize it outright for a while.
I'm not super aware of the mainstream stance among feminism in the US, but from the comments here I'm gonna say... not that?
From the US: I'm over 30 and this is the first time I've heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.
It's always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I've also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I'm starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts....?
But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.
I'm curious, where's "over here" for you? I'm not super involved in politics here in the US, but I don't think surrogacy is really talked about much here? There's the people who vehemently oppose it (from my experience that's mostly the religious right), but almost any interaction I've had discussing it just lists it as an option people can consider.
I should mention that I'm Bi and don't have a kid, so I mostly hear about it from the context of same sex couples.
I get the feeling this person is probably talking about commercial surrogacy from a European perspective.
Look, if I wanted to say that I'd have just come out and said it. You could probably figure it out by digging through my replies and mentions, but... that'd be kinda rude?
We can leave it at "not in the US", maybe?
In any case, it is interesting how that divide has not made it over. Along with the different positions on sex work it seems like one of the most notorious differences in position within feminism (TERFs exempted because I don't think they count at all in the first place).
I think we all have a tendency to try to paper over these regional differences to present a unified front, but these are significant differences in perspective.
And for the record, I know plenty of same sex couples here that will tell you outright that having babies is not a right and you don't get to pay for a woman's body under any circumstances. Like you, I feel like I don't have a horse in the race, so I abstain from opining in any direction on this one. You need at least one more uterus than I'm rocking to get a vote on this one.
But I can still notice the difference of opinion and how little it's mentioned.
I guess not. I'm also guessing it's a lot easier for same-gendered couples to adopt in your country. It's not easy at all in the U.S.
I don't know, I've never tried. The one person I know who did adopted abroad, so I'm gonna guess not super easy?
Extremely difficult. Courts have essentially ruled that adoption agencies can turn down whoever they want based on their religious views, and not just queer people, this was a case over a Jewish couple trying to adopt from a Christian agency because that was the only one available in their area. And, of course, that's true in a lot of places. All the adoption agencies are Christian and will only let other Christians adopt.
Which is pretty fucking ironic considering they kept saying adoption was an alternative to abortion.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Vatican has described the belief in gender fluidity as “a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God”, as it released an updated declaration of what the Catholic church regards as threats to human dignity.
The new Dignitas infinita (Infinite Dignity) declaration released by the Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday after five years in the making reiterates Pope Francis’s previous criticism of what he has called an “ugly ideology of our time”.
Reiterating opposition to gender reassignment surgery, it adds: “It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
The Holy See distinguished between these sorts of surgeries and procedures to resolve “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or develop later.
The Vatican said Pope Francis had approved the document, which also reaffirms its condemnation of surrogacy, saying the practice represents “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child”.
Fernández, a liberal theologian who was appointed to the DDF role – one of the Vatican’s most powerful positions – by Francis last year, said punishing homosexuality was “a big problem” and that it was “painful” to see some Catholics support anti-homosexuality laws.
The original article contains 417 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Lol.
Yeah go read all about it! It's in their book!...oh wait, could we just burn the book and the nightmare will be over like in the movies?
Lol