Kissing must steam up Pope and police

September 3, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I almost missed a news story last month about a staged gay “kiss-in” in front of the Coliseum in Rome (also carried by the BBC). Apparently hundreds of couples did this to protest the arrest of two men who had kissed there the week before.

It shocked me for very personal reasons. A dozen years ago my partner and I made our first trip to Europe, and flew into Da Vinci airport outside Rome. We had no reservations for the next two and a half weeks, but planned to find a cheap pensione when we arrive. Traveling by train from the airport into the Eternal City, we quickly figured two African-American guys in the same train car as being gay. As we got to talking, we learned they were from New Jersey, but were brothers not boyfriends. They were meeting their third brother in Rome, also gay.

As rookie travelers, we were quite happy to talk with anybody who spoke English. We made plans to meet them in St. Peter’s Square at the obelisk on Wednesday for the papal audience. When we did meet up with these guys, we all acted as if we were long-lost relations or bawdy intimates, kissing and hugging within shouting distance of the bishops and cardinals and 10,000 other people awaiting the appearance of John Paul II.

It never crossed our minds that kissing other males in public would have been a problem in Rome.

A year and a half later and slightly more proficient with guide books and Italian-English phrasebooks, we were in Milan. Happy to discover an actual gay bookstore there, we spent quite a while visiting with a clerk more proficient in English than we were in Italian. Amazed at the openness of a gay book store, he explained that the farther away one gets geographically from the Pope the less of a problem it is to be openly gay.

 I wonder if things are stricter in Rome now because of Pope Benedict XVI than under John Paul II, or if it really is still a geographic thing. Two years ago last April, Benedict condemned efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Spain. Two months later, he slammed gay “pseudo-marriage” during an internal Catholic conference on the family. According to www.boston.com Benedict has continued to be a strong opponent of “gay culture” and same-gender marriage, which is legal in Massachusetts (and quite a distance from the Vatican). The current Pope seems more determined than his predecessor to reject and belittle our relationships, and to silence any church ministries that offer sympathy or support for us.

But when Father Walter Cuenin preached during the Boston gay pride event last year (see same story above) and reminded people “that Jesus was always with those who were often the target of hatred and persecution,” he was treading on thin ice with the Roman hierarchy all the way up to the Vatican. The more firmly a religious truth is held, the less tolerant it can be of any form of dissent. Benedict shows himself as having no sense of humor, and cutting no slack on this issue. As in 16^th century Reformation days, it all comes down to the “authority issue” again.

But his holiness is treading on a thin theology of sex. The Jesus of the Scriptures hardly condemned anybody for sexual sins, and stood with those who were quickly condemned by their self-righteous neighbors. Too many religious leaders, including the Pope, would rather stand by their doctrines than to stand with Jesus. And loudly condemning gays and lesbians is a distraction from his worldwide pedophilia problem. Is it any wonder there are so many “recovering Catholics”?

In the meantime, I am still curious about the news report of the big “kiss-in” at the Coliseum. If the Pope really does have pull with the Roman police, one wonders if this time around it would be the Christians throwing the fags to the lions.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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