THE Vatican envoy to the Netherlands, we learn with enormous pleasure this weekend, is about to receive a well-deserved arse-kicking from Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister, Maxime Verhagen.
Maxime Verhagen, whose stance should serve as an example to other European politicians
According to an outraged report on fundie website LifeSiteNews, the envoy – Monsignor François Bacqué – has been called to a meeting to explain the Catholic Church’s stance on sexuality and marriage, and answer charges the Church opposes gay rights.
His imminent carpeting comes in the wake of the Vatican’s refusal to support a UN declaration calling on all member countries to extend human rights to gay people.
Said Verhagen:
The Netherlands is unpleasantly surprised by the opposition of Pope Benedict XVI to a UN declaration on human rights and homosexuality.
He noted that although there were points of agreement with the Vatican statements, the “judgments of the Pope on homosexuality” are cause for concern:
Because they are unnecessarily offensive, as can be seen, and do not contribute to a worthy debate.
Wailed LifeSiteNews:
The announcement is part of a declared campaign by homosexualist activist groups who are furious that the Church continues to resist the movement to legitimise homosexual partnerships. A leading homosexualist group in the Netherlands, the Dutch Foundation of Friends of the Gay Krant (SVGK), is calling for an international campaign against the Pope.
Editorial staff of Gay Krant claimed that never before in such a short time had they received so many angry phone calls, emails and letters from angry Dutch people.
LifeSiteNews said that, in December, the Vatican was attacked in the international press for refusing to endorse the UN motion claiming to “decriminalise homosexuality”.
The motion, which is not legally binding, was introduced by Verhagen and by his colleagues from France, and has been signed by only 66 of the UN’s 192 member states. Thus far, although the United States, Russia, China, Guatemala, El Salvador and some African countries have also refused to endorse the resolution, only the representative of the Vatican has been publicly called on the carpet by Verhagen.
The Vatican’s representative at the UN, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said in December that although there was agreement that persons with homosexual inclinations should not be subject to arrest or other forms of unjust discrimination, the motion would lend support to the movement to create homosexual “marriage” or other legal recognition for homosexual unions.
The Vatican also opposed the use in the document of expressions such as “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” saying they are not defined in international law but are only cultural concepts promulgated in the media and the homosexualist political movement.
Migliore told the French news agency I.Media that the proposal was “sad and outrageous” and was a form of:
Modern savagery that will dismantle our society from the inside out. If adopted, it would create new and implacable discriminations. For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.
In an earlier piece, on December 23 last year, LSN complained that:
In thousands of news articles and talk shows around the world today from Bulgaria to India, Pope Benedict XVI is being bashed for daring to say we should care as much for mankind as the tropical rainforests; that the harm caused by going against the Creator’s plan for human sexuality is destructive and hurtful. In truth, he is being pilloried for having enough love to tell his brothers and sisters struggling with same-sex attraction, promiscuity, pornography, adultery and more, that their behaviour is hurting them and society at large. It is hurting them physically, psychologically, but most importantly – hurting them spiritually.
The homosexual press has the most outrageous headlines on the topic; Pink News in the UK screams: ‘Pope Benedict learnt nothing from his time in the Hitler Youth’.
It’s not a headline I would have written, because much of Hitler’s anti-semitic rhetoric is now faithfully being parroted by Ratzinger – the only difference being that he is now using Hitler’s hateful words against homosexuals and not Jews.
But, hey, let’s take comfort from the fact that the reactionary old bastard is very old and will soon be dead!
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
