El Papa, "Condoms not good for AIDS."

I mean, he's not completely unreasonable, he's saying that abstinence is better and condoms promote sex. That's true, right? In much the same way eyeglasses promote poor eyesight.

From IndyStar.com:

In his four years as pope, Benedict had never directly addressed condom use, although his position is not new. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, often said that sexual abstinence - not condoms - was the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease, as he answered questions submitted in advance by reporters traveling on the plane. His response was presumably also prepared in advance.

FOXNews is quick to bring up the issue that most sources are emphasizing the "no on condoms approach." Because, you know, FOXNews is the moral paragon of the country.

Meanwhile, people continue to have sex and people continue to get AIDS. You know, because years of abstinence-abstinence-abstinence worked for this country and everyone else...

...after all, just look at the Palin's.

Look: let's be honest. Abstinence is the best way to protect yourself from getting STD's and against unwanted pregnancies. It's the truth. No one is denying that. But the problem is not whether or not we go out and teach abstinence, it's whether or not we add the rejoinder "but if you choose to have sex, you should use..."

It's called comprehensive sex education, not "happy-fun-fuck-orgy-time" sex education. Responsible, complete, intelligent.

UN Calls for an End to Criminalization of Homosexuality

From Joe. My. God.

From the article from the Edge...

The US government is one of the only Western democratic nations that has declined to support a United Nations Declaration calling for the global decriminalisation of homosexuality. 

The Declaration will be put before the UN General Assembly this Wednesday, 10 December, which is Human Rights Day and the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

"It will be the first time in its history that the UN General Assembly has ever considered the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) human rights," noted British gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell of the London-based LGBT rights group OutRage! 

Although not be binding on the member states, the declaration will have immense symbolic value, given the six decades in which homophobic persecution has been ignored by the UN. 

For a summary of the countries supporting the Declaration, see below. 

"Even today, not a single international human rights convention explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT people. The right to physically love the person of one’s choice is nowhere enshrined in any global humanitarian law. No convention recognises sexual rights as human rights. None offer explicit protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity," Tatchell added. 

Eighty-six countries (nearly half the nations on Earth) still have a total ban on male homosexuality and a smaller number also ban sex between women. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries or regions of countries (all under Islamist jurisdiction), the sentence is death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan:

Apparently, it's all about the Pope with United States. Really? The Pope?

RELIGION: Vatican will excommunicate female priests

Oh, good. Because what the Catholic Church needs is another reason to scare people away.

The Vatican issued its most explicit decree so far against the ordination of female priests on Thursday, punishing them and the bishops who try to ordain them with automatic excommunication.

The decree was written by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, giving it immediate effect.

A Vatican spokesman said the decree made the church's existing ban on female priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations.

Taken from an MSNBC story.


Photo taken from here.

POLITICS: Seven Deadly Sins

First caught this on the CNN homepage, then found it again on FOX, then saw it on Neatorama, and then on ABC News... so! I thought I might finally post it.

The Vatican, in all his wonderfulness, has released a list of the NEW Seven Deadly sins in addition to the original, which were written out by Dante -- lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, wrath, envy and pride.

The new ones are (although I'm getting some differences on some of these from different sources):

1) Genetic Modification (AHN), Genetic Manipulation (CNN), Genetic Engineering (ABC & FOX)
2) Human Experimentation (AHN), "Morally Dubious" experiments such as stem cell research (Neatorama)
3) Polluting the Environment (AHN & FOX & CNN & Neatorama)
4) Social Injustice (AHN), Causing Social Injustice (FOX), Contributing to the Widening divide between rich and poor (Neatorama)
5) Causing Poverty (AHN & Neatorama), Inequality of Wealth (ABC),
6) Financial Gluttony (AHN), Inequality of Wealth (ABC), Being Obscenely Rich (FOX), Excessive Wealth (Neatorama)
7) Taking Drugs (AHN), Drug Abuse (ABC & Neatorama), Drug Dealing (FOX)
( 8) Abortion (FOX))
( 9) Pedophilia (FOX))
( 10) Bioethical violations such as birth control (Neatorama))

HA! Read the ABC article linked above and the slight about Eliot Spitzer.

And, no, really. FOX lists two more that no one else does, and skips over human experimentation and causing poverty. And Neatorama adds one more.

In fact, the only thing that every source agrees on.. polluting is bad. So I do what I always do... go to the source.

The Official Website for the Catholic Church
Which, ironically, has nothing about it.

How about...

The Holy See -- After all, it is their paper, L'Osservatore Romano, that everyone was talking about.
Also, ironically, nothing on that, either.

In fact, it took the Associated Press article to shed light. It will be listed in the upcoming L'Osservatore Romano, and the one available currently is last weeks.

This is the entire AP article, and what every other story is based off of:

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A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution, genetic manipulation and social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior.

Sins increasingly manifest themselves as behavior that damages society as a whole, Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti said in an interview published Sunday by the Vatican's daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a social resonance, due to the phenomenon of globalization," said Girotti, who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican body that issues decisions on matters of conscience and grants absolutions.

Catholic teaching distinguishes between lesser venial sins and mortal sins.

Listing the new areas of sinful behavior, Girotti denounced "certain violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments, genetic manipulations."

He also mentioned drugs — which "weaken the mind and obscure intelligence" — pollution, and the widening social and economic differences between the rich and the poor.

Girotti said the Catholic Church continued to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and pedophilia.

He said Church authorities had reacted with "rigorous measures" to child abuse scandals within the clergy, but he also claimed that the issue had been excessively emphasized by the media.

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I'll update you as soon as the actual stuff comes out

UPDATE: Why is this under politics? Because they all have extremely political implications. And why do they all seem to be directed at the US, specifically?