This has the same foul smell as a same-sex marriage ban: singling out ONE group for second-class status. >:-(

JC Fisher

Has the good Bishop also spoken out on the Ugandan Bill to criminalize homosexuals? The silence from England is still deafening.

As you can see from the preceding comments, Nicholas, you are leading this board way off course with your talk of minarets and Moslems. So get a grip! You know what the topic is supposed to be!

BTW excellent post on Reuters FaithWorld by Tom Heneghan you linked to. Substantial.

I am appalled at the Swiss action and hope they reverse it. I am as appalled at those US communities, as chronicled in the Lead who are taking actions to shut down soup kitchens so they can avoid the taint of the poor.

But, Mr. Willard, lets be clear that the Swiss are not proposing imprisoning and killing Muslims for being muslim. There is a difference in kind and degree and the good Bishop of London while speaking rapidly about a zoning issue, has apparently not spoken as rapidly about state sponsored cruelty to the glbt community.

I will be clear, as you ask, Fr. Russell, just as clear as clear can be. Roughly two out of three posts on this board are about gay rights in one form or another. Good journalism, because that appears to be the issue the vast majority of the readership is here for.

The moderators post about other topics as well, like the very important topic above which we are not discussing. Some readers seem to think that these topics detract from the attention due to gay rights issues, and hijack those threads, as you have managed to rehijack this one. Well, OK, the hell with Europe's challenge in integrating Muslims. I will go with the flow.

The reason so many church and secular leaders don't devote attention to the proposed Uganda law is because they don't believe it is going to happen, and if it does happen is not going to change things much if at all from the way they are today. Which granted is pretty bad. I understand that there are seven other countries in the world that already have such laws on their books. We need to include them in our protests. If I were a gay in any of these countries I would think that the issue of whether two guys in Bangor could get a marriage licence from the county clerk was pretty small beer. And I think so too and have always thought so since the days of Gay Liberation in Berkeley in the '60's. IMO very few gays even want to get married or ever will. They want total public acceptance of homosexuality and the rest of the sandwich. At some point they are going to hit the wall, but they still have a ways to go IMO. Sometimes gays get killed in this country. More often straights get killed, but what the hell. Forty thousand children die in the world each day from hunger, we have been told over and over. Is that true? Or is it just hearsay, like most of what we are told about Central Africa? Probably we can let it go till the gay rights issues are straightened out. So bottom line, when any of the all gay rights all the time guys on the internet, and as you well know, it's not just this blog, when any of you get ready to go to Uganda to do some civil disobedience, which might, just might, have some actual effect, let me know, I'm retired, I could go along. Maybe we would only need one-way tickets. It's an expensive flight. Meanwhile, there are a lot of different things to wring our hands about, an activity we do to perfection. Just for today, I choose to wring mine about the welfare and happiness of European Muslims. Sincerely, Mr.Willard

Oh brother: I thought I was commenting directly ON-TOPIC on this thread, above, but AnthonyW informs me I "hijacked" it. Mea Culpa.

IMO very few gays even want to get married or ever will. They want total public acceptance of homosexuality and the rest of the sandwich. At some point they are going to hit the wall, but they still have a ways to go IMO. Sometimes gays get killed in this country. More often straights get killed, but what the hell.

No, not "what the hell" but where the hell? As in, where the hell is this ill-informed, narrow-minded tirade coming from? Did you get up on the wrong side of bed, Anthony? (and no, that's NOT alluding to sexuality!)

JC Fisher

JC Fisher - Mea culpa gladly accepted.

Where was this tirade coming from? It was in response to Michael Russell's riposte to my original mild quibble. If everyone else is going to discuss gay rights, then I will not beat them but join them. So I share my thoughts. Some of them are more cogent than others. I didn't think my tirade was so ill-informed, I thought it was sort of medium-informed. And broad-minded, broad-minded. Suffused with compassion.

BTW I always get up on the wrong side of bed. Make a point of it. If I didn't I wouldn't be getting a proper start on the afternoon. Thank you for reading my comment and responding. That's a rare complement for me. You probably have your own surmises as to why. Anthony