Sunday, August 22, 2010

The specter of violence is looming as a consequence of the church hate speech

Yesterday's events in downtown Guadalajara are frightening, for so many reasons. 
Civil society groups defending sexual diversity and separation of church and state had announced they would hold a demonstration the Plaza de Armas. Yet a group of catholic activists got hold of the demonstration, arrived early, and prevented them from displaying banners repudiating cardinal Juan Sandoval's recent declarations. 


The level of discourse? From the catholic activists: "Go adopt a dog, fags!" 


Such hate speech is far from isolated to a few extremist activist elements in the streets; they merely mimick Sandoval's infamous "Would you like to be adopted by a pair of lesbians or fags?"
The frightening implication is: When the Mexican church's own leaders, rather than calling for tolerance, respect, and love for the other, are directly responsible for whipping up such hatred, when will it come to blows?


Moreover, yesterday's demonstration also shows the proximity of the most most reactionary, pre-enlightenment, homophobic, inteolerant, misogenic sectors of the church with the state government: Two of governor Emilio González Márquez' own sons joined the catholic activists in preventing the pro-gay groups from demonstrating. 

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