The news came through last week that the Roman Catholic Church had decided that gay sex is still a sin. Hardly an earth-shattering revelation, you might say. After all, it is consistent with the position the Catholic Church has taken for a very, very long time indeed. Once a sin, always a sin.

Or could it be that sins change all the time?

Nah, I wouldn’t be on for that. If the truth is handed down directly from God – as is the case, we are led to believe, with all of the religions of Abraham – then it is surely immutable. If it was a sin in 100BC or 789AD or 1534 or 1748 or 1895, then it is a sin yet. A sin is a sin is a sin.

There is general agreement that it all goes back to the story of Lot. I know, it is hard to believe, but the entire campaign of vilification and persecution – and let’s not forget genocide – waged against gays and (to a lesser extent) lesbians by religious and civil authorities alike in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America derives essentially from that stupid little story that started life as a minuscule spot of cancer in the original myth of Judaism and subsequently spread across the globe, mutating through time and place into something far bigger and more toxic.

Deep breath.

While it is predictable, this latest declaration by the Vatican is not something we can afford to ignore either.

No matter how many conciliatory noises it is wrapped in, it amounts to an implied demand that gay men and gay women alike should – now, straight away, don’t even think of waiting till tomorrow morning – stop having sex with one another.

So if, by any chance, you are gay and mid-coitus while you are reading this: desist at once, you dirty, rotten, foul and unclean sinner! From the coitus part, I mean.

What you have to understand about the Roman Catholic worldview is this: the bottom line is that all gay sexual relationships should be seen in the same light – which is that they are, and must remain, way out there, beyond the pale. To say that it is insulting to an estimated 10% of the world’s population, and probably considerably more, is to put it mildly.

There are people who are doubtless going red in the face reading this. Self-styled, liberal-leaning religious commentators and apologists for the Vatican are likely to dance around on the head of a pin together, in a desperate bid to prove that all is not lost – that there really has been progress in Rome. But The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has just confirmed, in spite of them, that really this is all hot air and empty diplomacy.

So let’s be clear about the Catholic position, as endorsed by Pope Francis: gay sex is against the law of God.

No further elucidation required. End of fucking story.

BURN IN HELL

There are members of the LGBTIQ community – in Ireland and elsewhere – who had hoped that a change of heart might really be underway in the Vatican. In fairness, while I might have thrown my eyes to heaven, the optimism they felt was not entirely groundless.

The current Pope seems like a reasonable sort of bloke. He is widely considered to be less hard-line than his predecessors. He has a nicer personality too, and a smile that appears genuinely warm. And so, when he was first asked about gay marriage, soon after he became head of the Catholic Church, people took his answer at face value.

If you recall, he responded with what sounded like a rhetorical question: “Who am I to judge?”

Who indeed? It sounded like a variation on the old adage: “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.” On the surface at least, it sounded promising.

More recently, in a documentary directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, entitled Francesco – ‘an exploration of the Pope’s ministry and moral leadership’ – the Pope seemed to go further, saying that he supported giving legal rights to those involved in same-sex unions. There was much fevered speculation. This was a Pope who understood.

These apparently more open-minded, less judgemental, comments were woozily interpreted as an indication that a new day was about to dawn. After all, homosexuality has been a recurring issue among Roman Catholic Church clergy, almost certainly for as long as the Church has existed. Surely it would make sense to finally throw off the shackles – and with it the prevailing stench of hypocrisy that has bedevilled the Catholic Church’s attitude to sexuality?

There was another, more pragmatic reason for optimism. All over Europe, the numbers going to Mass regularly, or identifying strongly as Roman Catholic, have been diminishing.  Young people in particular are feeling utterly disillusioned by the historic abuse of women and children in, and by, the Church and its representatives. The proportion of the population identifying as atheists, or as ‘no religion’, has been growing – and not just in Ireland.

Surely, the argument ran, in a world in which the number declaring their hands as gay or non-binary is growing all the time too, the real-politick must sway those in charge of the Vatican coffers to see the direction in which the wind is blowing?

Sadly, that argument underestimates vastly the enormous reserves, in cash, shares, investments, land, property, art and more, on which the Catholic Church, its bishops and its multifarious religious orders, are currently sitting. They are not exactly in need of fresh loot, when they can sell land and assets for many trillions if push comes to shove. Not, of course, that they’d refuse money, even if the source happened to be an out-and-out scoundrel.

I don’t mean to be distracted here, but it is worth remembering they used to sell what were called ‘indulgences’, which guaranteed even the most monstrous criminals and abusers a straight passage to heaven, and blissful eternal happiness into the bargain. But that is a different story, for another day.

There is a suspicion, of course, among the more liberal thinkers within the Church that any attempt to turn back the clock in relation to sex and sexuality is likely doomed to failure. To put it at its simplest: no matter how much money is pumped into conversion therapy, we are not going to see a drop in the numbers declaring as LGBTIQ.

These issues may trouble the accountants in the Vatican.

The reality, however, is that where the long-established, and what are ludicrously considered core beliefs of the Catholic Church are concerned, there is no real room for manoeuvre. A sin is a sin is a sin.

There is, of course, lots of room for pseudo-ecumenical guff. And so, the decree issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announces that “the Christian community and its pastors must welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations.”

Marvellous.

That, it turns out, is just a load of mealy-mouthed, lying bullshit.

“God does not and cannot bless sin,” the decree goes on to insist, effectively kicking anyone who is LGBTIQ in their privates. Hard.

So, it goes on, there is no question of the Church allowing same sex marriages to take place in a Church.

INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE

The most important thing here, of course, is the unrepentant insistence that gay sex is a sin. Now, you can fooster around and try to present this as something other than it is. But, as we will see, it is a view that has dangerous real life consequences.

This is why the declaration has to be taken seriously, even by people who have no interest whatsoever in the Pope.

As reported elsewhere in the new issue of Hot Press, the EU has just passed a resolution which defines the European Union as a haven of LGBTIQ Freedom. That this is a good thing should go without saying. Except that it doesn’t.

It is a non-binding resolution, precisely because there are places in Europe where hatred and intolerance of the LGBTIQ community has been embraced afresh by the authorities.

This picture is part of an art project created by Bart Staszewski, in which road signs are used as a way of demonstrating the normalisation of anti-LGBT prejudice in Poland.

So answer me this: where in Europe does the Roman Catholic Church hold the greatest sway? I don’t know if there is a completely definitive answer to that question, but I suspect that countries do not come any more ‘Catholic’ than Poland. In 2019, only 6% of its citizens declared themselves as having ‘no religion’, with just 3% failing to, or preferring not to, answer the question. Religions other than Christianity amounted to just 1% of the entire population.

90% declare as Christian. Breaking that number down, 86% of the entire population are Roman Catholic and 4% are ‘other Christian religions’. The word monotheistic springs to mind.

No one in his or her right mind could imagine that it is coincidental that, in Poland recently, certain regional administrations declared themselves so-called ‘LGBT-free zones’. In effect, we are talking about the introduction of a new kind of anti-LGBT apartheid. On one level, it seems pathetic and ludicrous. But it is also deeply insidious and threatening.

It gives official legitimacy to what is a bloody-minded, open hostility to same sex couples. It is deliberately and provocatively discriminatory. It is designed to make citizens and visitors alike, who are LGBT, feel intimidated and unwelcome. And, let’s be clear about it, it provides a context in which gay bashing can be seen as merely ensuring that the law is upheld.

What if a same sex couple were to hold hands or kiss publicly in a so called ‘LGBT-free’ zone? How can a poor, law-abiding Polish citizen be expected to put up with it?

We have to ask: why have these blatantly prejudiced, discriminatory provisions been introduced in a country that is a member of the European Union? The answer to that question, sadly, can be expressed in one word: Catholicism.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have now left us in no doubt that what gay couples do in bed – or on the street for that matter, if they kiss – is defined as being wrong. As being sinful. As something that should be stopped. And in the process, they have emboldened the anti-LGBT movement. Pope Francis can bleat as much as he likes about legal niceties and about sensitivity. But the bottom line is sin. So who can argue with a council or a municipality, in Poland or elsewhere, that decides: enough is enough? That decides: we Catholics should not be subjected to the corrupt and corrupting sight of men kissing or women holding hands? That decides: it is time to officially end this appalling decadence?

The goon squad have their cudgels at the ready. They are spoiling for action. Which is why we should call it what it really is. The declaration made by the Vatican – in effect – is an incitement to violence against gays.

TIME TO MOVE ON

Which brings us back to a different core question. And it is this. What in the name of fuck is anyone who is gay – or who is the mother, father, brother or sister of anyone who is gay – doing staying ‘faithful’ to the Roman Catholic Church?

Other religions are guilty too. Of course they are. Judaism. Islam. Most forms of Protestantism. Rastafarianism even. And through the insidious process of colonialism, this or that version of the ‘truth’ was imposed across the world. The desire to conquer, control and exploit natural resources in the Americas, in Africa and elsewhere was given the imprimatur of one variety of Christianity or another. Greed and missionary zeal worked in tandem. Together, Church and State would bully and beat the world into being a more profitable, less sinful place. And everywhere Christianity went, gays suffered.

The declaration from the Vatican ensures that this remains the status quo, as far as Catholicism is concerned. The Roman Catholic religion always was an unwelcoming place for citizens of the world who are LGBTIQ. And there is nothing in the story, around which the whole edifice is built, to say that it should be otherwise.

It is like the argument in relation to the treatment of women in the Church. The truth, of course, is that misogyny was inbuilt, from the start. All of this stuff is supposed to have come from ‘God’. Was he – and it was a ‘he’ – so inept as to structure a narrative that in effect gave men control, just because those were the ‘mores’ of the time? Was ‘he’ incapable of divining that women would be excluded, walked on, bullied, beaten and generally treated like shit?

The reality is that it is in the genes of the Christian myth that women don’t count. That the redeemer was the son of God. That it required 12 men – and only men – to get the show on the road. And so on. In the same way, it is in the genes that gay sex is a sin. That it is unnatural. That whatever about getting horny about a member of the same sex, you should never, ever act on that.

All religions have to offer are stories. It is useful to read them to understand where we have come from. But our duty now is to fashion beliefs – and laws – that inspire in society an awareness of the real, enduring value of goodness, kindness, generosity, mutual respect, solidarity, understanding, support and love – and the freedom to express that love in whatever ways work for us as individuals, as well as for our lovers, our friends and our extended families.

Life is never going to be ‘easy’: it is too complicated and chaotic for that. But there is one way we can make it much easier for people who identify as – or who are – LGBTIQ. That is by leaving behind us – as individuals and as societies – all of the religions that have promoted the demonisation of gays. That have defined LGBTIQ sex as a sin.

People don’t need that bullshit any more. It is surely time to move on, and leave the real guilty parties to their own, twisted worldview.

Read Shamim Malekmian's report on Europe being declared a LGBTIQ “Freedom Zone” – and the reality on the ground in places like Poland and Hungary – in the new issue of Hot Press, out now.