JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, May 8, 2025

Archbishop criticised for comments on homosexual acts

by

793 days ago
20230306
Roman Catholic Archbishop  Jason Gordon

Roman Catholic Archbishop Jason Gordon

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don is be­ing told to stop call­ing mem­bers of the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty sin­ners, even if he stands with the Pope’s po­si­tion that ho­mo­sex­u­al acts should not be crim­i­nalised.

Speak­ing on the Eye on De­pen­den­cy ra­dio pro­gramme with Garth St Clair and Natasha Nunez on Sun­day evening, Arch­bish­op Gor­don was asked by the hosts to com­ment on Pope Fran­cis’ re­cent com­ments on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters af­ter vis­it­ing South Su­dan in Feb­ru­ary, the Pope said while the Catholic Church can­not per­mit “sacra­men­tal” mar­riage of same-sex cou­ples, the laws ban­ning ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty were “a prob­lem that can­not be ig­nored.”

In con­tex­tu­al­is­ing the Pope’s com­ments, Arch­bish­op Gor­don said, “We’ve said for a long time, hate the sin and not the sin­ner.”

The Arch­bish­op said while civil­i­sa­tion has re­alised that the act of sodomy is “moral­ly wrong,” whether or not it should be a cap­i­tal crime, “is a whole oth­er sto­ry.”

“So, adul­tery, sodomy, all of these things were cap­i­tal crimes at one time, so as we move from it be­ing a cap­i­tal crime, the sodomy laws re­main on the books as a law, where you can con­vict some­one up to 25 years if they are con­vict­ed of sodomy, which is a strange set of sex­u­al per­ver­sions,” Gor­don added.

Gor­don said the law was once used in Eng­land to con­fis­cate lands.

“So, the ques­tion is, should it be a crime? Is it wrong? It is ab­solute­ly wrong. Is it moral? It is an im­moral act, but is it a crime? That’s the ques­tion the Holy Fa­ther was rais­ing and he’s say­ing where­as it is im­moral and it is some­thing that is not good for so­ci­ety, a per­son should not go to jail for 25 years be­cause of the act,” he said.

But hu­man rights ac­tivist Ja­son Jones yes­ter­day said the church has no place in this dis­cus­sion.

“What hap­pens be­tween two con­sent­ing adults in the pri­va­cy of their bed­room is not a mat­ter for the church,” Jones said.

Jones al­so took is­sue with the Arch­bish­op’s open­ing state­ment of, “hate the sin, love the sin­ner.”

“Once a catholic priest us­es the term hate I switch off, be­cause if you are try­ing to say it shouldn’t be il­le­gal but we hate the sin, then you’re still con­demn­ing us and we don’t have any time for that,” he said.

Jones said the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty will take no com­fort in the Arch­bish­op’s words even if they sound sym­pa­thet­ic to their strug­gles.

“It ac­tu­al­ly mud­dies the wa­ter and it cre­ates even more con­fu­sion for the gen­er­al pub­lic, be­cause what does that mean? And that type of hyp­o­crit­i­cal stand­ing on the fence does not help any­one.”

In 2018, Jones filed a law­suit against the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, chal­leng­ing two spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions of the Sex­u­al Of­fence Act which crim­i­nalise bug­gery and se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy. The hu­man rights ac­tivist at the time said those laws in­fringe up­on his rights as a gay man.

Yes­ter­day, he re­vealed to Guardian Me­dia that he has, in fact, writ­ten to Pope Fran­cis, chal­leng­ing the head of the Catholic Church on his lat­est po­si­tion on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

He said, “Af­ter that state­ment, I wrote a let­ter say­ing it’s very nice of you to say that but I come from a coun­try where we are still crim­i­nalised and it’s caus­ing so much harm and your state­ment is not help­ing us.”

Jones is await­ing a re­ply.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored