Vatican under fire for linking gays to pedophilia

Pope Benedict's number 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone's, statement came out as a shock to the gay groups and politicans in Vatican city On April 12th, 2009. He stated that homosexuality was linked with pedophilia. On a visit to Chile, Bertone had said this and now it is in mainstream Italian newspapers. The French foreign ministry and some Catholic blogs are against the Cardinal's remarks. Some members of the Catholic Church are asking for a review of the rule that prohibits priests from marrying because they would have a healthy sex life. Bertone told a news conference in Santiago: Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia." Gay rights were outraged at this comment. The World Health Organization calls gayness a variation of human behaviour. Pedophilia is a crime, not homosexuality. This comment was made by Franco Grillini, a former parliamentarian in Italy. Meanwhile catholic blogs were saying that the French foreign ministry defined the link as unacceptable. Controversy was the last thing the Vatican needed. The Pope is now being told to clean up his man's job. Reverend Federico Lombardi tried to clean up the mess by saying Church leaders were not making general affirmations. He tried to prove it with statistics. The grand-daughter of Benito Mussolini, Alessandra Mussolini, criticized Bertone for his comments. ArcLesbica, Italy's main lesbian rights group said that the Vatican was using violent words. They said that Italian parents should not let their children attend Church-run institutions anymore. The Pope has decided to perhaps address the issue whe he visits Malta this weekend.

I think generalization like this is wrong. Bertone seemed to believe the negative side of what psychologists and psychiatrists were saying. And even if Reverend Federico Lombardi's statistics are proven to be scientifically right, there is no need to express it in front of the public. I feel Bertone should have thought about what gay activist rights and other people might think before speaking, even if this information was a fact. Additionally it is good to see people are changing for the better. For example Alessandra Mussolini has completely different views than those of her grandfather Benito Mussolini. She realizes this comment was wrong and hurts certain people unlike her father who would have supported this and actually in fact did send gay people to camps and further on.

http://www.canada.com/news/Vatican+under+fire+linking+gays+pedophilia/2905297/story.html

Toronto 18 trial hears of 'jihadi flavour' paintball

This past week, a trial in Brampton Ontario was told of militant training camp participants playing paintball in a "jihadi way". They also heard that an alleged terror cell videotaped its activities in hopes of getting more information from jihadi leaders across the world. Three people from the Toronto 18 Group are on trial for terrorism. Fahim Ahmad is their accused leader who wanted to attack Parliament, nuclear plants, and electrical grids. Mubin Shaikh, being the first witness, said that Fahim had a training camp in Washington DC in December, 2005 to which the other two accused, Asad Ansari and Steven Chand attended. They did target practice, used obstacle courses and played paintball. The whole thing was a substitute for combat. Zakaria Amara decided to videotape the whole training camp thing to send over to jihadi leaders who could send their best people suited for a higher level camp in spring. A total of 14 people attended the camp. The men are pleading against all charges and the trial is continuing.

In a scenario like this I feel that maybe the court and all the accusers may be taking this too seriously. I doubt that this small group of 18 men had any motives to blow up the Parliament. Nobody in there right minds would be so naiive of themselves to think they could pull of such a stunt. Additionally calling their paintball games substitutes for combat with Muslims without any evidence other than possible racial profiling is wrong. Another point is if they are completely guilty they should realize that pleading against charges is not smart because they will be figured out.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/04/13/toronto-eighteen.html