Pope “Benedick” releases long-awaited document barring gays from the priesthood. Rules bar “practicing” homosexuals, men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies and those who support gay culture. In a commentary intended to accompany the release of the document, a Vatican newspaper argued that “homosexuality risked ‘destabilizing people and society’, had no social or moral value and could never match the importance of the relationship between a man and a woman,” according to Reuters.
Swedish pastor who called homosexuality “a deep cancerous tumor on all of society” is acquitted of hate crime accusations. Case pitted freedom of speech against protection of minorities. Ake Green says he’ll not deliver any more sermons on gays: “I don’t need to. I have said so clearly where I stand on the issue.”
The United States has condemned the arrest of more than two dozen men preparing for a “mass gay wedding” in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities in that country have threatened to try the men for adultery and prostitution, test them for male hormone levels and order them to be injected with hormones as a possible sentence reduction option. In a statement released Monday, the U.S. State Department said, “We call on the government of the United Arab Emirates to immediately stop any ordered hormone and psychological treatment and to comply with the standards of international law.”