VATICAN CITY (RNS) A Vatican official told a United Nations body on Tuesday (March 22) that people who openly object to homosexual behavior are at risk of losing their human rights when they are prosecuted or stigmatized for their beliefs.
Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, at the U.N Human Rights Council in Geneva, stated that the persecution that he feels for his belief that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered is a violation of his human rights. In Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, it states that, "Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder.".
The Buddha once said that when meditating, a technique to use is to focus on how precious the human life is. He used the analogy of a blind turtle, swimming in an ocean, who only comes up for air once every thousand years. Floating on top of that ocean is a small golden yoke. The Buddha stated that it is more likely for that turtle to rise to the surface with his head in that yoke than it is for a spirit to be born as human. From the Buddha's teachings, he has stated that he has only been able to teach the dharma to the human realm. The beings that inhabit the Hell and Hungry Spirit Realms are too focused on their own suffering to hear the dharma. Likewise, the beings of the Heavenly Realm are too focused on their material rewards to hear the dharma, and the beings of the Demigod realm are too focused on taking over the Heavenly Realm to listen to the dharma. It is only in the Human Realm, where there is a balance of suffering and pleasure, that its beings are capable of listening to and understanding the dharma. Even the beings of the Animal Realm, who share our plane of existence, are too focused on finding food and avoiding becoming food to hear the dharma. To be human is to be closest that one can be to attaining Enlightenment that one will achieve in eons.
In this case, there is a human right at stake. That human right is to have the ability to see one another as beautiful beings. It is to look at another person and to have the ability to empathize with that person, to view that person as one views himself or herself. Throughout history, however, we have shown, time and time again, that this proximity to Enlightenment is still very far by comparison. The Inquisition, the Holocaust, World Wars, terrorism, xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, racism - these are but a few of the many ways in which humans take away their own human right of empathy and ability to attain Enlightenment.
It is easy for us to see the victimhood of those who are killed by others. It is easy to feel remorse for the downtrodden, the racial, religious, sexual, and gender minorities. But what many people fail to see is also that the perpetrators are victims, too. How many times have we seen instances of pastors belittling the homosexuals, only to be caught (literally) with their pants down? How many other instances are there that we find the diaries of people who gun down their school, only to see that the world they created for themselves is like a well of darkness and fear that is so deep that they see no light?
My cousin died seven years ago this month. He was seventeen, and driving out of his subdivision with his girlfriend. He was killed because two guys decided to race their trucks down a busy highway. It is such a ridiculous way to die. I do not have the ability to forgive those two men for what they did - nobody does. The actions that they took not only took two human lives, but they took a son and daughter from parents. They took away a man and a woman; a man and woman who nobody knows what they would have done, but if their past was an indication, it would have been beautiful. Their karmic retribution is already taking place. For almost 2600 days, those two men have had to wake up, every day, and know what they did. I do not know if time has dulled what they feel. They may have been responsible for what happened, but they have become victims, too.
I agree with Archbishop Tomasi. I do believe that he has lost a defining right of humanity in his belief that certain people, because of how they were born, are intrinsically disordered. He has lost his ability to view those people with loving kindness. He has lost his ability to see a mass of human beings as beautiful creatures. And as the years go by, and more and more people regain their human right to view homosexuals just as they view everyone else, the world that people like Archbishop Tomasi are creating for themselves is only going to become darker and more frightening. He may be responsible for creating that world, but we must never forget that he, too, is a victim.
Read more at the worlds of me graves
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