Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole…
Lefty atheists from North London to Northern California are in outrage today at the latest shock revelations that Pope Francis is, in fact, a Catholic. “The pope played us for fools, trying to have it both ways”, thundered Michaelangelo Signorile in the Huffington Post, outraged that the Pope had (briefly) met Kim Davis. Ms Davis, you’ll remember, is the rather silly Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on ‘biblical’ grounds while herself being on a rather unbiblical fourth marriage. (Giving her the martyrdom she so transparently sought by jailing her, however briefly, was both stupid and morally wrong.)
Trevor Martin in the Guardian felt his meeting with Ms Davis left “LGBT people with no illusions about the Pope’s stance on equal rights for us, despite his call for inclusiveness”. There has never been any doubt of the Pope’s stance on equal rights for LGBT communities – he doesn’t believe in them. He doesn’t agree with marriage equality; he used some pretty salty language in Argentina when it came into force there, several years before he hit the world stage. At the same time, he seems determined to avoid wasting energy fighting a battle that has already been lost psychologically everywhere in ‘the West’ and Latin America, even where the laws are yet to change.
As it turned out, this storm in a teacup involved a certain amount of shooting first before all the facts were available (it’s always fun to see the rational and evidence-based cyberlegions of New Atheism in action). The Pope seems to have been bounced into meeting Davis as one of dozens of attendees of a Washington reception, and her attorney’s version of events many not have involved a full exposition of facts. “The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects” said a tersely worded press statement from Vatican Press Office.