The undermining of gay righs in Italy

[LONDONER]

Italy might be in the EU but not all rights are equal:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/anger-protest...57293.html

[Insertnamehere]

Really? A Catholic country has equality problems!!??

Call me shocked!

[Meurzh]

The public opinion of homosexuality in Italy is quite positive right now, so I'm not very concerned. If I was a gay Italian, I'd be concerned about more pressing matters.

[Insertnamehere]

The public opinion of homosexuality in Italy is quite positive right now, so I'm not very concerned. If I was a gay Italian, I'd be concerned about more pressing matters.

Oh the problem is not the people. People don't make laws. It's the opus day ultra catholic right winger nutjobs that roam around politics. Those need to be removed in due time.

[meridannight]

Oh the problem is not the people. People don't make laws. It's the opus day ultra catholic right winger nutjobs that roam around politics. Those need to be removed in due time.

the Italian politicians aren't some religious nut-jobs. it's all about money. due to the unfortunate fact that the catholic church controls a lot of real estate and business in Italy, it has an influence over the politics in the country. it's no more nuts than corporations and private individuals donating money to American presidential candidates in order to influence politics through them later on. same principle. and yes, it's bullshit.

Italian politicians are as corrupt as they come, though. but what are you gonna do? the power and influence inherently draws corrupt individuals to such positions. you're not gonna change that any time soon.

[Insertnamehere]

the Italian politicians aren't some religious nut-jobs. it's all about money. due to the unfortunate fact that the catholic church controls a lot of real estate and business in Italy, it has an influence over the politics in the country. it's no more nuts than corporations and private individuals donating money to American presidential candidates in order to influence politics through them later on. same principle. and yes, it's bullshit.

Italian politicians are as corrupt as they come, though. but what are you gonna do? the power and influence inherently draws corrupt individuals to such positions. you're not gonna change that any time soon.

Some of them must be religious.

But yes, you are most correct. The clergy are a social class on their own, propertied and dangerous. Not only in Italia, I might add. Oh and politicians are the same everywhere.

Make politics like any other public service and less will be tempted to take that power.Loooooong time for that to happen though.

Clergy should not have any assets anyway, according to their own favorite book. The only thing I can think I ever liked about the Soviet Union (besides Katyusha rocket launchers) is the anti-clergy policies. Oh I have pleasant thoughts in my head about similar things happening here.....expropiations, evictions, churches going down......

In other news, when do we start evicting the pope and absorbing the Vatican into Italia as it was meant to happen back in the day? I'll join in the frenzy if it ever happens. Let me know!

[Insertnamehere]

That's not true, there are some good politicians, like the president of Uruguay and Nigel Farage.. some actually want to do the right thing.

Mujica gets points for donating his salary, he loses them dearly for being too supportive of Chávez/Maduro. I like Tabaré Vásquez better to be honest. Uruguay is a special case anyway, it was a redistributive welfare state since early on. Politicians still showed their true colors around 1972 and still now they get the better cut. There is no escaping corruption when you get into politics.

Nigel Farage.................

[LJay]

[MENTION=23097]Insertnamehere[/MENTION] , the name of the organization to which you refer is Opus Dei. Do not mistake me as being supportive of their activities, but I would like to know your references for the statement you have made about them influencing matters. Thanks.

[Insertnamehere]

[MENTION=23097]Insertnamehere[/MENTION] , the name of the organization to which you refer is Opus Dei. Do not mistake me as being supportive of their activities, but I would like to know your references for the statement you have made about them influencing matters. Thanks.

*sigh* I knew that typo would come bite me in the ass.

And don't ask me why but I knew you'd come and say something to me about this.

Now, mind you, my comment was a rather general one regarding the triple threat of church/business/right wing politics that lurks around these places and that I can assume has also a presence in Italia.

Around these parts the conservative catholic ultra right is represented by the UDI party, (those would be the anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, Pinochet-lovers, etc) who always have a decent enough representation in the Congress (usually 1/4 and above). Some of those Senators and Deputies (Representatives you would say in your lands) are affiliated to Opus Dei and some of the Ministers that run the various governmental offices were too when the right wing coalition was in power from 2010 to 2013. Back in the times of the dictatorship plenty of those were in charge of universities and what not.

These same people either own businesses, as per usual with politicians, or received money for their campaigns from large private groups related to mining or banking activites.

Dig around enough in the news and I bet you'll find the scandal that's been going on for a year or so.

http://jaquevedo.blogspot.cl/2008/03/el-...ilena.html

That is the review that one scholar does of the history of the organization here.

As a summary, I can tell you that the catholic church and the landowning elites were always working together by means of the conservative party, who held power since independence and for a good part of the XIX century. When the liberals came to power in the late part of it, they loosened up a bit on the clergy's priviliges but they were never the less, enterpreneurs and bussinessmen, and so, politically they were still quite conservative.

Until 1925, in which the presence of immigrants from mostly protestant countries (namely Germans and English folks) turned the government to officially separate the Church and the State, the catholic church had a monopoly on education and civilian registry, amongst other kind of records, and the clergy owned not few pieces of land.

Around that time, socialism began to sound everywhere which put a pressure on the traditional right (conservative and liberal parties) and as new parties emerged as alternatives and the lower classes pushed for rights, some of the church (priests mainly, never the upper clergy) became embedded in that social doctrine bit for a while. This was troublesome for all self-declared catholics who were in power or owned bussinesses.

This is when Opus Dei comes in, at a time when the politics were becoming polarized over these social issues and became the bridge both bewteen religious and political conservatism and bewteen professed catholicism and enterprenurial and bussiness elites. Their members didn't quite care to follow the new found "nicety" of the general populist church, so they became the new allies representing the religious elites in the triple threat model I mentioned. And that is how you got the people I told you about.

The church had to openly oppose the dictatorship for human rights' sake? These guys didn't care. Furthermore, they benefited from the years of military dicatorship. The upper clergy with close ties to the vatican (after all the pope is who names who's in charge of what and where) are also Opus Dei and rather separated from this "nice" church.

The current model is that in which the upper clergy and the bussiness elites use the UDI party as a proxy to further their policies (sometimes a single person is Opus Dei, UDI member and a bussinessman at the same time).

That is how, for instance you get divorced legalized as late as 2004. Lets not even begin to talk about abortion and other things.

A few years ago, the Deutsche Presse Agentur noted said scheme in this country. They mention the great hold that Opus Dei has here. So obviously that leavs to question as to how much this is reflected in other catholic countries.

[meridannight]

Clergy should not have any assets anyway, according to their own favorite book.

that's funny.

since we're on the subject of clergy...did you know that prior to 18th-19th century men who could be classified homosexual by today's standards were much more likely than average to go into being monks? because the monks didn't suffer from the pressure to get married and have kids, it was a position that drew men and women who were sexually attracted to their own sex. explains some things to me. i never could wrap my head around that choice.

this has nothing to do with the current thread, i just came across this statistical detail in one of the books i was reading lately, and this was a good opportunity to inject it here.