Who am I to judge?” the Pope said famously last year on gays and lesbians, setting off an even greater debate in these liberal times in which people of different sexual orientation and gender identity than what was for ages considered normal have received a fair amount of support from lawmakers and the community, at least in advanced societies. Under pressure from conservatives, the Vatican may have backtracked Tuesday on its surprisingly positive assessment of gays and same-sex relationships released in an interim report on Monday, after a meeting of 200 leading members of the Catholic clergy in an “Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family”, but liberals are viewing such thinking as a welcome development whose motive force is Pope Francis. The first Pope from the New World has done more to open the gates to liberalism than many of his predecessors.
Conservative Catholics may have expressed some misgivings, but there is no reason for them not to embrace the bold ideology of their leader. It is not only Catholics who should remain open to change but also people of the major religions, some of whom have been subscribing thus far to what may be termed old-fashioned thinking on the subject. Has science itself not declared that sexual preferences may even be genetically typed? Members of the LGBT community are not to be discriminated against for something they cannot help. Society and laws are adapting and there is no reason to go back on this.
