Protesters clash with police at Romania gay parade

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

BUCHAREST, June 9 (Reuters) - Romanian riot police detained dozens of militant protesters on Saturday as hundreds tried to violently break up a gay rights march in the capital, Bucharest.

Around 500 gay activists marched through the city to demonstrate against discrimination in this essentially conservative country and to call for the legalisation of same-sex marriages.

Police fired tear gas to hold the protesters at bay after hundreds threw stones and attempted to break through protective cordons manned by 700 officers.

Gays are viewed with hostility by much of the public as many people in the country of 22 million largely accept the powerful Orthodox church's view of homosexuality as a sin and a disease.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L09656251.htm

[mitchtv]

1. Ah Christianity

allied with Neo nazis it makes for a potent mixture

[cigsandcoffee]

2. Is that Christianity?

I suppose it is. But it's also Christianity to spend your vacation in New Orleans gutting and rebuilding homes for the poor alongside other members of your church group - as an overtly Christian friend of mine just did.

It's difficult to understate just how down and in the trenches real Christians are when it comes to helping the poor, dispossessed, and vulnerable. In a very real sense, Christian philosophy is at the very roots of liberalism - at least the "helping hand" aspect, if not the libertarian one.

[mitchtv]

3. allied with Neo nazis it makes for a potent mixture

One of the oldest Sects. It's too bad those 'Beatitude' Christians have been so meek that their Sects by and large, have been coopted by those who wouldn't know Jesus if he came up and bit them.

[cigsandcoffee]

4. I don't think they have been co-opted at all.

Are many intellectually wrong? Sure. But it's a tiny minority that would practice the violence described in the OP. Quiet disapproval is somewhere in the spectrum of "tolerance," unless you see support for anti-gay legislation as a form of violence. To that I would argue that there are light years between bashing someone in a physical attack and supporting a ban on gay marriage. A non-physical approach to activism is certainly of merit even if the cause itself is goofy.

I think you're using a small group of violent people to make a large scale attack on Christianity, which is kind of a lazy and overly-dramatic argument.

Are fringe fundamentalist Christianity and neo-Nazism a potent mix? Sure. Are they remotely representative of mainstream Christianity? Not by a long shot.

[mitchtv]

5. They certainly are in the Russian Orthodox&

related Orthodox community, and yes ,discrimination is violence. Hate is violence. Denial of rights is violence. As I said before these types wouldn't recognize Jesus if he bit them. I hope you are not trying to characterize the type of rhetoric being engaged in by Pope Benny the Rat as "quiet disapproval".Hateful and demeaning is closer to his "Christian" style. The behavior of the clergy in Jerusalem is equally venomous and violent along with Catholic Poland and Latvia. In the US that viciousness is being promoted by half of the Episcopalians virtually all of the Baptists and all their sundry mini cult "Evangelicals" with notable exceptions. The alliance of "Evangelicals" with the GOP is close to the alliances being formed in Europe. Cannot forget the "loving' Mormon church that supports closing all school clubs down , before allowing a Gay-Strate alliance club. And you say a small minority? Ha! Indeed, Christianity has lost its message, and its way., and has ceded any claim of righteousness in trade for hypocrisy. Sanctity of Marriage indeed. MA has one of the lowesr divorce rates in the country au contraire with the "religous" red states.

[donco6]

6. Free yourself.

You can help build houses without tainting yourself with a religion that has brought little but pain into the world.