Mervyn Lobo wrote: > >Unfortunately, for the past 10 years, the Vatican has >been extremely slow in addressing the problem of gays >and paedophiles in its ranks. >
It is inappropriate to compare gays with pedophiles, and state that gays are a problem. Homosexuality in consenting adults is a well-documented variation of human behavior, which in and of itself does no harm to anybody. Pedophilia, whether heterosexual or homosexual, on the other hand, is a crime. It does enormous amount of damage to our children, and can be regarded, from all points of view, as a grave harm in our society. Recently, there was a long debate in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) regarding the outrageous notion that homosexuality is a sickness. Until 1973 most medical diagnostic manuals classified it as a sickness which needed to be treated, quite likely as a horrible after-taste of the antiquated religious doctrines. As a result, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s the British National Health Service, and many hospitals in the U.S. and Europe tried to treat homosexuals with various forms of aversive therapy. It was one of the great debacles of the now obsolete non-evidence-based medicine. Essentially, nobody was helped by such �treatment�. In fact, BMJ counted this as a shameful chapter in modern medicine�s past. During this debate a physician, who declared himself as a Christian under conflicts of interest section of his letter to the editor, stated his belief that homosexuality was similar to pedophilia. He was severely castigated for it in the editorial correspondence. Indeed, a series of letters blasted the editor for allowing such a bigoted letter to be published in BMJ. Cheers, Santosh
