The Advocate magazine put Pope Francis on its cover, proclaiming him the Person of the Year, offering a myriad of reasons why it passed up others, such as Edie Windsor. The best thing about this is that Francis has a "NoH8" decal Photoshopped onto his face, and it's driving poor Bill Donohue of the Catholic League into a blood-vessel-popping rage.
But mostly, this was idiotic. Pope Francis is a lot of things to many people in the world. But he is not our hero of the LGBT community in 2013. Can we please get a grip, folks? Are we that starved for validation?
Pope Francis' statements of the past, which he's never repudiated, and the doctrine of his church, are horrendously homophobic. As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina three years ago, he called gay marriage the work of the devil and said it was "a destructive attack on God's plan." And his recent statements, saying church leaders are too "obsessed" with the issue of gay marriage, and that he can't pass judgement a gay priest, while very encouraging, do not in any way take back those statements.
