While thousands of young people gather in Rio de Janeiro this week to celebrate World Youth Day with Pope Francis for the very first time, gay rights activists can’t wait to welcome the pontiff to Brazil – with an offensive gay “kiss-in.”
According to Huffington Post, a gay rights group plans to stage a gay “kiss-in” during the Pope’s World Youth Day appearance. The obscene protest is scheduled for July 25, during the speech Pope Francis will give on Copacabana beach. Gay couples will meet there and kiss each other on the lips to demonstrate their opposition to the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage.
Huffington Post spotlighted the “kiss-in” or “beijaco,” along with a feminist “Slut Walk” also planned as a protest at WYD, while lamenting that, “though a reformer in many respects,” the Pope “cleaves to traditional church doctrine on the gay marriage issue.”
The gay make-out session scheduled for July 25 is not the only aggressively offensive move by gay rights groups in Brazil, however. According to U.S.News & World Report, LGBT activists got even more edgy and obscene when they staged a gay kiss-in along the Pope’s motorcade route on July 22, complete with topless women and rainbow flags.
US News also noted that the so-called “Slut Walk,” a staged parade of scantily-clad women carrying offensive signs, is intended by its organizers to be a protest against the “control of female sexuality.”
Other protests have also been scheduled during this year’s World Youth Day in Brazil, HuffPo reported, including groups who want to “demand upgrades to public transport, health, and education, as well as to criticize corrupt government spending.”
The media has already gone out of its way to attack the new Pope for upholding Church teachings on sexuality and abortion; they couldn’t even say goodbye to Benedict without touting buzzwords like “scandal” and “intrigue.” Given the media’s track record on this one, no doubt the sensational gay protesters will get lots of hype. But the thousands upon thousands of passionate young Catholics at WYD will probably merit only a passing mention from a news media that thinks young people find the Church irrelevant.
