Christians must brace themselves for a "new form of persecution" driven by homosexual activists and their ideological accomplices, an Italian cardinal has said.
Freedom of thought and expression is under threat from the gay rights movement, said Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the retired archbishop of Bologna, in memoirs that are published on Thursday. And the result is that those people who disagreed with the homosexual agenda are being ostracised by society, he said.
"The ideology of homosexuality" – as often happens to ideologies when they become aggressive and end up being politically triumphant "becomes a threat to our legitimate autonomy of thought: those who do not share it risk condemnation to a kind of cultural and social marginalisation," said Cardinal Biffi. "The attacks on freedom of thought start with language," he wrote. "Those who do not resign themselves to accept 'homophilia' ... are charged with 'homophobia'."
The remarks came as a British paediatrician lost a religious discrimination case after she was forced to step down from an adoption panel because she opposed adoptions by gay couples. Dr Sheila Matthews was employed by Northamptonshire County Council. Peter Tatchell of the gay rights campaign group Outrage rejected Cardinal Biffi's claim that Christians were being persecuted by homosexuals and their supporters. "Gay human rights defenders are not persecuting Christians, we are simply asking them to stop persecuting us," he said.
Cardinal Biffi, 82, is seen as something of a maverick in Italy where he regularly made headlines with his pronouncements. He has attacked freemasonry, and feminism and once denounced journalists as "rats".
The Telegraph (lol)
