Benedict, Emadict und Alvays Vill Beadict!

Phew! I almost forgot! Thank Koresh religions like Catholics and Branch Davidians appoint supreme leaders to tell the rest of the world exactly how they should live! Those other "religions" should dump that whole live-and-let-live "respect our differences" bullshit and get their vanity on!

Pope Repeats Church Opposition to Abortion, Gay Marriage

from CBC News

The Pope used an audience of local politicians on Thursday to reiterate the Roman Catholic Church's objections to both abortion and gay marriage.

Pope Benedict spoke of the need to help pregnant women and said medical officials should not prescribe any pill that terminates a pregnancy. Officials, he said, should "avoid introducing drugs that hide in some way the gravity of abortion, as a choice against life."

As well, the Pope said the union of a man and a woman is not a "casual sociological construction" and suggested that efforts to allow gay marriage "obscure the value and function of the legitimate family founded on matrimony."

The Pope's meeting with political officials from Rome and the surrounding area was at the Vatican. Italians are preparing for a general election in April.

The church has been mounting a renewed fight against abortion in general and the abortion pill RU-486 pill in particular. The pill recently became available in parts of Italy on an experimental basis.

Women in Italy have been allowed access to abortion since 1978, to the end of the third month of pregnancy.

Gay marriages are legal only in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. In the United States, Massachusetts alone allows gay marriage, while Vermont and Connecticut permit gay civil unions.

Late last month, the United Kingdom began allowing civil partnerships for gay and lesbian couples. The new legislation does not use the word marriage.