OTTAWA, Jan 19 (LifeSiteNews) – Homosexual activist MP Svend Robinson has responded to the LifeSite News report on his altercation with Fr. Tony Van Hee, the famed pro-life priest on Parliament Hill. The LifeSite News story received extensive coverage in the mainstream media last Friday after MP John Nunziata reacted to Robinson’s rough treatment of the elderly priest with a letter of protest. An official letter to the editor was sent out by Robinson’s office yesterday, which, while admitting seizing one of the signs belonging to the priest and throwing it over a wall, demanded an apology from the priest rather than giving one.
In his letter, Robinson described Fr. Van Hee’s two posters as “signs that attack all gay and lesbian people as ‘deviant’ and ‘disordered’ and ‘immoral’. His signs read, “Homosexuality – objective disorder tending to deviant acts,” and “Sexual orientation. Defeat of reason. Protecting disorder” – signs based on Vatican documents. “These signs promote hatred of gays and lesbians, hatred that in turn leads to gaybashing and low self-esteem among gay and lesbian youth,” wrote Robinson.
Since Fr. Van Hee’s signs are based on official teachings of the Catholic Church, Robinson’s charges of the promotion of hatred and gay bashing take on added significance. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’” (2357) Further a Vatican statement on homosexuality issued in 1986 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith notes that “homosexual activity is immoral.”
Placards quoting biblical passages on homosexuality would likely be even more intolerable to Robinson. Romans 1:26-27 refers to lesbian and homosexual sex as “degrading passions” and 1 Corinthians 6:9 notes that “homosexual offenders”“will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
The Ottawa Citizen, which carried the story on its front page last Friday (the Vancouver Sun also covered the story) quoted Liberal MP Dan McTeague who called Robinson a “bully on the Hill” for his attack on the priest. Mr. McTeague said Robinson should apologize to the House of Commons as well as to Father Van Hee. “I guess freedom of speech, a right given by Parliament, is a one-way street for Mr. Robinson.”
For the coverage of the LifeSite story see the National Post and Ottawa Citizen.
For the complete text of MP John Nunziata’s letter to Robinson click here.
For the original LifeSite story on the matter click here.
Also, see yesterday’s story on Cardinal Winning’s comments on this issue.
See also LifeSite links “Family Issues – Homosexuality.”