Catholic leaders are furious at
Scotland's largest gay rights organization, Stonewall Scotland, for
naming Cardinal Keith O'Brien their Bigot of the Year for his
opposition to gay marriage.
In March, O'Brien, who heads the
Scottish Catholic Church, called the government's plans to legalize
marriage for gay and lesbian couples “madness” and a “grotesque
subversion of a universally accepted human right.”
He also compared such unions to plural
relationships.
“If marriage can be redefined so that
it no longer means a man and a woman but two men or two woman, why
stop there? Why not allow three men or a woman and two men to
constitute a marriage, if they pledged their fidelity to one
another?”
The church has also claimed that people
of the same sex who marry suffer greater risks of mental illness and
premature death.
Stonewall Scotland gave out its awards
on Thursday.
“Stonewall and others have promoted
terms like 'bigot' and 'homophobe' relentlessly, in order to
intimidate and vilify anyone who dares oppose their agenda,” a
church spokesman told The
Guardian.
Colin Macfarlane, the director of
Stonewall Scotland, reacted to the criticism, insisting the award was
justified.
“We've never called anyone a bigot
just because they don't agree with us,” he said. “But in just
the past 12 months, the cardinal has gone well beyond what any normal
person would call a decent level of public discourse.”