Sounds like a joke, right? What person in a position of power would use a Christmas speech to promote hate?

Answer: The Pope.

In Vatican City, the good old Pope said:

The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices – and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.

And:

"People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being," he said. "They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves."

"The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned," he said.

And:

In his speech, the pope cited Bernheim as lamenting how a new philosophy of sexuality has taken hold, whereby sex and gender are "no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society."

He said God had created man and woman as a specific "duality" – "an essential aspect of what being human is all about."

Now, though, "Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his own nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will."

And last but certainly not least:

"When freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God," Benedict said.

Bah humbug!

I very much doubt sexuality is a ‘social role’. I’m a heterosexual male and I can’t just wake up in the morning and decide that females will no longer appear attractive to me any longer. My sexuality isn’t a freaking suit that I can change at a moment’s notice.

Does the Pope offer any proof for his claims?

Nope.

Does the Pope think this is the issue that should be targeted in a troubled world?

You bet he does.

Screw the starving children, the school massacre that took place in America, the poor, downtrodden or vulnerable. Who cares about the children all over the world who will wake up in the morning with no present under their tree? Let’s target those homosexuals who want to be legally married and share the same rights as everyone else.

The Pope should be ashamed of himself in my opinion. Like it or not, the Pope speaks to over a billion people on our planet. He’s an influential person and this is how he uses his power on what is supposedly the greatest Christian celebration of the year. Instead of using his speech to uplift, he decides to use it to marginalize and attack same-sex couples.

Bah Humbug, indeed!