The Top Five LGBT Villains and Villainesses of 2008
by Michael A. Jones
Published December 29, 2008 @ 07:38AM PST
http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/the_top_five_lgbt_villains_and_villainesses_of_2008As Carole King might say, sometimes you've got to take the bitter with the sweet. So before we get to our year-end list of heroes and heroines of the LGBT rights world (later this afternoon!), let's take a look at the five folks who specialized in harshing the mellow of the LGBT community this year. What's the nice thing about villains and villainesses? Well, from Cruella De Vil to Nikolai Volkoff, they always get their comeuppance.
5. Pope Benedict XVI. There's a number of religious leaders that could take the cake on this list. We've got our James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly and Richard Land, but we've also got some newcomers like San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, Frederick K.C. Price, Bill Donohue, and (according to some) Rick Warren. But the religious leader with the most ardent string of anti-gay rhetoric this year was Pope Benedict XVI. First was his announcement that he'd "weed" out homosexuals from the priesthood through "psychological testing." Then there was the Vatican's refusal to sign a UN statement that would have called on country's around the world to stop imprisoning and executing homosexuals. Then last week, according to many reports, the Pope compared the urgent need to save the rainforests with the need to save humanity from homosexuality. That's pretty villainous, in our humble opinion.
