Singapore: A civil activist has attacked the Singapore Catholic Church’s recent public statement on LGBT issues by saying it does not practices what it preaches.
Dr Vincent Wijeysingha in a Facebook post on June 23 rebutted Singapore Archbishop William Goh’s open letter to Catholics that LGBT relations is “not in accordance with the plan of God” by accusing a local Catholic priest of trying to molest him when he was a teenager.
Archbishop Goh’s letter that was read out during Mass at Catholic churches here over the weekend had also called upon the Holy Spirit to “restore” gay people and condemned the LGBT community for a lifestyle “detrimental to society.”
Wijeysingha, 44, a former Singapore Democratic Party member who quit the party last August to focus on LGBT rights is the first Singapore politician to come out as gay.
While the archbishop had said that “this (LGBT) kind of lifestyle should not be promoted by Catholics “ Wijeysingha claimed that the Catholic Church “has no authority whatsoever, moral or otherwise, to comment on whom I can and cannot love.”
Wijeysingha pointed to child sex abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church worldwide and recounted that when he was 15, he came into an “unfortunate contact with a priest who would engage me in play wrestling and attempt to touch my crotch in the process.”
He added: “He once brought me into his bedroom and took a stack of pornographic magazines from his wardrobe to show me.”
Wijeysingha claimed that he didn’t feel the need to disclose this sorry incident publicly because “it never seemed momentous” or damaged him “but Archbishop William Goh’s pronouncements this weekend prompted me to.”
The Archdiocese Communications Office did not address this allegation in its response to media queries.
About 300,000 people or close to 6 percent of the population are Catholics in Singapore where a British colonial-era “Section 377A” law criminalizes same-sex relations with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years.
Source: news.xin.msn.com
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