Hong Kong Catholics split over church’s stance on gays ahead of district polls
Sexual minorities feel let down by church’s call to consider candidates’ views on same-sex relationships when they vote on Sunday
Cardinal John Tong Hon raised the stakes for gay rights activists on November 5 when he called on Hong Kong’s Catholics – who make up 5 per cent of the population – to consider candidates’ views on homosexuality when they vote in this coming Sunday’s district council elections.
“Extreme libertarian attitudes, individualism, the ‘sex liberation movement’ and the ‘gay movement’” were advocating the enactment of a Sexual Orientation Discrimination Ordinance (Sodo) and the recognition of same-sex marriages, he wrote.
Hong Kong was in a “critical situation” that could “force our society into undergoing a change that would turn it upside-down”, he said with apocalyptic drama. A Christian student group that organised a workshop on lovemaking techniques at the Chinese University of Hong Kong recently was yet another piece of evidence that the “propagation of sexual liberalisation” was rampant, and had to be stopped.
The Victorian language, the suggestion that gay rights and loose morals are the same thing, and the decision to make sexuality an issue in a grass-roots election came as a surprise to a lot of people.
