Ricky Martin, who announced he was gay in March 2010, is being blasted for his sexuality in a series of homophobic slurs coming from clergy in his native Puerto Rico.
Martin, in the midst of his Music+Soul+Sex tour, was called out in separate interviews by two major Puerto Rican church figures, On Top Magazine reports. Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez of San Juan urged Martin in an interview with Primera Hora last week to stop promoting his homosexuality.
“Personally, I admire Ricky for the great artistic gifts the Lord has endowed him, but please, for the love of his children, for whom I imagine he wants the best, try to set an example to our youth of the great values we all share, besides sex,” the Cardinal said.
Uh, it has very little to do with sex, but with sexuality, which is actually a different subject. I would not expect a Cardinal, forced into [assumed] celibacy by his career choices, to be an expert on sexuality, so this may be new information for him.
This comes on the heels of an even harsher rant from Pastor Wanda Rolon, the head of a large northern Puerto Rican church.
“[Ricky Martin] wants to take people to hell!” she wrote on her Facebook page. “RM is its ambassador.”
Wanda is dramatic! I would imagine, though, that Ricky Martin is a pretty confounding figure for closed-minded religious leaders to deal with. He’s got a beautiful family, loves his kids, is quite talented, seems by all accounts to be an overall nice guy, and so on; he’s everything that wingnuts lie to themselves and say that gay people are not. He’s an example of why wingnut messages about gay people just don’t play with our increasingly globalized, technologically savvy younger generations. They know better than to buy into the religious hatred, because they’ve seen with their own eyes that it isn’t valid or true.
Your blogger also likes to have an excuse to post pictures of Ricky Martin. Just sayin’.
