OK, that does it

How DARE they? How DARE the Roman Catholic Church decide, after its shameful looking-the-other-way during the Nazi Holocaust, decide NOW to gain political advantage from the corpses of my relatives and those of millions of other Jews worldwide by allowing one of its high-level representatives to make the ludicrous and offensive connection between gay marriage and death camps:

Gay rights groups in Spain reacted with anger on Wednesday after a Roman Catholic cardinal compared obedience to the legalization of same-sex marriage to the process that led to the creation of Nazi death camps, Agence France-Presse reports. "If you give obedience to the law priority over obedience to your conscience, that leads to Auschwitz," Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles, former archbishop of Barcelona, told a Spanish television station.

Spanish deputies last week approved a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry and adopt children. The bill is expected to become law and would make Spain the third European country after the Netherlands and Belgium to do so. "The people who made Auschwitz were not criminals, but people who had been forced to, or thought they had a duty to, obey the laws of the Nazi government rather than their own conscience."

The Triangulo foundation, a Spanish gay rights group, said that comparison with the Holocaust was "repugnant" and called on the church to "stop sowing hatred against victims of discrimination and against victims of the Holocaust, among whom there were many homosexuals."

Another gay rights group, Cogam, said it was "incredible that the Catholic hierarchy should reach the point where it makes a link between the parliamentarians who voted for the [gay marriage bill] and Nazism" and attacked an "unacceptable interference by a foreign state in Spanish politics."

Particularly galling is the use of the perfectly legitimate notion of conscience overriding adherence to law to justify this kind of hate-filled screed, particularly when the Catholic Church is now being led by a man who chose adherence to law during the Nazi regime over his own conscience....assuming that his conscience told him that what Hitler was doing was wrong. I'm not convinced that's the case.

Lurking behind what seems to be a legitimate and admirable sentiment of personal moral courage lies a warning: gays and those who support them had better watch out or they'll end up in camps.

I'm sure Pope Ratso I is smiling, right along with Dr. Frist and Mr. DeLay, who are probably making the plans even as we speak.