BRITAIN: Gay Rights Group Names Catholic Cardinal "Bigot Of The Year"

The British LGBT rights group Stonewall has named Cardinal Keith O'Brien its 2012 Bigot Of The Year. Joseph McCormick reports at Pink News:

The title was announced at the Stonewall Awards on Thursday evening, which took place at the V&A museum in central London. Upon nominating the cardinal, Stonewall wrote on its website: “Keith O’Brien has been a prominent opponent of marriage equality and made headlines with deeply offensive comments about same-sex couples”. He’s stated that same-sex relationships are “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing” and compared equal marriage to slavery and child abuse. The cardinal was a staunch critic of government plans to introduce equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, describing the measure as “grotesque,” earlier this year. Stonewall added: “Under his leadership the Catholic Church in Scotland has pledged to ‘declare war’ on marriage equality and has committed an additional £100,000 for the fight”. Cardinal O’Brien beat Lord Ken Maginnis, the former Ulster Unionist MP, who referred to same-sex marriage as “unnatural and deviant behaviour”, as well as Simon Lokodo, the anti-gay Ugandan Ethics and Integrity Minister, who presided over a homophobic crackdown of LGBT orginisations in Uganda back in June.

Two major British banks threatened to withdraw their sponsorship of Stonewall earlier this week in protest that the "Bigot" category existed at all.