Category: Support

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Catholic Church Continues its War on Gays

The Roman Catholic Church has been in the news quite a bit lately. At times, it seems like positive change is happening. We saw this recently when, under pressure, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago issued an apology for his comments comparing the LGBT community to the Ku Klux Klan. It was a small victory, and was prompted by a large outcry, but gave us a glimmer of hope that the Roman Catholic hierarchy may be slowly coming in line with the vast majority of Catholics who already support their LGBT friends and family.

Then, we saw a barrage of stories that brought us back down to earth, for now. Since there’s been extensive media coverage of Cardinal George in Chicago (and in Green Bay), the following is a roundup of other actions and statements from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that continues to alienate and demonize both LGBT people and fair-minded Catholics.

Minnesota

The American Independent has reported that Archbishop John C. Nienstedt has ordered his priests to either speak in support of the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment, or to remain silent. If a priest opposes the constitutional amendment which would constitutionally ban marriage equality, the priest is forbidden from speaking his opinion publicly. Instead, that priest has been instructed to speak to Archbishop Nienstedt personally. The order for priests to remain silent was given in a speech last October. Presumably this was the same time that the Minnesota bishops organized teams of priests and married couples to canvas the state to support the amendment. A letter was sent to those who did not attend the speech. A copy of the speech was leaked to the Progressive Catholic Voice, which has now published the full text.

Connecticut

The Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, is launching an abstinence program for gay and lesbian Catholics. According to the Hartford Courant, the Archdiocese is establishing a chapter of the anti-gay so-called “support group” Courage“to support men and women who struggle with homosexual tendencies and to motivate them to live chaste and fruitful lives in accordance with Catholic Church teachings.” While not technically an “ex-gay” program, Courage encourages gay and lesbian people to live in chastity. The story has been picked up by CNN, giving it national attention.

Spain

The Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, used his Boxing Day sermon on December 26 to make the outlandish claim that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is participating in a conspiracy to make half of the world’s population gay within twenty years. The comments were picked up by el Pais.

New York & Maryland

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and former Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien who are known for their opposition to LGBT equality, have been elevated to the office of Cardinal. Dolan is particularly well-known for his vocal opposition to marriage for same-sex couples, most recently and vocally about the passage of marriage equality in New York State.

With so much Roman Catholic LGBT-related news lately, GLAAD reminds media outlets and our own constituency that the vast majority of Catholics are supportive of LGBT people, including marriage equality, despite opposition from Roman Catholic hierarchy. GLAAD wishes to amplify the voice of LGBT-affirming Catholics, including organizations such as DignityUSA, Equally Blessed, Fortunate Families, Catholics for Equality, and so many more national, statewide, and local affirming Catholic organizations. GLAAD continues to call on the media to lift up stories and voices of LGBT-affirming Catholics who will likely differ from the hierarchy on issues of LGBT equality.

Those of us who identify with the Christian faith will continue to pray for a change in the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s attitude toward LGBT people, for LGBT Roman Catholics, and for ourselves as we continue to work for justice, peace, and reconciliation for all God’s children.

Complete Article HERE!

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SNAP says it will keep working with victims

An advocacy group for clergy sexual abuse victims on Wednesday urged the public to continue to contact it despite a judge’s recent order that it release emails and other documents.

Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Ann Mesle required that the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and its national director, David Clohessy, produce an extensive amount of correspondence with alleged victims, whistleblowers, journalists and others.

In a news conference in Kansas City, Clohessy declined to comment about the order but said the group was not deterred and is continuing to assist those who say they were abused by clergy, church staff and volunteers.

“Those who call us for help, please keep coming forward and reach out,” he said. “Please don’t be intimidated or bullied, don’t let anything keep you from finding the strength and the courage to report child sex abuse crimes and to get the help that you need.”

Critics have said that SNAP has repeatedly demanded that the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph release certain records but now is not willing to be as transparent with its own documents.

Mesle issued the order in one of five abuse lawsuits filed against the Rev. Michael Tierney since 2010. Tierney has denied any wrongdoing. Diocesan officials said Tierney was removed from all pastoral assignments in June.

T

he judge’s order also allowed defense lawyers to depose Clohessy. The deposition took place in St. Louis on Monday, and Mesle ordered it sealed on Tuesday.

The plaintiff in the civil lawsuit, identified as John Doe B.P., said he was 13 when Tierney molested him in the 1970s.

Mesle issued a gag order in the case last year, prohibiting attorneys on both sides from making any prejudicial statements. Defense attorneys later accused the plaintiff’s attorney, Rebecca Randles, of violating the gag order by providing SNAP with details of the case that they said SNAP then printed in a news release. They subpoenaed Clohessy and demanded that he turn over the documents involving SNAP as evidence of the gag order violation. Randles has denied violating any ethical rules.

Complete Article HERE!

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Roman Catholic Church free — but wrong — to reject adoptions by gay parents

COMMENTARY

Roman Catholic bishops are refusing to budge: They’d rather end their adoption services in several states than accept gay parents.

And that’s a real shame. Other religious groups that don’t recognize same-sex marriage have been willing to compromise — a conservative Lutheran adoption agency in Illinois, for instance, agreed to abide by laws against discrimination so it can continue to receive state funding and provide neglected children with homes.

Yet while we argue that the bishops’ priorities are all wrong, Catholic Charities does have the right to opt out of the adoption business. When a private religious organization wants to reject state funding and refuses to recognize gay marriages, it should generally be free to do so.

That’s not to say religious liberties always take precedence. Consider the case of a Christian grad student at Augusta State University in Georgia. She was expelled from the counselor education program when she refused to abide by the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics.

Jennifer Keeton sued, arguing that if she were a high school counselor, she should not have to tell students it’s acceptable to be gay. Instead, she indicated that she’d try to convert them to being heterosexual, school officials said.

Like the Catholic bishops, Keeton maintained that gay rights threaten her religious freedom. Yet forcing a public university to grant a degree is a totally different story: Keeton wasn’t simply seeking an exemption for her own religious views. She was expecting the university, and her future clients, to work around her personal beliefs.

That’s asking too much. Which is why an appeals court ruled against Keeton, saying that requiring her to undergo cultural sensitivity training did not discriminate against her viewpoint; it simply reflected the expectation that counselors “refrain from imposing their moral and religious values on their clients.”

It’s a tricky balance: Religious exemptions should exist, as long as the cost to everyone else’s rights is not too great. (A private Catholic hospital can’t deny same-sex couples their lawful visitation and decision-making rights, for example.)

Yet at the same time, Catholic Charities can’t be compelled to provide social services for the state. Gay couples can still go elsewhere for adoptions. They shouldn’t have to, but in the name of religious freedom, they will.

Complete Article HERE!

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Gay Men Being Trafficked in Kenya

Gay and bisexual men in Kenya are being lured into sex trafficking rings in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, according to a new report in African LGBT magazine, Identity.

Identity magazine says that the men attending Kenyatta University are particularly targeted, offered jobs as airline attendants or office workers,and given visas and passports (thanks to officials who’ve been bribed to help facilitate the travel arrangements).

Some of the men have reported violent sadistic sexual abuse at the hands of their captors. Many countries, including Qatar, have no anti-trafficking legislation and remain on the U.S. Department of State watch lists for showing no progress in identifying victims of trafficking and prosecuting the perpetrators.

While Kenya did pass anti-trafficking legislation last year, homosexuality is still illegal in both the Arab states as well as Kenya, so the men are unable to report abuse to police.

Complete Article HERE!

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Bishops Say Rules on Gay Parents Limit Freedom of Religion

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.

For the nation’s Catholic bishops, the Illinois requirement is a prime example of what they see as an escalating campaign by the government to trample on their religious freedom while expanding the rights of gay people. The idea that religious Americans are the victims of government-backed persecution is now a frequent theme not just for Catholic bishops, but also for Republican presidential candidates and conservative evangelicals.

“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., a civil and canon lawyer who helped drive the church’s losing battle to retain its state contracts for foster care and adoption services.

The Illinois experience indicates that the bishops face formidable opponents who also claim to have justice and the Constitution on their side. They include not only gay rights advocates, but also many religious believers and churches that support gay equality (some Catholic legislators among them). They frame the issue as a matter of civil rights, saying that Catholic Charities was using taxpayer money to discriminate against same-sex couples.

Tim Kee, a teacher in Marion, Ill., who was turned away by Catholic Charities three years ago when he and his longtime partner, Rick Wade, tried to adopt a child, said: “We’re both Catholic, we love our church, but Catholic Charities closed the door to us. To add insult to injury, my tax dollars went to provide discrimination against me.”

The bishops are engaged in the religious liberty battle on several fronts. They have asked the Obama administration to lift a new requirement that Catholic and other religiously affiliated hospitals, universities and charity groups cover contraception in their employees’ health plans. A decision has been expected for weeks now.

At the same time, the bishops are protesting the recent denial of a federal contract to provide care for victims of sex trafficking, saying the decision was anti-Catholic. An official with the Department of Health and Human Services recently told a hearing on Capitol Hill that the bishops’ program was rejected because it did not provide the survivors of sex trafficking, some of whom are rape victims, with referrals for abortions or contraceptives.

Critics of the church argue that no group has a constitutional right to a government contract, especially if it refuses to provide required services.

But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”

The controversy in Illinois began when the state legislature voted in November 2010 to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples, which the state’s Catholic bishops lobbied against. The legislation was titled “The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act,” and Bishop Paprocki said he was given the impression that it would not affect state contracts for Catholic Charities and other religious social services.

In New York State, religious groups lobbied for specific exemption language in the same-sex marriage bill. But bishops in Illinois did not negotiate, Bishop Paprocki said.

“It would have been seen as, ‘We’re going to compromise on the principle as long as we get our exception.’ We didn’t want it to be seen as buying our support,” he said.

Catholic Charities is one of the nation’s most extensive social service networks, serving more than 10 million poor adults and children of many faiths across the country. It is made up of local affiliates that answer to local bishops and dioceses, but much of its revenue comes from the government. Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).

In Illinois, Catholic Charities in five of the six state dioceses had grown dependent on foster care contracts, receiving 60 percent to 92 percent of their revenues from the state, according to affidavits by the charities’ directors. (Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled out of foster care services in 2007 because of problems with its insurance provider.)

When the contracts came up for renewal in June, the state attorney general, along with the legal staff in the governor’s office and the Department of Children and Family Services, decided that the religious providers on state contracts would no longer be able to reject same-sex couples, said Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the department.

The Catholic providers offered to refer same-sex couples to other agencies (as they had been doing for unmarried couples), but that was not acceptable to the state, Mr. Marlowe said. “Separate but equal was not a sufficient solution on other civil rights issues in the past either,” he said.

Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockford decided at that point to get out of the foster care business. But the bishops in Springfield, Peoria, Joliet and Belleville decided to fight, filing a lawsuit against the state.

Taking a completely different tack was the agency affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, which, like the Catholic Church, does not sanction same-sex relationships. Gene Svebakken, president and chief executive of the agency, Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, visited all seven pastoral conferences in his state and explained that the best option was to compromise and continue caring for the children.

“We’ve been around 140 years, and if we didn’t follow the law we’d go out of business,” Mr. Svebakken said. “We believe it’s God-pleasing to serve these kids, and we know we do a good job.”

In August, Judge John Schmidt, a circuit judge in Sangamon County, ruled against Catholic Charities, saying, “No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government.” He did not address the religious liberty claims, ruling only that the state did not violate the church’s property rights.

Three of the dioceses filed an appeal, but in November filed a motion to dismiss their lawsuit. The Dioceses of Peoria and Belleville are spinning off their state-financed social services, with the caseworkers, top executives and foster children all moving to new nonprofits that will no longer be affiliated with either diocese.

Gary Huelsmann, executive director of Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois, in the Belleville Diocese, said the decision was excruciating for everyone.

“We have 600 children abused and neglected in an area where there are hardly any providers,” he said. “Us going out of business would have been detrimental to these children, and that’s a sin, too.”

The work will be carried on, but the Catholic Church’s seminal, historic connection with it has been severed, noted Mr. Marlowe, the spokesman for the state’s child welfare agency. “The child welfare system that Catholic Charities helped build,” he said, “is now strong enough to survive their departure.”

Complete Article HERE!