Category: Gay Catholics

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Bishops say full effect of ‘redefining marriage’ will be felt for years

More sour grapes from our beloved leaders.

The “full social and legal effects” of state lawmakers’ decision to legalize same-sex marriage “will begin to manifest themselves in the years ahead,” said the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

“Today the Minnesota Senate voted to redefine marriage in Minnesota. The outcome, though expected, is no less disappointing,” the conference said in a statement.

Archbishop John Nienstedt
Say, I don’t look like i have a same-sex attraction, do I?

The state Senate in a 37-30 vote gave final approval Monday to a same-sex marriage bill. The state House passed the measure May 9. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed it Tuesday.

The law is to take effect Aug. 1, making Minnesota the 12th state to allow same-sex couples to marry. Earlier in May, Rhode Island and Delaware became the 10th and 11th states, respectively, to legalize same-sex marriage.

“The church, for its part, will continue to work to rebuild a healthy culture of marriage and family life, as well as defend the rights of Minnesotans to live out their faith in everyday life and speak the truth in love,” said the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops.

“Some wish to believe that sexual relationships outside of the marital context of husband and wife are innocuous, choosing to ignore the fact that they are actually harmful to individuals and to society as a whole,” said Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.

“There are many of us Americans, including many Minnesotans, who stand for the natural and true meaning of marriage,” he said in a statement released Tuesday. “They know that men and women are important; their complementary difference matters, their union matters, and it matters to kids. Mothers and fathers are simply irreplaceable.”

Cordileone called it “the height of irony” that the final vote on “the redefinition of marriage” and the governor’s signature on the bill occurred just a day “after we celebrated the unique gifts of mothers and women on Mother’s Day.”

In November, Minnesota voters rejected a ballot measure to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only a union between a man and woman, but polls show Minnesotans remained sharply divided over legalizing such unions. According to Minnesota Public Radio, a recent survey showed a majority are against same-sex marriage.

The measure changes the definition of marriage from “between a man and a woman” to “a civil contract between two persons.” A prohibition against marriage between relatives, such as first cousins, remained in place.

In a statement about the earlier House vote, the conference said lawmakers by approving same-sex marriage “set in motion a transformation of Minnesota law that will focus on accommodating the desires of adults instead of protecting the best interest of children.”

“This action is an injustice that tears at the fabric of society and will be remembered as such well into the future,” it said.

The Catholic conference said the bill posed “a serious threat to the religious liberty and conscience rights of Minnesotans.”

It includes legal protections for clergy and religious groups that don’t want to marry same-sex couples, but the conference said lawmakers failed “to protect the people in the pew — individuals, non-religious nonprofits, and small business owners who maintain the time-honored belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman.”

According to the conference, lawyers on both sides of the issue have stated that no accommodations for “the deeply held beliefs of a majority of Minnesotans will result in numerous conflicts that will have to be adjudicated by our courts.”

In a separate statement issued after the House vote, Duluth Bishop Paul Sirba said the church “will continue to uphold and propose to the world what we know, through sound reason and through divine revelation, to be the authentic nature of marriage: a permanent union between one man and one woman, uniting a mother and a father with any children produced by their union.”

No civil authority, he said, “has the authority or competence to redefine marriage. Civil authorities have the obligation to protect and defend true marriage for the sake of justice and the common good.”

Sirba acknowledged that many disagree with the church’s stand on the issue and expressed dismay over the negative tone the debate over same-sex marriage has taken toward the church.

“We are particularly mindful of our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attractions,” he said.

(Have you ever noticed how our fearless leaders can’t and won’t use the word gay? We use it to self-define, but they want to define us for us, using the euphemism — our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attractions. It’s like if our same sex attraction is an add-on, the likes of which they want us to pray away, if we don’t mind.)

“Our hearts break that this debate has often been used as an occasion to sow mistrust and doubt, as if followers of the God who is love, and whose love for all people we proclaim each day as the body of Christ, are acting instead out of some sort of ill will.”

“To all those with same-sex attraction, we continue to extend our unconditional love and respect. For those who have heard God’s call and respond in faith, hope and love, striving to walk in his ways, we also offer our pastoral support,” the bishop added.

In Rhode Island May 2, Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed into law a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in that state. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence expressed “profound disappointment” that the measure to “legitimize same-sex marriage” passed the Legislature.

In an open letter to the state’s Catholics, he said the Catholic church has fought very hard to “oppose this immoral and unnecessary proposition,” and that God would be the final arbiter of people’s actions.

Same-sex marriage became legal May 7 in Delaware; the law goes into effect July 1.

In an April 15 letter to Delaware legislators, Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington said marriage “is a unique relationship between a man and a woman” and it’s not the government’s place to “define or redefine” it.

Complete Article HERE!

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Gay Would-Be Priest Fathers 22 Kids with 17 Lesbians As a Form of “Revenge” on the Church

In Munich, Germany, a once-aspiring priest is allegedly spreading his love around as a very popular sperm donor to lesbian couples as a way, he says, of getting “quiet revenge” on the church for denying him his vestments.

 

By Lester Brathwaite
Markus K. has never slept with a woman, but since fathering his first child nine years ago with a lesbian couple, he hasn’t been able to stop impregnating them. It all started in 1994. Friends had taken the U.S. by storm and Markus decided to do the same to some German ovaries. He had been in seminary in hopes of becoming a priest, but he was forced to leave because he was gay.

“Six years of theology, the Latinum Graecum, Hebraicum, all for naught,” Markus told the Munich Evening News. “My life was at a low point.”

You know what always cheers us up? Ejaculating into a paper cup. Markus felt the same way after seeing a note on the wall from a lesbian looking for a sperm donor. Big mistake. The woman was a bit of a whack — “she wore her first menstrual blood in an amulet around the neck, stuff like that” — but luckily his check bounced, as it were.

Then in 2003, a few years older and wiser and wealthier (he works in insurance) Markus answered an ad from a lesbian couple. Once he met them, he felt they would be good parents. Two attempts and nine months later he had a son. What’s more he didn’t charge the women so it was literally a gift of life.

Once word spread that Markus’ sperm took the HOV-lane to the uterus without paying a toll – well, let’s just say it’s a wonder he’s not incapacitated by severe carpal tunnel. Women just come to his apartment, he gives them the…stuff in a cup and then they go into a separate room to self-baste. See, nothing shady or strange about it. Sure, some of the ladies might “do a headstand after” but “others simply lie down and fall asleep.”

Now 45, Markus has 22 sons and daughters — 12 in Munich, one in Vienna, one in Tuscany, six scattered throughout the rest of Germany and two still on the way. With the birth of the two this summer, he’ll have 12 boys and 12 girls — then he might give it a rest.

The hectic seed-spreading schedule he’s been keeping over the last ten years has taken its toll on Markus’ love life. Turns out guys aren’t lining up to date a guy with more kids than pairs of shoes. His last boyfriend wasn’t too keen on having to deal with Markus’ 17 women and all of his fatherly commitments. Even with all those kids in different places, Markus is no deadbeat dad. He makes sure to see all of them for their birthdays and meets with five of the families every four weeks.

When one of his five-year-olds asked him how many other kids he’s been competing with, Markus began to wonder what other questions will be asked of him once his kids grow up — such as “why?”

“Probably a mix of help, reproductive instinct, loneliness and quiet revenge on the church. I can not be a priest as a gay man,” he said, “but I can reproduce myself as often as I want.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic church excommunicates Brazil priest for liberal views

File under: Insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf church power structure

By Paulo Prada

The Catholic Church has excommunicated a Brazilian priest after he defended homosexuality, open marriage and other practices counter to Church teaching in online videos.

In a statement released late on Monday, the priest’s diocese said Father Roberto Francisco Daniel, known to local parishioners as Padre Beto, had “in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ betrayed the promise of fealty to the Church.”

The priest “injured the Church with grave statements counter to the dogma of Catholic faith and morality.” The actions amount to “heresy and schism,” the statement said, the penalty for which is excommunication, or expulsion from the Church.

The rare punishment follows what Daniel’s bishop and the priest himself said were repeated rebukes about the videos and other public activities, such as a radio broadcast and local newspaper column, in which he challenged Church doctrine.

The 47-year-old cleric, who studied theology in Germany, is popular in the southeastern city of Bauru, where he has been a priest since 2001. He is known for his rock T-shirts, a silver stud pierced through his right ear and his habit of posing, as on his official Facebook page, with a glass of beer.

On Facebook and Twitter, Daniel posted a brief statement about the excommunication: “I feel honored to belong to the long list of people who have been murdered and burned alive for thinking and searching for knowledge.”

SPREAD OF MODERATE VIEWS

Daniel’s excommunication, which prompted headlines across Brazil and protests in social media, illustrates the rising influence of more moderate social views in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country, and much of the rest of the region.

Progressive stances on sexuality, birth control, scientific research and other delicate topics for the Church are increasingly common in Latin America, home to 42 percent of the world’s Catholics, more than any other region worldwide.

The shifting views are among the many challenges faced by Pope Francis, an Argentine who ascended in March to become the first Latin American pope in history.

The excommunication comes just two months before Francis is scheduled to attend World Youth Day, expected to attract as many as 2 million young Catholics to Rio de Janeiro.

Though Francis is known to be a traditionalist on social issues and Church doctrine, his appointment raised hopes that the first non-European pope in 13 centuries would do more than his predecessors to modernize Catholicism.

But Daniel’s beliefs clearly went too far for church leaders.

In one of the recent videos he posted on YouTube.com and his own Website, the priest said a married person who chose to have an affair, heterosexual or otherwise, would not be unfaithful as long as that person’s spouse allowed it. “If someone is in an extramarital relationship and that relationship is accepted by the spouse, then faithfulness still exists there,” he said.

A “REBEL SON”

In a telephone interview, Daniel said his statements “are personal reflections that should be considered and discussed in the dialogue of the church.” The excommunication, he said, is “the sad act of a lukewarm and disengaged church that is out of touch with today’s society.”

The diocese retained a church expert in canonical law to oversee the excommunication process. The diocese also initiated a separate process at the Vatican through which Daniel will be stripped of clerical authority.

Last Tuesday, Bishop Caetano Ferrari gave Daniel a letter asking him to take the videos offline and publicly retract his statements. In an interview posted on the diocese Web site shortly afterward, Ferrari called Daniel “brilliant,” but characterized him as a “rebel son” who “crosses the line.”

On Monday, Daniel said he went to the diocese headquarters planning to renounce his clerical duties rather than retract any of his comments. But before he had a chance, the bishop and canonical expert made him face a committee of Church officials.

“It was a trial,” Daniel said. “I told them I was not there to be tried, that I had not been indicted.”

Shortly afterward, the Church issued the statement announcing his excommunication.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic bishop warns against attending same-sex weddings

File under: Sour Grapes.  Really, Bishop?  It’s God who looks unfavorably upon marriage equality?  Really?  Remember when pious Catholics were warned not to attend marriages between a man and a woman but were held in non-Catholic settings?  Was God pissed off at that too back then?  I guess he got over it, huh?  You shameless fraud!

By Eric W. Dolan

Bishop of Providence Thomas Tobin, the Roman Catholic leader of Rhode Island, on Thursday warned Catholics that God looked unfavorably upon those who attended same-sex weddings.

In a letter published as Rhode Island was poised to become the tenth state to embrace marriage equality, Tobin wrote that Catholics should have “respect, love and pastoral concern” for LGBT individuals.

But that didn’t mean Catholics should accept their relationships or attend their wedding ceremonies.

“At this moment of cultural change, it is important to affirm the teaching of the Church, based on God’s word, that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2357) and always sinful,” Tobin explained.

“And because ‘same-sex marriages’ are clearly contrary to God’s plan for the human family, and therefore objectively sinful, Catholics should examine their consciences very carefully before deciding whether or not to endorse same-sex relationships or attend same-sex ceremonies, realizing that to do so might harm their relationship with God and cause significant scandal to others.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Columbus Diocese Fires Gay Teacher, Coach

File under: insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf leadership.

by Bob Vitale

Bishop Watterson High School students are fighting for a longtime physical education teacher and coach they say was fired by the Catholic Diocese of Columbus because she’s gay.

Carla Hale is liked and respected by students and colleagues, but people close to her and the school say she was terminated after Bishop Watterson and church officials were told that she included her partner, Julie, in her mother’s newspaper obituary.

Students began an online petition yesterday that has been gaining about 100 supporters per hour. It was up to 2,800 by noon today.

The petition calls Hale a beloved teacher “who cared for her students and treated each one with respect.”

“The school, however, did not reciprocate that respect in its treatment of her,” reads the petition, started by Watterson senior Jackson Garrity. “Discrimination and injustice is something that we all have a duty to fight in today’s society. … The school claims its mission is to teach its students about love, acceptance, and tolerance, and yet it did none of this in the way it treated Ms. Hale. That is why we all have to stand up together and let it be known that this decision is unacceptable.”

Garrity said students learned of Hale’s firing this week, although they weren’t told directly by the school. The school didn’t tell faculty either, others said.

 

“She’s a great lady,” a former colleague said of Hale. “She’s totally dedicated to her students.”

Two people who know others who’ve spoken to Hale told Outlook the details of her termination. Hale’s mother, Jeanne E. Roe of Powell, passed away on Feb. 25, and her obituary appeared in The Columbus Dispatch the next day. Hale’s partner, Julie, was listed among Roe’s survivors. That is what prompted school officials to fire Hale, the source said.

“My classmates and I feel very passionately about this issue,” Garrity told Outlook by email. “We (the senior class) agreed that we needed to take a stand as leaders and voice our opinions.”

Other Watterson students, parents and alumni have voiced their anger at the school as well. Here’s a sampling of comments:

“Bishop Watterson demands that we all treat each other with equality and respect. I hope they see that their students are standing up for the morally right thing, not to just rebel against the school. Carla Hale is a child of God and equal in his eyes to all of us. Bishop Watterson needs to recognize that.”

“Ms. Hale was a fantastic PE teacher, she encouraged everyone to be a part of the games and activities we did in class. This made the class more fun for everyone. She was always fair towards me, even in my freshman year when I was rude and disrespectful in her class. … To see the treatment of a woman who has given so much time to the Watterson community as a teacher, coach, and much more is just sickening. Judging and discriminating against people on the basis of their sexuality is not what God wanted at all. … I want Ms. Hale reinstated to the school because regardless of her sexuality (which is no one’s business but her own), she is a great teacher, and a fantastic woman and role model.”

“When I was a student at Bishop Watterson, we were always taught to treat others with dignity and compassion. As an alumni, I still credit Bishop Watterson with shaping me into the person I am today — both morally and ethically. I am deeply saddened to learn that, in spite of what Watterson taught me about respect for all humanity, a longstanding and well-respected faculty member was treated so unfairly. Ms. Hale has always been an excellent coach and teacher. Her sexual orientation and lifestyle choices have no bearing on her capacity to educate her students and should NOT be grounds for termination of employment.”

“My kids go to Bishop Watterson. I want them to see a model of tolerance and love, not discrimination.”

“As a graduate of Watterson I am deeply disappointed that my former school seems to have lost sight of one of their core principles — to love and respect others. I truly hope Watterson realizes their mistake before teaching students that it is acceptable to judge another person for any reason, let alone for loving someone. Ms. Hale please know that we support you.”

Someone who signed the petition with the name of Hale’s daughter wrote: “Discrimination against someone for their sexuality is wrong. It is not our place to judge someone especially based on these terms. She is an amazing mother, friend, teacher, and all around person. That is how people should see her!”

Hale still is listed on Watterson’s website as head of the school’s health and physical education department.

Bishop Watterson Principal Marian Hutson didn’t respond to Outlook’s request for comment. Diocese spokesman George Jones said it’s church policy not to comment on personnel matters.

It’s the second time this year that Catholic schools in Ohio have fired educators for ties to the LGBT community. In February, Mike Moroski, an assistant principal at Purcell Marian High School in Cincinnati, was fired by the Cincinnati Archiocese after he stated his support for marriage equality on his personal blog.

Complete Article HERE!

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Two Catholic Leaders Advise Denying Communion to Marriage Equality Supporters

Detroit Catholic leaders, one a legal adviser to the Vatican, suggest those who support gay marriage be denied Communion. Compare this to news that the Vatican collaborated with another murderous dictator.

By Niraj Warikoo

A Detroit professor and legal adviser to the Vatican says Catholics who promote gay marriage should not try to receive holy Communion, a key part of Catholic identity.

And the archbishop of Detroit, Allen Vigneron, said Sunday that Catholics who receive Communion while advocating gay marriage would “logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.”

The comments of Vigneron and Edward Peters, who teaches Catholic canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, are part of a polarizing discussion about gay marriage that echoes debate over whether politicians who advocate abortion rights should receive Communion.

In a post on his blog last week, Peters said that Catholic teachings make it clear that marriage is between one man and one woman. And so, “Catholics who promote ‘same-sex marriage’ act contrary to” Catholic law “and should not approach for holy Communion,” he wrote. “They also risk having holy Communion withheld from them … being rebuked and/or being sanctioned.”

Peters didn’t specify a Catholic politician or public figure in his post. But he told the Free Press that a person’s “public efforts to change society’s definition of marriage … amount to committing objectively wrong actions.”

Peters, an attorney and the Edmund Cardinal Szoka chairman at Sacred Heart, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 to be a referendary of the Apostolic Sinatura, which means he helps advise the top judicial authority in the Catholic Church. Peters’ blog, “In Light of the Law,” is popular among Catholic experts, but not everyone agrees with his traditional views.

“Most American bishops do not favor denying either politicians or voters Communion because of their positions on controversial issues,” said Thomas Reese, a Catholic priest and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. Reese said that Peters’ views are “in a minority among American canon lawyers.”

But, Reese added, “about 30 or so bishops have said that pro-choice or pro-gay-marriage Catholics should not present themselves for Communion.”

Peters has said before that liberal Catholic Democrats, such as U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, should be denied Communion because of their statements and positions.

In 2011, Peters said that Cuomo should not receive Communion because he is an outspoken proponent of gay marriage. Last month, Peters said, “Pelosi suffers from one of the most malformed consciences in the annals of American Catholic politics or … she is simply hell-bent on using her Catholic identity to attack Catholic values at pretty much every opportunity.”

In 2002, Catholic Jennifer Granholm’s support of abortion rights became an issue in the gubernatorial race a month before the election, when Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida released a letter saying Catholic politicians had a “special moral obligation” to oppose abortion.

Last month, Vigneron said at a news conference that maintaining views that oppose abortion and support traditional marriage are important for Catholics.

“Were we to abandon them, we would be like physicians who didn’t tell their patients that certain forms of behavior are not really in their best interest,” said Vigneron, who oversees 1.3 million Catholics in southeastern Michigan.

On Sunday, Vigneron said about supporting gay marriage and receiving Communion: “For a Catholic to receive holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches.’ In effect, they would contradict themselves. This sort of behavior would result in publicly renouncing one’s integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.”

Vigneron said the church wants to help Catholics “avoid this personal disaster.”

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Gay man removed from Catholic parish involvement after getting married

The media has made much ado about Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, wherein he claimed that the Roman Catholic Church needs to be better at welcoming gay and lesbian people.

Cardinal Dolan also stated that the Catholic Church isn’t “anti-anybody” and should be a church for all.

But his words do not ring true for real life Catholics. In fact, as Cardinal Dolan was expressing his desire to have the church be open to all, one gay Catholic man was being stripped of his roles and responsibilities within his Long Island parish.

Nicholas Coppola is a parishioner at St. Antony’s Roman Catholic Church in Oceanside, New York. His involvement at the church included serving as a religious education instructor, lector, altar server, visitation minister for homebound members, as well as member of the Consolation Ministry and St. Vincent de Paul.

He has been completely out to his parish for years, and has had the support of his priest and fellow parishioners. Mr. Coppola and his husband, David were married on October 27, 2012. A number of parishioners attended their wedding.

Upon returning from his honeymoon in January, Mr. Coppola was called into the office of Fr. Nicholas Lombardi S.J., the pastor of St. Anthony.

Bishop William Murphy of the Diocese of Rockville Centre received an anonymous letter, informing him of Mr. Coppola.

According to the letter:

“Nicholas Coppola is a Religion Teacher at St. Anthony’s. I have also seen him involved with other Parish work including his name on a board for “THE ST. ANTHONY PROJECT” to raise money for air conditioning in the Church. The problem is that he is a homosexual. He was recently married to another man. He does not hide this or keep it silent.”

The diocese then faxed the letter to Fr. Lombardi, noting that “it would be of concern to you if a catechist were, in fact, ‘married’.”

Fr. Lombardi stated that Mr. Coppola must be removed from all parish involvement. The reason stated was that Mr. Coppola made a public statement by getting married, which is against church teaching.

“I was in shock. I had just come home from my honeymoon. I went to mass on Martin Luther King Day, where we heard a great sermon about justice and equality,” said Mr. Coppola, recalling the meeting.

“After mass, I was summoned into the pastor’s office and told that I could no longer be active in my own parish.”

Mr. Coppola has had two meetings with the Diocese of Rockville Centre, and was informed that the bishop’s ‘hands were tied.’ While the Roman Catholic hierarchy states that it wishes to welcome gay and lesbian people into the church, being in a loving, committed relationship, and seeking protections for that relationship and for one another through civil marriage will exclude one from parish life.

Following Cardinal Dolan’s interview and assertion that the church is welcoming to gay and lesbian people, Mary Ann Walsh, Director of Media Relations, took to Huffington Post to respond to the heightened media attention around Dolan’s claims.

She stated very boldly, “No one is carded at a Catholic Church. Shunning is not the Catholic tradition.”

However, once Nicholas Coppola was identified as a married gay man, he was shunned from the parish.

“When I suffered a back injury that didn’t allow me to work, participating in the ministries at St. Anthony’s gave me a purpose,” said Mr. Coppola.

“Being shunned from a community that means so much to me takes a toll, not just to me, but to those around me. My mom cried. My husband has been a great source of support for me, but he is also struggling with this action. Even my fellow parishioners are hurt and angry that I can’t be involved in the parish anymore.”

Nicholas Coppola is not the first Catholic to be persecuted by Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Several employees of Roman Catholic parishes, schools, and related institutions have been fired for their support for marriage equality, no matter how public or private those beliefs have been.

Dominic Sheahan-Stahl was uninvited to speak at the graduation of his alma mater in Michigan.

Lennon Cihak was denied confirmation after urging people to vote against the anti-marriage amendment in Minnesota.

Most famously in Maryland, Barbara Johnson was denied communion at her own mother’s funeral because she was gay.

“We continue to hear assertions from the hierarchy that the Roman Catholic Church is loving and embracing to all, but the experience of Nicholas Coppola and so many others run counter to those claims,” stated GLAAD’s Director of News and Faith Initiatives, Ross Murray. “Until the hierarchy stops persecuting those within its ranks who support full equality for LGBT people, its message of love and inclusion means nothing.”

Mr. Coppola continues to express his hope for the church. “I want a church that is open to all and loves each one of us the same.”

GLAAD calls on the media to highlight the stories of Nicholas Coppola and others who have been persecuted by the Roman Catholic hierarchy for supporting full equality for LGBT people.

These stories represent the disconnect between words like that of Cardinal Dolan or Sister Walsh and the experience of real LGBT Catholics in America.

They will tell a fuller story of why Catholics overwhelmingly support LGBT equality, including marriage equality, despite virulent opposition from Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Church Rips Off Marriage Equality Facebook Campaign With Red Division Sign

File under: Insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf power structure

division-sign

Nearly three million Facebook users turned their Facebook profile pictures into some variation of a red HRC equal sign in support of marriage equality.

The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco didn’t like that one bit, so it encouraged the faithful to post its own symbolic images: a plus sign, a division sign and a “man + woman = child’” icon.

After a Change.org petition was started to get the Archdiocese to remove its divisive images, the division symbol was taken down, but the others remain.

We’d say the Church was being pretty pathetic in stealing the LGBT community’s symbols, but co-opting imagery and rites from other cultures is pretty much the Catholic Church’s bailiwick.

plus

baby

Complete Article HERE!

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Silent or supportive, U.S. conservatives give gay marriage momentum

By Peter Henderson

On a frosty December night last year, about two dozen guests slipped into the Alta Club, a century-old private retreat a block away from the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that dominates Salt Lake City.

Two men, who didn’t know each other, were the reason for the dinner: church lobbyist Bill Evans and gay rights leader Rick Jacobs. Evans was a point man for the church’s successful effort to pass California’s gay marriage ban, known as Prop 8, in 2008. Jacobs, leader of Courage Campaign, produced a 2008 commercial against the ban showing Mormon missionaries ransacking the home of a lesbian couple.

Politics was not on the agenda – just getting to know each other. “The two hit it off,” said host Greg Prince, a medical researcher and church member who had come to know both men. He noted that less than a month before the dinner, the church had launched a website with a major change in its view of gays: the site said homosexuality was not a choice.

“There has been a shift of some tectonic plate somewhere,” Prince said.

Shifting attitudes among some conservatives and many businesses is altering the landscape around gay marriage, long considered a uniquely liberal and political issue, at one of its most crucial junctures – its review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the court’s nine justices will hear arguments on the constitutionality of Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, which excludes gay couples from federal benefits.

Some jurists look to societal changes when interpreting the law, and scholars speculate that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the possible swing vote in the divided court, will be pondering increased public support for gay marriage.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found 63 percent of Americans supported gay marriage or civil unions.

While the Mormon Church has backed “traditional marriage” in Supreme Court briefs, it has been silent in recent ballot battles and has not promoted fundraising as it has in the past.

Republicans like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio are supporting gay marriage and publicly conflicting with party leaders, such as House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. Portman this month said he had switched position on the issue after his son told him he was gay.

Corporations, including Goldman Sachs, whose chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has campaigned in support of gay marriage, have joined the battle, arguing in briefs to the court that federal policy of not allowing gay marriage is bad for business.

The issue is far from settled, however. Gay marriage opponents have been written off as dinosaurs before, including in California, and most states ban same-sex weddings. But the momentum has been moving towards the proponents of gay marriage.

MORMON MONEY, NO MORE

Money has played a huge part in the pivot, both in terms of the financing of campaigns in favor of gay marriage and the funding of opposition groups.

When the New York State Senate voted to approve gay marriage in 2011, four Republicans joined Democrats. Republicans led by hedge fund manager Paul Singer, whose son is gay, gave the four financial and moral support, and in the 2012 national race, Singer led a political action committee that spent more than $2 million to help pro-gay marriage Republicans.

“You have billionaires telling Republicans ‘Vote our way and you’ll receive more money than you’ve ever seen,’” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the leader of the movement to stop gay marriage. “That was new.”

Pro-gay marriage groups have routed their opponents financially, outraising them three-to-one in November 2012 ballot races that legalized same-sex marriage in three more states, bringing the total to nine states and the District of Columbia.

The single biggest fundraising change between 2008 and 2012 was the disappearance from the political arena of the mightiest foe of gay marriage – the Mormon Church.

While the church has petitioned the Supreme Court in favor of Prop 8, it has focused its public messages about gays on personal issues of respect and love rather than politics.

In the four November 2012 votes – Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota – the top ballot committees raised about $30 million for gay marriage and $10 million against it. The $20 million difference between the two campaigns last year is close to several estimates of what the Mormon Church and its supporters gave to California’s Prop 8 in 2008.

More than 800 Utahns gave $2.7 million to support Prop 8 in 2008, state campaign finance records show. In 2012, a total of 16 Utahns gave $1,264 to the main ballot committees against gay marriage.

“The Mormon Church left as a major funder,” concluded Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the biggest gay rights group.

Frank Schubert, who ran the 2008 and 2012 anti-gay-marriage campaigns, downplayed the Church hierarchy’s silence last year. “Not having a direct statement encouraging people to get involved in the campaign naturally would result in fewer people getting involved in the campaigns, but there were fewer Mormons in these states to begin with, and there was never any expectation that they would be involved.”

California Mormon Brooke Crosland, 27, gave $1,000 in 2008 for Prop 8 and made campaign phone calls, but she stayed out of politics in 2012. She described a personal search for understanding, which she saw reflected in the church. “I feel like the ideal for a child is a father and a mother, but I also feel under the law we should have equal rights,” she said.

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, whose portrait of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk won an Academy Award, was approached for informal talks by Mormon officials after he narrated a documentary critical of the church called “8: The Mormon Proposition.” Church officials were surprised to learn that he, a young, gay man, deeply wanted a family. “That was this big ‘ah ha’ moment,” he said.

But Black said the initial invitation came only after the church was pilloried in public. “They didn’t contact me after making ‘Milk’. They contacted me after making ‘8: The Mormon Proposition’,” said Black, who was raised a Mormon. He since has introduced HRC leader Griffin to church officials, at the December dinner and a concert following, while continuing talks.

Church spokesman Michael Purdy said its hospitality did not signal a change in position. “Being committed to marriage between a man and a woman does not mean that we do not love and care for all of God’s children. Having conversations with gay rights leaders, speaking about compassion and respect for all, and inviting people to attend a concert do not equal pulling back from supporting traditional marriage due to negative publicity during Prop 8,” he wrote by email.

Meanwhile, gay marriage fans and foes agree that same-sex-union proponents have improved their fundraising. Ted Olson, President George W. Bush’s Solicitor General, made it ok for conservatives to support gay marriage when he agreed to take the Prop 8 case, said Margaret Hoover, a pro-gay-marriage Republican activist.

When former Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman in 2010 came out as gay, it was critical mass. “Nightingales don’t sing unless they hear another nightingale singing. As soon they hear one, another one sings, and another one sings,” said Hoover.

Dozens of Republican leaders, including former California candidate for governor Meg Whitman and former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, have signed a brief to the Supreme Court in favor of gay marriage.

Some 278 businesses, including Goldman Sachs and hotelier Marriott International, whose chairman and major stockholder is Mormon, have signed a similar brief opposing the Defense of Marriage Act. (Thomson Reuters, the parent of Reuters News, is part of that group.)

UNEXPECTED CONVERTS

The person credited by all sides with cementing the victory in California for the gay marriage ban was a little schoolgirl who told her mother she had just been taught, “I can marry a princess!” The girl was in a commercial for Prop 8, and for years Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, has been asked whether he could beat the “Princess” ad.

Wolfson, a fundraising and strategy leader for most recent ballot campaigns in favor of gay marriage, said the answer was chiefly to change his own side’s message, rather than chase the opposition. The pro-gay-marriage campaign, which in 2008 had largely focused on appealing to voters to give gays rights because it said they deserved them, took a more personal tone, he said, of affirming the idea of equal rights and respecting loving couples.

That strategy had some unexpected converts.

David Blankenhorn, founder of the family-focused Institute for American Values think tank, was the prime witness in 2010 in the opening round of the federal trial of Prop. 8. Blankenhorn struck up unlikely friendships with gays while debating the issue in public, and he was sitting at his desk one day last year, when one called and told him to go to a website with a strident, anti-gay article.

“He said, ‘Are you sure that this is the side you are on?’” Blankenhorn recalled. He put down the phone, and in that moment realized he had already changed his mind.

“I have a kind of intellectual reason for shifting from one foot to the other foot,” he said “But I really, honestly think that it was through just personal interactions… if you want to stick with your position, don’t get to know people who disagree with you.”

Gay marriage foe Brown says he is not worried by polls that show gay marriage support snowballing. It’s all about how you ask the question, he said, and a majority of voters do not want to redefine marriage. His side has always been behind in the money battle, he added, but has had some banner successes.

Politicians can see the danger of switching sides, he said. Of the four New York State Senate Republicans who voted for same-sex marriage, only one returned to office, despite financial backing from sources as diverse as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union, Wall Street Republicans, and libertarian David Koch.

Back in California, Rick Jacobs, the Courage Campaign chief, thinks Prop 8 was the best thing that ever happened to his movement. People sat up and started paying attention when liberal California overturned its own state Supreme Court and took away the right to marry, he said, and the court fight has kept the issue alive.

“It not only galvanized a lot of people who didn’t really care about it before that – gay people – but it also galvanized straight people,” he said. “People said, ‘wait a minute, we don’t like voting on people’s rights.’”

The night in Salt Lake City left little doubt things had changed since 2008. After the dinner, the gay rights leaders all headed over to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas spectacular. It was the hottest ticket in town and, as guests of the church, they had VIP seats.

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