The Church hates the gays more than it loves its own.
File under the category: The Church hates the gays more than it loves its own. Churches are closing, schools are closing, food banks are underfunded, and shelters for homeless people are shuttered. More and more people are living on the edge of financial collapse…
BUT
Catholic Church Ponied Up More Than $1 Million To Fight Marriage Equality
Forget that vow of poverty: The Roman Catholic Church has shelled out more than $1 million to fight various marriage-equality initiatives, according to a new report from the Human Rights Campaign.
The study shows that the millennia-old institution has donated more than $1.1 million to anti-equality initiatives, including ones fighting gay-marriage measures in Washington, Maryland and Maine—and one supporting a gay-marriage ban in Minnesota, where it has given more than $608,000 to support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. (That’s more than half the campaign’s budget.)
Today, the Church is now the top religious donor for anti-equality efforts, with more than $640,000 coming from the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus.
Fortunately it looks like gay-rights advocates have been able to raise considerably more funds overall than anti-equality cronies. (HRC has contributed $7.3 million to marriage-equality campaigns in the past 12 months.).
Given that a majority of everyday Catholics actually support gay marriage, HRC president Chad Griffin says “The Church hierarchy owes the laity an explanation as to why they are spending this much money on discrimination, and at what cost to other crucial Church programs.”
In a statement, Jason Adkins of the Minnesota Catholic Conference replied, “Our marriage amendment activities, like our other activities, are aimed at fostering the common good.”
Thanks but no thanks, pal.
Complete Article HERE!
Catholic Church errs in fighting same-sex marriage
There’s a delicious rebellion brewing in Washington state — the “other Washington,” as those of us based in D.C. like to say.
A group of 63 former Roman Catholic priests, with a total of 800 years service, supports Referendum 74, a ballot initiative that would make Washington the seventh state in the nation to legalize marriage between same-sex couples. The announcement of their support is designed to combat a church campaign against the measure that the San Francisco Chronicle describes as “aggressive.”
The church is issuing pastoral statements and releasing videos urging parishioners to vote against marriage equality.
Here’s a sampling:
— Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima, Wash., told his 41 parishes: “Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract, it will become legally discriminatory for public and private institutions such as schools to promote the unique meaning of marriage. … This law will challenge our right to educate about the unique value of children being raised by his or her own mother and father in a stable home (sic).”
I understand why the church is undertaking an extensive political campaign against gay marriage. There’s no doubt that gay marriage goes against the very biased doctrinal interpretation of homosexuality often cited in the New Testament.
But if members of the Catholic hierarchy are worried about losing followers to other Christian churches, or want to capture the hearts of the next generation of Catholics, they’ll give up the fight.
It’s clear that young Americans of all faiths have been raised in a cultural environment that views LGBTQ couples as no different than heterosexual couples. The bishops are picking a fight over an issue they are not going to win.
The Chronicle sites a recent Elway Poll that pegged support for Referendum 74 at 57 percent. Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat and an outspoken proponent for it, championed same-sex marriage legislation through the state chambers.
Similar measures are on the ballot in Maryland and Maine.
The church is taking on not just Catholic voters in those states or, one could posit, in the United States — Gallup poll last May on gay marriage showed half of Americans support it.
Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, this week told Irish state broadcaster RTE she supports gay marriage. Her views on social issues have drawn the ire of many an archbishop, including the former Archbishop of Boston Bernard Law, who called her “a very poor Catholic president.”
Her response: “I am not a Catholic president, I’m president of Ireland,” where “there were all sorts of people. I’m their president. I happen to be Catholic.”
It seems unwise for the church to take on such powerful politicians and social movements that are gaining mainstream support. The timing is particularly unwise when one takes into account how the church’s handling of the priest pedophilia scandal cost it credibility.
I am in awe of the gay rights movement’s progress on this issue. It seems LGBTQ leaders have been able to turn around public opinion on marriage equality in less than a decade. Too bad their sisters in the abortion-rights movement have not been as successful. Abortion is one topic on which the church, sadly, can keep up a successful crusade. But the church undoubtedly has a dwindling supply of social issues in its arsenal.
Complete Article HERE!
A Gay Wedding in Rome
Though it’s still not legal, the home base of the Catholic Church hosted its first known same-sex marriage today. Barbie Latza Nadeau on the new push for civil rights in Italy.
Gay marriage is not legal in Italy, but that hasn’t stopped a number of same-sex couples from tying the knot.
On a rainy Sunday afternoon in the historic All Saint’s Anglican Church near Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, Francesco and Alessandro made their vows of marriage in the presence of friends and family. One groom wore a blue suit; the other a white one. A flower girl dressed in pink and a young ring bearer accompanied the couple, who both smiled and cried tears of happiness like thousands of other newlyweds.
The one-hour ceremony included communion, scripture readings, and lively spiritual music by a visiting choir invited to help celebrate the first same-sex marriage known to be held in Rome, the base of the Roman Catholic Church. The grooms held hands and exchanged rings that had been blessed by Mother Teodora Tosatti, the first woman to be ordained as a priest in Italy under the Vetero Catholics, which is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. “Why should love that does not follow tradition be illegal?” she asked the congregation made up of same-sex and heterosexual couples. “Your vows to each other are as important as any other’s.”
The Rome ceremony is the second same-sex wedding in Italy in a matter of days. Last week, a city counselor in Bologna united Ida and Mariagrazia at a symbolic ceremony that divided the city and prompted staunch criticism from the Catholic Church. Bologna bishop Giovanni Silvagni said the marriage was an affront to unions between heterosexual couples. “This is a move against nature and against the order,” he said in response to the wedding, which was held in a hospice unit of a hospital where one of the brides is fighting terminal cancer.
In Milan, the city council has offered a civil-union registry, but it carries few benefits and is more like a petition for rights of gay couples. Most gay couples that wish to have their unions recognized with a legal document must do so in another country, even though no legal rights transfer back to Italy.
France plans to recognize gay marriages in October, following Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, which have all passed laws that give rights to same-sex couples. French politicians who support the new legislation have even introduced a bill that would remove the words husband, wife, mother, and father from legal bureaucratic documents to help pave the way for nontraditional couples and families. French president François Hollande promised to redefine marriage in his election campaign and has introduced a bill that will now define marriage as “a union of two people, of different or the same gender.”
But in Italy, where the Catholic Church still holds significant sway over the political process, gay marriage is still taboo. Rosy Bindi, president of the center-left Democratic Party, said she would consider supporting legislation for rights for same-sex couples under the statutes being revised for common-law marriages and heterosexual civil unions, but she said she would not support same-sex marriage. Nichi Vendola, the governor of Puglia and the country’s most outspoken gay politician, said that it is not enough. “At 54 I want to be able to marry my companion, or at least start the conversation,” he said at a debate on the topic. “As a citizen, as a person and as a Christian I want a real discussion and ask my state and my church why expressions of love cannot be released by an attitude carried over from the Middle Ages.”
Sunday’s ceremony in Rome was not legal, and there were a dozen body guards outside the church to stop anyone who might protest or disrupt the union from entering the church, but it was a landmark ceremony in a city that is largely considered the capital of Catholicism.
“This ceremony may not be recognized by the law,” said Tosatti. “But it is a step in the right direction.”
Complete Article HERE!
Australian Comic Obliterates Arguments Against Gay Marriage
VIDEO
