Tag: LGBT Rights

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Cardinal George says mayor overstepped with Chick-fil-A remarks

Here is the pot calling out the kettle… This man has no shame!

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago says the city’s mayor showed contempt for many residents’ beliefs by stating that Chick-fil-A’s stance on marriage was against “Chicago’s values.”

“Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the ‘values’ that must be held by citizens of Chicago,” the cardinal wrote in a July 29 online post, responding to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s assertion.

“I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval,” Cardinal George wrote.

He wondered: “Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a ‘Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities’ and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it?”

“I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, ‘un-Chicagoan.’”

The cardinal made his remarks on the Catholic Chicago blog after the mayor ventured into an ongoing controversy about the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain.

Many homosexual “marriage” advocates took offense at company president Dan Cathy’s support for “the biblical definition of the family unit” in a recent interview.

During a July 30 press conference, Mayor Emanuel said he stood by his July 25 statement that was interpreted by some as supporting a plan to bar the restaurant from the city’s First Ward.

After Alderman Proco Moreno said he would block the restaurant’s plan to open a new location, Emanuel issued a statement saying that “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.”

“They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents,” the mayor stated. “This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”

But a spokesman for the mayor told NBC 5 Chicago that Emanuel did not intend to stop Chick-fil-A from opening, despite his conviction that the Christian-run company’s values were not those of the city.

In Monday’s remarks, the mayor appeared to identify the city’s “values” with government policy on homosexual unions, saying: “When it comes to values, there’s a policy as it relates to gay marriage. The values of our city are ones that welcome and recognize that, and I will continue to fight for that.”

Emanuel’s statement also appeared to identify civil unions – which Illinois implemented in 2011 – with homosexual “marriage,” which has never been instituted in the state. The mayor personally supports a measure to redefine marriage, which was introduced in February but has stalled in the legislature.

In his response to the mayor on Sunday, Cardinal George spoke out on behalf of Catholics, and others, whose “values” do not include what he called “gender-free marriage.”

The cardinal stressed that authentic marriage exists prior to any decree of the state or Church, due to the complementarity of the two sexes and their procreative potential.

The natural definition of marriage is not “bigotry,” nor is it unique to a particular religion, he said.

“People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life,” Cardinal George noted. “The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage.”

But the Chicago archbishop also pointed to Jesus Christ’s teaching on marriage in the Gospel of Matthew, in which the Lord affirms marriage as the unbreakable union of a man and woman as “one flesh.”

The citation prompted him to pose a question as to whether Jesus’ own “values” were still welcome in Chicago by Mayor Emanuel’s standards.

“Was Jesus a bigot?” he asked. “Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan?”

To answer your question, Francis; Jesus wan’t a bigot. But the same can’t be said about you. Sheesh!

Complete Article HERE!

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U.S. Episcopalians set to be first to bless gay marriage

On Monday bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States – the 14th largest denomination in the country, with almost 2 million members – “overwhelmingly” approved a rite for blessing gay marriages, making it the first big U.S. church to say “yes” to gay marriage.

Speaking to Reuters, Ruth Meyers, a chair of the Episcopalians’ Subcommittee on Prayer Book, Liturgy and Church Music, said the Episcopal Church’s Chamber of Bishops agreed to the proposed blessing at a meeting in Indianapolis and its House of Deputies should formally approve it later this week.

“The decision would go into effect in December and make the Episcopal Church, an independent U.S.-based institution affiliated with global Anglicanism, the biggest U.S. church to allow a liturgy for same-sex marriages,” Reuters said.

Up until now, it had been the United Church of Christ, a mainstream Protestant denomination counting approximately 1 million members, which had done more than any other U.S. church to support same sex marriage voting in favour of it in 2005.

The new Episcopal same-sex liturgy is called “the Witnessing and Blessing of a Lifelong Covenant,” and would become the standard rite for same-sex marriage, Reuters reported.

In the past, it was bishops who showed the strongest opposition to such measures but the result of Monday’s vote showed a different attitude altogether, with 111 voting in favour and 41 against. Abstentions totalled 3.

The convention also approved inclusion of transgender people among those who should not be discriminated against, either for ordination or as lay leaders.

“Today the Episcopal Church affirmed the human dignity of a deeply stigmatized population that is far too often victim to discrimination, bullying and abuse,” the Reverend Lowell Grisham, a leader of the Chicago Consultation, a group that supports equality, said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

The Episcopal Church allowed gay priests 16 years ago and approved its first openly gay bishop 9 years ago.

Today, gay marriage is legal in six states and the District of Columbia and as Reuters reported, the legislatures of three states – New Jersey, Maryland and Washington State – approved gay marriage this year, although New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed it. Governors in the other two states signed the legislation but there are attempts being made to block it through a referendum. Monday’s decision has nevertheless marked yet another victory for gay-rights advocates in the U.S., after President Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage in May.

Complete Article HERE!

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Episcopal Church Approves Ordaining Transgender People

The Episcopal Church on Monday overwhelmingly voted to allow the ordination of transgender people.

At its triennial General Convention in Indianapolis, the church House of Deputies approved a change to the “nondiscrimination canons” to include “gender identity and expression.” The move makes it illegal to bar from the priesthood people who were born into one gender and live as another or who do not identify themselves as male or female.

The church, which has 1.9 million members in the U.S., currently has rules against discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, disability and age for Episcopalians who want to become priests.

There are transgender priests in some Episcopal dioceses and transgender people have been discouraged from becoming priests in some areas. Transgender advocates have campaigned for an official denominational policy.

The vote by the House of Deputies — which includes lay people and clergy — followed Saturday’s approval of the non-discrimination clause by the church House of Bishops. Both groups have to approve new legislation.

“We are filled with joy for this clear affirmation that the Episcopal Church welcomes and values the ministerial gifts of transgender people, lay and ordained. We are also delighted by the strong support and broad understanding of trans issues shown by deputies representing a wide range of regions and generations in this church. As the church steps boldly into new frontiers in various facets of its light, we are proud to be part of this spirit-filled movement,” members of TransEpiscopal, a organization of transgender Episcopalians, said in a statement.

The House of Deputies passed similar legislation at the previous General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., in 2009. When presented with the legislation that year, however, the House of Bishops voted instead to bar discrimination against “all” people instead of specific groups.

The church on Monday also voted to make it illegal to discriminate against transgender people in non-clergy positions in the church.

“It is not just a good day for transgender Episcopalians and their friends, families and allies. It is a good day for all of us who are part of a church willing to the risk to continue to draw the circle wider as we work to live out our call to make God’s inclusive love known to the whole human family,” the Rev. Susan Russell, a deputy from the Diocese of Los Angeles and an activist who supported the legislation, said in a statement.

The House of Bishops on Monday also approved a provisional standard liturgy for priests to use in the blessing of same-sex relationships. Bishops approved the liturgy 111 to 41 with three abstentions. The House of Deputies is expected to vote on the matter before the church’s meeting ends on Thursday.

If the same-sex liturgy is approved, it would be used during a trial that would begin in December and be revisited at the church’s next national meeting in three years. Some Episcopal bishops currently allow same-sex blessings in their dioceses, but many have said they will not allow them unless the church has an official liturgy. If approved, the new liturgy would not be mandatory. Bishops who do not approve of same-sex relationships could bar its use in their dioceses. The liturgy does not represent a religious marriage, though some clergy in states that allow civil marriage do secular marriages in their churches.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S.-based wing of the Anglican Communion, an 85 million-member global denomination. In addition to its U.S.-based members, it has 173,000 members in other countries and territories, including the British Virgin Islands, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Taiwan and Venezuela.

Liberal trends in the church regarding the ordination of gay priests and bishops have increasingly strained its relations with its more conservative counterparts in the United Kingdom and Africa. The election in 2003 of its first gay bishop, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, caused several dioceses to defect and align themselves with more conservative Anglican churches in Africa.

The vote on transgender clergy and the possible passing of same-sex liturgical blessings could further strain relations between Episcopalians and the Anglican Communion.

Complete Article HERE!