General: April 2007 Archives

I started my day by reading this over on Straight, Not Narrow. It set a good tone for my day.

You’ve got to love a writer who uses the word “poppycock,” but I wish Mr. Pimentel had not focused on the word “tolerance.” Sure, that would be a major improvement over the attitudes he derides in his column, but is that the end goal we’re seeking with the GLBT community? Should I walk up to the gay and lesbian members of my church next Sunday, hug them, and say, “I tolerate you.” I know at least with a couple of them, I’d better plan on ducking if I pulled something like that.

Tolerance is an incremental step, much like civil unions are in the issue of same-sex marriage, but acceptance of GLBT people as full-fledged members of society needs to be the end result. A bad rash, you can tolerate. Traffic at rush hour, you can tolerate. Gay and lesbian people should be accepted.

Why? Because they’re people and God made them.

Leah Vader and Lynne Huskinson, a lesbian couple who got married in Canada in August, sent a letter recently to their state legislator decrying a Wyoming bill that would deny recognition of same-sex marriages. The lawmaker read the letter on the floor of the Legislature.

Soon after, the local paper interviewed the couple on Ash Wednesday and ran a story and pictures of them with ash on their foreheads, a mark of their Christian faith.

It wasn’t long after that that the couple received a notice from their parish church telling them they have been barred from receiving Communion.

“If all this stuff hadn’t hit the newspaper, it wouldn’t have been any different than before -- nobody would have known about it,” said the couple’s parish priest at St. Matthew’s, the Rev. Cliff Jacobson. “The sin is one thing. It’s a very different thing to go public with that sin.” (source)

Does this mean that a private citizen can not have a personal opinion about a social issue without being punished by their church? I could see this action taking place if they made a public announcement of their relationship in church. But that is not what happened. They simply wrote a letter to their legislator stating their concerns and their opinion. It became public after that legislator read their letter on the floor of the Legislature - something the couple did not ask him to do.

So now, their church is punishing them for basically being active and interested citizens. So much for the separation of church and state.

But I can honestly understand this action. We are talking about a church, after all, that will quickly take an action on the issue of homosexuality, and spend decades covering up and transferring priests who are known to the church to be molesting young boys. That sounds “intrinsically disordered” to me.

Republicans on Wednesday threw the first political salvos after the collapse of the gay marriage amendment.

House Minority Leader Brian Bosma called a news conference to denounce Democratic leaders in the House -- particularly Speaker Pat Bauer -- for orchestrating the defeat of the joint resolution.

“When a measure is overwhelmingly supported by the public and a few leaders thwart it from moving forward, that may catch the public’s attention,” Bosma said about possible political fallout in the 2008 House elections.

The proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman tied 5-5 in the Democratic-led House Rules Committee Tuesday night.

Five of the six Democratic members voted against the measure based on the ambiguity surrounding the second section of the proposed amendment. That language says, “this Constitution or any other Indiana law may not be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents of marriage be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.” (source)

“When a measure is overwhelmingly supported by the public”....

Slavery was overwhelmingly supported by the public. Why wasn’t that placed on the ballot for a public vote?

Preventing women from being able to vote was overwhelmingly supported by the public. Why wasn’t that placed on the ballot for a public vote?

Keeping the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from being enacted was overwhelmingly supported by the public. Why wasn’t that placed on the ballot for a public vote?

Keeping interracial couples from being able to marry was overwhelmingly supported by the public. Why wasn’t that placed on the ballot for a public vote?

Why does the gay community deserve the special treatment under the law of selectively, as a group, having our civil rights voted on? Or should I say, voted away?