Below is a trailer for a documentary set to release in 2012. It chronicles the fight of one gay couple as they struggle to battle Prop 8 in California. Amidst the turmoil of the struggle for Gay Marriage Equality, this gay couple fights back through home movies, showing that they are no different than any other married couple.
The ultra uber conservative Catholic group, Tradition, Family, and Property, plans to hold a “public rosary rally” as reported on Joe.My.God.
The rosary is scheduled for Saturday, October 15th at noon. At that time, Catholics across the nation will pray for “the ills that afflict our nation,” as posted on the TFP website.
They pray against those “who seek to remove God and His holy law from our society. . . . Abortion murders innocent unborn babies; the institution of the family is weakened by impure customs and threatened by the legalization of homosexual ‘marriage;’ the sexual revolution pervades popular culture especially in television, media, movies and the Internet.”
I must preface my response with this fact: I’m a Roman Catholic, born and raised. I was baptized and confirmed into Roman Catholicism and even attended a Catholic university, where I received my undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Therefore, I’m responding as a Catholic, not just a gay man.
I find this rosary rally a ridiculous waste of time and further reason why the Catholic Church is falling out of touch with those they claim to represent.
First of all, abortion is an awful concept. One that I hope many never consider. But pro-life proponents incorrectly believe that those who are pro-choice are also pro-abortion. That is not the case. I, and many other pro-choice advocates, believe that a woman has the right to control what happens to her body. This right for women, to control their own destinies, was a long and hard-fought struggle. Women were considered property and thought of as little more than that. It even says so in the Bible!
Women are not property, and their decisions are not up for public opinion any more than a man’s.
Think about it: if all life is sacred, then that means semen (which is the fluid of life) is also sacred. Therefore, every time a man masturbates to completion, then he is killing his unborn children. There are no rosary rallies that I know of currently established against masturbation, and from what I know about men, masturbation happens more frequently than abortion! Seeing as how the Catholic Church is run by celibate men, I doubt they’ll be banning self-pleasure any time soon.
In regards to the FTP’s second reason for their rally, homosexuality doesn’t weaken or threaten marriage. I’m gay and married. My husband and I are more like our straight friends than our single gay friends. We ferry children to and fro, we fret over their well being and their grades, we argue, we do household chores, and all the other millions of things heterosexual couples do.
Homosexual marriage actually strengthens marriage, and if the Catholic Church could see that and change their hate mongering, then they would see their congregations grow in size. If the gay lifestyle is so offensive, Catholic Church leaders (and the FTP) should be clamoring for homosexuals to get married. Then the parades, clubs, and sexual perversion they abhor would quickly disappear.
Think about it: how many straight heterosexual couples have time for those things. They’re too busy and too tired to be having that kind of fun!
As for their last reason for rallying, the growing sexual revolution, the FTP fails to consider history. Sex has been a part of humanity, since, well, humanity started. The only reason it’s more prevalent now is because the methods of communication have increased and improved.
Think about it: nude or graphic pictures didn’t just originate with the Internet or television. People have been drawing or snapping naughty pictures since they’ve learned how to sketch or photograph. You think the first individual who learned to draw didn’t test out his talent by drawing a naked picture of someone he thought was hot? Of course he did! The current media isn’t to blame for an aspect of human nature. Humans are sexual creatures, and sex is, well, fun!
So instead of holding a “rosary rally” against abortion, gay marriage, or sexual promiscuity, I vote we pray for the end of hate and a return of true love for all humanity. If we can accomplish that miracle, world peace wouldn’t be far behind.
That seems like something more worthy of our time and prayer because it would be something we would all benefit from and would exclude no one.
Now that sounds like something Jesus would support!
Some of you who may have heard about the town clerks in New York whose jobs are threatened or who have resigned because they refused to sign gay marriage licenses. Gay marriage is now legal in NY, and part of their jobs is to sign marriage licenses for citizens in their county. Since these clerks refused, they are facing/have faced losing their jobs.
Naturally, NOM (National Organization for Marriage) jumped all over this faster than a rat on a Cheetoh!
They produced the following videos to help spread the panic that religious freedom is being threatened. Below you will find the video featuring Rose Marie Belforti. If you can keep from bringing up your latest meal, have a look.
What I find interesting about her commentary is that she claims she had no prior knowledge of gay marriage being made legal in her state. It took receiving a marriage certificate from two people of the same gender to clue her in. That is utterly preposterous. She works in a government office, where they receive updates on new laws, since, well, it’s their job to know these things. To claim ignorance is ridiculous, especially when the topic was all over the media–newspapers, television, and the Internet. These laws weren’t made in secret as she seems to allude.
Additionally, she (and the other clerks who NOM gobbled up for their campaign of terror, Laura Fotusky and Ruth Sheldon, whose videos can also be found via Towleroad) now believes that doing her job threatens her religious freedom.
If she feels that strongly in her religious beliefs, then she can resign.
Shirking your assigned (or elected) duties based on religion isn’t a defense nor does it get you out of performing duties you promised to uphold when you took the job (or were elected).
What about if a doctor refused to treat a gay man who was ill because homosexuality went against his Christian beliefs? Would he be allowed to get away with it? What if a teacher didn’t want to educate African-Americans because she was a white supremacist? That teacher has a right to her beliefs, but does that mean she is not required by her job to educate all students?
If Belforti, Fotusky, or Sheldon are no longer capable of fulfilling their job duties as town clerks, then they need to find jobs where they can perform the expected tasks and remain true to their religious convictions.
Their religious freedoms don’t negate someone else’s civil rights, and no one gets to pick and choose what laws we follow.
These women aren’t victims. They placed their jobs in peril by refusing to sign the marriage certificates. Now, they have to suffer the consequences, as any other employee would.
In what can only be called a frivolous waste of tax payers’ money, House Speaker John Boehner has approved to triple the amount paid to their legal team to battle DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) in legal proceedings. This move is supported by other House Republican leaders.
What I find interesting, and a little maddening, is that Republicans constantly blast Democrats for their “frivolous” spending on the poor, Medicare, food stamps, and Social Security, to name a few, (all programs to help Americans, by the way), while Republican leaders apparently have no problem spending 1.5 millions dollars to defend a law that restricts civil rights.
Apparently, defending marriage and restricting it to only one man and one woman means more than providing food and health care for the down trodden. Is that really what this country, whose deficit is approximately 14 trillion dollars, needs to be spending money on? Is ensuring that two men or two women, who love each other, are not allowed to marry that important?
For Republican leaders, the answer would apparently be a resounding yes!
When asked about the tripled budget to defend DOMA, Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said, “At a time when Americans are hurting and job creation should be the top priority, it just shows how out of touch House Republicans have become that they would spend up to $1.5 million dollars to defend discrimination in our country.”
And that is exactly what Republican leaders are doing.
As I’ve said before, marriage is not only a religious sacrament, it is also a civil right. Not every straight couple is married in a church. And homosexuals aren’t asking to be married in a church. We are simply asking for the same rights heterosexual couples enjoy (and take for granted), which they receive from the government–the right of inheritance, the right of hospital visits, the right to make medical decisions, and the right to file joint income tax returns. The list goes on and on.
But spending 1.5 million dollars to prevent that from happening means more to Republican leaders than any social program that helps others. This is government-sponsored discrimination at its best!
With the way things are going in politics these days, the America of 2050 I envisioned in my novel Moral Authority really isn’t that far-fetched, is it?
New York Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan, in a letter sent to the Obama Administration on Friday, threatens that if Obama continues to withhold support for DOMA or a federal ban on gay marriage that it could “precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions.”
The Archbishop’s veiled threat intrigues me.
The Swiss Guard, wielding their pikes, are ready for war
Is there some underground movement in the works, stockpiling ammunition and awaiting word from the Archbishop or his General, Pope Benedict? At this moment, are priests and nuns engaged in pike-wielding combat training, supervised by the brightly colored Swiss Guard? Are altar boys and girls being used to courier messages from the pulpit to the budding revolutionaries sitting in the pews every Sunday morning? Are Roman Catholics, and those who have thrown support behind their crusade, merely waiting for the opportune moment to usher in a new holy war?
Archbishop Dolan’s strongly worded letter to Obama definitely indicates that plans are being set in motion to deal with Obama and his future Administration decisions. Most likely, the Catholic Church will simply throw its considerable weight and perhaps even resources behind a Republican presidential nominee who is more amenable to conservative Catholic views.
But what if that’s not the case? What if the Archbishop spilled beans not yet meant to be spilt? What if his slip of the tongue revealed a hidden Catholic agenda? What if right now the nation stands at a precipice of war?
It’s not like the Catholic Church hasn’t declared war before or done some pretty vile things to guarantee the spread of the one true religion. Remember the Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? (“what a thrill!”)
Whose to say Pope Benedict isn’t sitting on his golden throne, kicking back in his Prada shoes, and plotting the demise of American liberalism? Popes (and those who serve them) have done worse things throughout history, such as commit murder, desecrate the graves of former popes, and engage in acts of simony, licentiousness, and violence.
Nuns with guns and ready to kick @$$
Still, the image of nuns advancing down streets in their wimples and habits carrying weapons or squads of gun-toting priests and bishops battling the scourge of the “gay agenda” is far too comical to believe. It’s just as ridiculous to imagine as the prospect of gay marriage, which is all about allowing two consenting adults to live in love together, as being the single event that sparked a “conflict between church and state of enormous proportions,” according to Dolan.
Religious people who claim marriage is a religious sacrament only fail to understand that marriage is also a civil right.
Our nation, any nation, has the right, through laws passed by the consent of the majority, to define what the word is, just as they have defined criminal activity, discrimination, and slavery. No one is asking the Catholic Church or any church to change what they believe marriage or anything else to be. Their rituals are theirs alone! We are simply asking that their religious definitions not be applied to those who don’t support them. There is a separation of Church and State for a reason. (Just dig through the history books and look at our humble beginnings if you need to remember why.)
I would like to ask Archbishop Dolan to be just as respectful of what I believe as he wants me, and others, to be respectful of his. Threats, veiled or otherwise, seem counterproductive and a bit childish.
Instead of clinging to anger and hate, I prefer to embrace what Jesus asked me to embrace–faith, hope, and love. I have faith that God’s message will one day be made clear to all of us by God himself. I have hope that a better future will be fashioned by our children, who prove to be far more tolerant and accepting than the generations that preceded them, and I’m confident that in the end, love will be all that matters.
After my last post on Sally Kern, I came upon this video on YouTube that I had to share. No terrorists here. Just people in love and their friends and families celebrating that love!