DC Same Sex Marriage Bill & Social Services November 17, 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Recent news reports have mistakenly claimed that the Archdiocese of Washington and its social services arm, Catholic Charities, are threatening to cease providing social services in the District of Columbia if the proposed bill to legalize same sex marriage is passed.

Catholic Charities is not threatening to end its services if a same sex marriage bill passes. Catholic Charities is vowing to continue its services even if a same sex marriage bill passes. However, the bill, as it now reads, will diminish the resources we have to do so. Why is that so? Because without a meaningful religious exemption in the bill, Catholic Charities and other similar religious providers will become ineligible for contracts, grants and licenses to continue those services.

What we have said to the Council is this: While we are opposed to redefining marriage in the District of Columbia, if the Council moves forward to do so, we respectfully request that religious individuals and organizations be afforded protection from restrictions on their deeply held religious beliefs and that the Council preserve the ability of Catholic Charities and other providers to continue to serve the growing and unmet needs of the poor and most vulnerable residents of the District of Columbia.

Attached is a fact sheet [editor's insert: click here for fact sheet] with further information that we hope may assist you in understanding the issues. Please share this with your colleagues, friends, and others. Additional information, including testimony, press releases and other material, is available at http://www.marriagemattersdc.org.

Sincerely in Christ,

Most Reverend Barry C. Knestout
Auxiliary Bishop of Washington
Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia

Archdiocese of Washington
The Department of Charity and Justice
P.O. Box 29260
Washington, DC 20017

Mary C. McGinnity, 301-853-5339
Executive Director

Anthony Bosnick, 301-853-5340
Coordinator for Parish Social Ministry

We are here to serve you.

The statement you linked to(which is the SAME statement quoted in the post we’re all commenting on, by the way) is from December 15th. That’s almost a month afterwards.

Seriously, they decided to respond to shoddy journalism almost a month later? They were perfectly okay with taking several weeks to bother to respond to such alleged misrepresentation? Really? You honestly believe an organization with that much to lose by bad press would take that long to craft a response?

It’s interesting that NOWHERE in the statement you linked to do they make ANY charge of misrepresentation, falsehood, lies, etc.

So let’s review.
-Over a month ago they said “something” which was allegedly misquoted and distorted by the media at large.

-They waited until just a few days ago to issue a “clarification.”

-Nowhere in that “clarification” do they mention being misrepresented, slandered, or misquoted by the media.

And that story, that chain of events sounds reasonable to you?

Can you get me the number of your dealer?

http://www.adw.org/news/news.asp?ID=714&Year=2009

Notice how they attempt to turn the situation around and imply that DC was trying to exclude them!

And, Brian, as for whether the press “misrepresented” the Church’s position over the last few months, I wonder why the archdiocese didn’t just clarify its position…

They threatened to take their toys and go home and now they won’t. The nuns who taught me would have called that “lying”.

Keept It Easy: here’s another POV.

A growing number of religionists– not a majority, but a sizable minority– are coming to the conclusion that the traditional “beliefs” about G’s will and homosexuality are yet another in a long sad line of mistaken ideas that have been attributed to G and not to the religionists who have forever remolded G in their own image. “Good” Christians used to burn witches with exactly the same moral certainty (and assumption of superiority) that they understood and did G’s will with which they now attack gay people. How many people were tortured and murdered for that slight mis-apprehension of G’s will? 2000 years of G-sanctioned anti-Semitism (both Jew and Arab) led to the murder of 6 million people, and the mess that is the middle east today. Slavery and segregation have certainly been church-and-bible supported, but only an unashamed racist would admit it today.

Don’t tell me that this is different. It’s not. You just have no historical lens to look at your current position with. You’ve inherited it, very much like racial segregationists inherited their rock-solid certainty about G’s will. Yet another thing that turned out not to be true, though some will cling to it fiercely until they die.

But the whole idea that being gay and living a gay life is somehow a sin, especially as it is portrayed as the WORST sin, especially displeasing to G, is yet another matter of opinion. So many people are willing to state “The Bible says THIS about homosexuality.” with no biblical or even extra-biblical justification for it. This is because they look at the “relevant” (they are not) biblical passages only through the filters of “these are about homosexuality”, “these are about homosexuality as we understand it today”, “these are clear condemnations”, “we have always been told that these passages refer to homosexuality and therefore it must be true”, and worst of all, “we claim expertise and authority in this matter because we speak for G.”

Funny about that, because if you don’t make those assumptions, if you apply a little bit of logic and perception, and especially, look at what is there is terms of scholarship, a vastly different picture appears. The bible may or may not condemn some aspects of gay sex. As jason notes, it is amazing to me how unclear G manages to be on the subject, when he is so clear on so many other subjects. So coy: “sleep the sleep of a woman” (literally from Leviticus– do you know what it means? I don’t, and neither does anyone else.) to “abusers of themselves with mankind” (KJV on words we don’t know the meaning of. Luther thought it had to do with masturbation, but what did he know?)

If it were as important to G as it is to you, he would have said: “two men or two women together shall not have sex in and way, shape, or form. They will not be naked together and touching each others’ skin. They certainly will not be bumping nasties. Penis into vagina, that’s it. And you shouldn’t enjoy it too much.”

Now, that is clarity befitting the Creator of the Universe. “Sleep the sleep of a woman”? Your guess is as good as mine. G managed to be pretty clear about governing heterosexual behavior. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” That’s clear, but the opposition to adultery is usually limited to “Tsk Tsk”, not “let’s pass constitutional amendments to make sure your family isn’t recognized as one and your kids don’t get health insurance.”

Perhaps G was just embarrassed to talk about homosexuality, so he couldn’t be clear on it.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. The jury is still out on that. What we do know is that the word “homosexual” didn’t exist at this time, and the words being translated to mean “homosexual” in modern printings of the Bible are mistranslations.

I find it odd that God can say something specific like “thou shalt not kill” but for gay people, we get vague, ambiguous rules delivered by people other than God or Jesus, that in context aren’t about gay people at all. Rather difficult to accept or follow a rule that can’t be plainly put.