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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyNovember 14th, 2012
Earlier this week, the Vatican announced that it wasn’t going to back off in its opposition to marriage equality. In fact, after looking at last week’s marraige equality victories in three states and the defeat of an anti-marriage constitutional amendment in a fourth, the Vatican somehow decided they were actually winning the battle. Now Bill Donohue has added his two-cents’ worth and told Focus On the Family that the Church is never gonna change its mind:
The Catholic Church is not going to change its position on marriage any more than it’s going to change its position on slavery or racism or genocide. These are fixed principles that are there, and those people who are in the Catholic ranks who keep thinking that the Catholic Church may want to change now because the country seems toward gay marriage — really, they’re in the wrong religion. And I think it’s time that our society has to reset its moral compass and think these things through.
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Timothy Kincaid
November 14th, 2012
“…those people who are in the Catholic ranks who keep thinking that the Catholic Church may want to change now because the country seems toward gay marriage — really, they’re in the wrong religion.”
well at least we agree on something
Hunter
November 14th, 2012
“Gay Marriage Is Just Like Slavery, Racism, and Genocide”
Which have Biblical support.
Lord_Byron
November 14th, 2012
“it’s going to change its position on slavery or racism or genocide.”
Really? Does Donohue even know the history of the Catholic Church? The anti-semitism, the support for slavery, the racist attitudes inherent in the church? Idiot.
tomchicago01
November 14th, 2012
I agree with all 3 preceding comments.
BD is truly noteworthy as a loudmouth, but his scholarly insights are kind of fuzzy. The 3 exact travesties he cites have been perpetrated with well-known and loudly cited Biblical justification, and he has only to look at the decimation of the Native peoples on this continent to get a clue.
iDavid
November 14th, 2012
Lets see, with all the shots in the foot, how many toes does the Catholic church have left? I’ll be glad to donate the next bullet. Oh that’s right, they don’t accept gay bullets. Alrighty then.
Eric in Oakland
November 15th, 2012
” And I think it’s time that our society has to reset its moral compass and think these things through.”
It’s amazing that he doesn’t see the irony in this statement. Society is doing exactly that, which is why support for gay rights is gaining acceptance.
Norris Nordin
November 15th, 2012
That “The [Catholic] church is never going to change its mind” really isn’t a problem. It has been mindless on so many issues for so long that its adherents are quietly following their own conscience. It holds sway only in Africa where, sadly for our sisters and brothers there, Catholics and Protestants alike, scriptural in-errancy and fundamentalism reigns supreme.
Rob in San Diego
November 15th, 2012
it must kill the church that governments forced them to get rid of slavery and genocide like crusades. But then again their bible says it’s ok to kill your daughter if she is not a virgin at marriage.
Regan DuCasse
November 16th, 2012
Thank you TomChicago: There were institutions that solely were constructed for the purpose of reprogramming young native Americans.
As recently as the late 1940’s. They were forcefully stripped from their families, forced to take on Christian names and believe the Bible. They were not allowed to use their native language and to forget their indigenous cultural backgrounds or skills relative to their customs and needs.
Those institutions taught them skills that were to be used for work in white homes and businesses.
It sickens me how revisionist some Christians are about their destructive participation in the colonial and demolition of indigenous people all over the world.
They exploited the poverty that such people were forced into to shore up taking away their children arbitrarily as proof that these tribes were unfit to raise their own children.
My own family were victims of missionaries and it’s extremely hard for me not to scream whenever there is so little ownership of such a past and it’s negative effects.
The power of Christianity was NOT gleaned by compassionate persuasion. Only a minority of it did so.
You’d think by some recent articles, that Christians were SOLELY responsible for the destruction of the Nazis, Communism, reversal of Jim Crow and women’s liberation.
And gay people were responsible for the destruction of everything, even the Roman Empire.
Their retrospect sure doesn’t square with events, does it?
Priya Lynn
November 16th, 2012
Regan said “You’d think by some recent articles, that Christians were SOLELY responsible for the destruction of the Nazis, Communism, reversal of Jim Crow and women’s liberation.”.
And when discrimination against gays and lesbians is a distant memory the same christians will be claiming christianity was solely responsible for ending it.
Timothy Kincaid
November 20th, 2012
Priya Lynn,
You are right.
And, indeed, some will deserve it. For example in Minnesota it was a coalition of Religious groups who played a very large role in defeating the amendment. When the head of the Lutheran Church passes out literature at the gates of the state fair, it says something.
But the opponents of marriage will also claim that they too defeated discrimination. The children of the Southern Baptists (for example) will believe that their parents were instrumental in ending anti-gay discrimination.
The funny thing is that in a way they will be right. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out.
Those who stand in the way of equality will some day move. And when they move, equality will come. And they will move loudly and proudly and with great fanfare welcoming in equality.
Some day the Southern Baptists will declare at their convention that discrimination against gay people is a sin. And they will do so in opposition to those who will be – at that time – a minority. And they will see themselves as champions for equality – which, in their own denomination, they will be. And on that day we will sing the praises of those who fought that battle.
But of course it is also true that Christianity has been the strongest excuse in this country for inequality. Both now and with slavery. Without question.
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