Box Turtle Bulletin
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 lobbyMay 14th, 2009
The Providence Journal reports that yesterday’s debates over marriage were contentous, with Catholic activists on one side and equality supporters on the other. There were a few items that made me chuckle.
It was a heated evening, punctured by emotional moments, including one where a group of women spotted a man in a “Mr. Gay Rhode Island” sash and surrounded him, praying and offering advice that his lifestyle was wrong.
Because, ya know, he was “forcing his lifestyle down their throat.”
In his own turn at the microphone, the Rev. Bernard Healey, lobbyist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, said opposition to that view does not amount to discrimination. “It has been and continues to be the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church as well as the existing state law that marriage is the union of a man and a woman,” Healey said.
As seems to be quite common these days, the local Catholic leader showed up and declared by divine right that discrimination against gay couples isn’t discrimination. Cuz he says so. Based on the traditions of his religion.
I wonder if it ever crosses their mind that any group, no matter how extreme, hateful, or bigoted, can claim that the brand of mistreatment of others that they favor “does not amount to discrimination” based on their own beliefs. I suspect they are so convinced of their moral authority to declare what must be believed without question that they never consider that “cuz I said so” only works on small children. And those who think like small children.
Thirty one of the 75 House members cosponsored this year\’s gay-marriage bill. But many Rhode Islanders believe it could take time before the Ocean State approves such unions, something they attribute to resistance from Smith Hill leaders and the state\’s powerful religious establishment.
Governor Carcieri ardently opposes the measure, with House Speaker William J. Murphy and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed also voicing resistance.
If they have 31 cosponsors then it’s almost certain that this bill would pass. They only need seven others to vote “yes”. But, yet again, “leadership” seems at times more like autocracy.
In the prior dozen years the bill has come before the legislature, it has never been voted out of committee. No decisions were made Wednesday about the fate of this year\’s bill.
Sigh. And so Rhode Island will continue as an island of refuge for New England’s anti-gays.
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Bruno
May 14th, 2009
Give Little Rhody a year or two…they may have to get rid of Carcinogenic Carcieri first.
occono
May 15th, 2009
Well, the Anti-Gays will still have to put up with the fact RI Recognises SSM’s, it just doesn’t license them.
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