IN the Roman Catholic Church's currently unprecedented interference in the United States (and European Unions) Legal, Judicial, Constitutional and most importantly of late, Electoral Processes, we, the opposition, finally saw a small ray of sunshine that our Judicial System will stop ignoring the intolerable disruption of properly implementated legal practices (in this case the right to assemble and demonstrate within the laws of the State of Massachusetts) by misguided and highly over-zealous right-wing Catholics, and other so called Christian groups. These people must be brought to understand that however visceral or gut wrenching their personal reactions are to what they perceive as moral and/or spiritual injustices, (i.e. same sex marriage, abortion, same-sex adoption), NO ONE is permitted under any circumstance whatsoever to engage in violent criminal and felonious actions towards another person whom is engaged in expressing their legal American Right of Assembly and their Rights to Protest and of Free Speech.
Today, Mr. Larry Cirignano, the former prominent anti-gay leader of a Catholic Church affiliated Massachusetts group, Catholic Citizenship, was notified that he will be arraigned before a Magistrate of Massachusetts on February 20, 2007, for his unprovoked physical attack upon a pro-gay demonstrator, not only for physical assault but for civil rights violations. The young woman was participating in a legal rally, supporting the currently intact same sex marriage law of the State of Massachusetts, which Cirigano's group, Catholic Citizenship, is attempting to have overturned by voter referendum in the State. The Massachusetts same sex marriage law can only be voided by a Massachutsetts Constitutional Amendment supported by this State's voters.* (Ciriganon, who is no longer a member of this particular anti-gay group, has high-tailed it to Washington DC, where he now leads a similar band of
anti-gay men and women.)
As Cirigano was leading his anti-gay same sex marriage rally in Worcester, at the City Hall, on December 16, 2007, he is alleged to have leapt from the dais to assault a woman holding a pro-gay marriage placard. Ms. Sarah Loy, who was standing in a designated area as part of a group of protesters, held the placard which read: "No Discrimination in the Constitution". As Cirigano finished leading the anti-gay group in the Pledge of Allegiance, Cirigano is said to have run from the stage and attacked Loy, physically forcing her to the ground, and shouting: "You need to get out. You need to get out of here right now!".
As Loy lay on the ground, bleeding, and with bruises appearing from where she was struck, Cirigano apparently left Loy on the street and without assisting her in any way, or apologizing for his violent behavior, simply proceeded back to the lectern as if nothing at all had occurred.
Loy, who incidentally is heterosexual, was helped to stand-up after the attack by her husband, and others, whom had come in to Wocester City Hall to support the rally against anti-gay discriminatory language being added to the Massachusetts State Constitution.
The announcement of a Civil Right's Violation charge being levied against Cirigano, in addition to the already standing assault charge, is a very welcome finding for those of us who have looked with astonishment at Cirigano's statements that he did not attack Loy. The number of witnesses present who can cohoberate that the attack took place has helped to bring about the additional charge.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
These attacks, which have become ever more prevalent as the GLBT community makes legal strides towards equality in a number of arenas, are very frightening. The unfathomable hatred upon display within groups like Cirigano's 'Catholic Citizens' and Fred Phelp's so called 'Church' remind us of a number of prior horrific attacks. Following the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion in Roe vs. Wade, 1972, attacks upon members of the legal and medical communities who were involved in a woman's right to choose abortion led to deaths and injuries by clinic bombings, gunshots and the intimidation of doctors and patients at abortion facilities. Also brought strongly to mind is the terrible backlash against African Americans, as well as their Northern White supporters, who sought racial equality in the civil rights arena of the 1960's. The gunshot murders of both Black and White social activists, lynchings in swamps and the bombing of Black Churches, resulting in the horrific murder of innocent children, still prey upon our collective conscience. We can only hope and pray that such violence against the Gay community will be stopped now, before it grows beyond the horrendous proportions of those many other sad incidents - some still coming to light and trial today.
Additionally, as I have said here before, it has been the traditional position of the Catholic Church to be a Voice of Conscience in the matters of Faith and Morals, but to strictly prohibit political intervention. I note again the strongly worded Vatican reprimands to clergy - priests and brothers, nuns and laity - who intervened for the poor and underprivileged against the systematically cruel class-based legal systems of South America in the 1970's, which supported only wealthy land owners and their corrupt politicians. The Vatican took a very dim view of all such assistance by it's clergy in what has been coined as 'Liberation Theology'. Liberation Theology mandated that it was the duty of those who served the spiritual needs of the Catholic Laity had also a duty to serve their physical needs - in particular in the face of such brutal and wholly unethical acts as kidnapping, torture, intimidation, unlawful imprisonment and political executions and murders. Many priests and nuns who felt it was their duty to assist the poor opposed the direct orders of the Vatican. Their intervention on behalf of the many disenfranchised citizens of these totalitarian regimes saved lives, but soon many of them suffered the same vicious fates at the hands of these South American dictatorships.
Here we are some thirty years on or better and we now find that the Vatican, formerly in opposition to politically assisting the lowliest of Christ's flock through any means other than prayer and the Sacraments, is actively purporting that American and European Catholics especially use every political means available, including smear tactics (i.e. John Kerry being refused communion in particular by US Bishops because he supports Gay Civil Equality, though other candidates supporting agendas which included abortion and stem cell research, also equally abhorrent to Catholics, were left unscathed of any personal attacks) to oppose the legal recognition of Gay marriage,
Here is what the Vatican and many US Catholic Bishops and American Catholic Laity, newly in conjunction with right-wing fundamentalists, are supporting: unethical signature campaigns, often deceiving people about what they're actually signing; additionally, obtaining signatures from Catholics whom are attending Mass for the sole purpose of worship; clergy encouraged to support these signature drives before or after Mass which, if they do not actually break United States IRS laws (regarding direct political persuasion of parishioners by specific verbal support of certain candidates and/or of particular pending bills from the pulpit) by tax-free religious organizations**, are certainly treading a thin line. While many Bishops will deny involvement in such activities there is little doubt that the Church's hierarchy have had little, if any, compunction to be forthcoming in regards to what are likely illegal and illicit activities. Certainly immoral. It must be noted here that the child abuse scandal of the Cathoilic Church clearly indicates that the welfare of of others can easily become lost to the need of political expediency.***
These repeated attempts to blur the lines between Church and State by the Catholic Church, now in conjunction with the Protestant far right fundamentalists, represented by such groups as Focus on the Family, is in direct opposition, I believe, to Jesus' own statement of: "give unto Ceasar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's". Let me explain what I believe that statement means. Jesus is telling us that what is important to Him is the example we give to others, not in our outward visible promotion of what is politically beneficial to our appearance as exemplary Christians, but in how we live, love and help those in need, whether physical, emotional or spiritual - quietly, with understanding and love unexpectant of reward. I believe this applies in the context of my arguments above in a very straight forward way. It is not our place as followers of Jesus to, in false fits of pious outrage, publicly attack and politically viscerate those persons whose sexuality we do not understand or with whose sexual orientation we may deeply disagree, or with those persons who may support the civil rights of Gays and Lesbians.
Jesus gives us a specific example of this with His own behavior. He stopped the stoning of a prostitute by asking those in the process of committing her execution, "whom amongst you is without sin?" I imagine He received some nasty outward looks and some odious under the breath castigation for his defense of this common woman, whom in their eyes was a monstorus and corrupt public sinner. Yet, when he wrote in the dirt at His feet, and those stalwart leaders of society about Him read His words, well, they dropped their stones and with heads hung in shame, wandered away one by one.
My point is this. I am a Gay man in a long term relationship, some twenty years, and I and my family need the leagl protections of our civil government. Despite my failures in my marriage, it is genuine as a marriage of minds, hearts and bodies. I give my love, loyalty and commitment to this marriage wholly. Growing up Roman Catholic, as a man who loves God and believed for many years in all the Church taught about homosexuality, I finally could only make this one choice: to integrate my homosexuality, a loving gift from God to me, as being a normal and primary part of my state of being. I cannot separate my sexuality from the remainder of my personage without physical, emotional and spiritual illness. My decision was made over years with long, quiet deliberation, seeking both counsel in prayer and in words with clergy and therapists; and in fighting many years of my own unhealthy self-hatred for not being the celibate the Church said I must be to live within God's Grace. Therefore, to choose in personal conscience, to stand against all I was taught to believe about my sexuality, can be said to be my personal experience of wrestling Jacob's Angel. Never has a struggle been more profound for me until now: to choose to debate in open my sexuality has caused me great personal cost, ever I wonder whose love and respect I may lose and always, I wonder, just how many Angels am I to wrestle?
Why do I now fight publicly for civil equality and to live openly as a sexually active gay man, when I am asked as a Catholic to be silent when I am in disagreement with Church teachings? The Church itself is now, using modern media and political expedience, attempting to win upon the battlefield of public opinion its own civil laws - perverting its own responsibility to our souls simply to hold sway in the temporal world; and because I see the harm this is doing to my own gay family, and the many gay men and women whom are my friends and their families, I choose (as those liberation theologists perhaps did) to fight for the wholeness and well being of not just our souls but of our minds and our bodies. If you have not lived in mortal fear of your safety trying to find a home or to keep a job, if you cannot relate to being bashed and spat upon either figuratively or in reality, if you have no basis for comparison for being denied access to your spouse by a hospital employee or your partner's family when he is ill, or to be loathed by an unknown person openly on the street, well, you can still understand what it feels like and what it means to be hated completely for whom you are as made by God.
Here's how. You can step back from your prejudices for just a moment and you can imagine that you are one of those men or women who now holds a stone above me or my partner, or our daughter or one of our friends; and you can, as a Christian, remember the New Testament and Christ's actions and words when, with great love and compassion, He intervened on behalf of the prostitute. You can remember, as I do when I wrongly choose to be someone else's judge, that whatever Jesus scratched in the dirt of Judaea some two millennia ago, that our sins, mine and yours, were very likely among them.
And, if for one moment you wonder whether denying civil rights to me and my family warrants a pause and reconsideration, despite some tough propoganda from the Vatican and civil governments worldwide, than I will have done what I believe may, just may, have rightly saved one precious life and soul from the so called justice of men so that it may be left to Jesus and His Father in Heaven to decide what judgement to give upon his life.
Matthew Shephard, Gwen Araujo, Pfc. Barry Winchell, Amancio Corrales, Tyra Hunter, David Curnick, Michael Sandy, Scott Amadeur, Aaron Webster, Kevin Hale, Jody Dobrowski, Danny Overstreet, David Morley, Brandon Teena, Bill Clayton and many, many others have paid or are still paying for your intolerance in America and Europe. In the Middle East Gays are hung with mock trials. In Russia and Eastern Europe Gays are murdered and violently attacked without any legal recourse whatsoever - they cannot even assemble. In Africa, Gays are routinely slaughtered when it is discovered where they assemble - and while AIDS runs rampant among all sexual populations there, but especially amongst heterosexual women and children, many African governments and the Vatican refuse AIDS drugs, condoms and/or health workers in their countries. India and Pakistan also arrest and imprison without representation - as without question does China. Human rights abuses against Gays are so rampant worldwide it boggles the mind and yet, chief amongst those whom block ANY humanitarian relief and/or legal recognition of their plight at the United Nations are two States foremost: America and the Vatican. These two States, which have prided themselves upon a rigorous human rights agenda of compassion and love, fall short first, by using their significant veto powers, to deny legal recognition of gays, much less equality. Amongst all those countries whom could save Gay lives anywhere, it is the Vatican State and the United States of America which stand alone among all Western nations**** to oppose our legal recognition. It gives me pause as to what exactly being Catholic and American actually mean anymore? When it becomes so terribly all important to make a spiritual and moral compass our only view, let me remind you once again of Scripture - Christ said, instructing the Pharisees, that saving a man's livelihood by removing his sheep from a well, was more important than keeping the Laws of the Sabbath. Can any of us, then, actually believe that God will reward us when we do far, far less for the life, much less the livelihood, of a Gay brother or Lesbian sister?
______________________________________________________________________
*The debate over the voters having the right to amend the Constitution, at State or Federal level, to restrict instead of enhance, the legal standing of a minority group is a suprising first and definitely not in the spirit of what the US Constitution has traditionally stood to protect. The American Courts, being accused of overstepping their authority by providing equal marriage to gays and lesbians, are, in fact, doing exactly the opposite: by insuring that the Constitution is intrepretted in its broadest sense to protect ALL Americans, and in particular those Gay men and women in
this instance, for whom otherwise the prejudice of the many against the few leaves the few in great legal jeopardy on many essential levels. The idea of separate but equal, now being proposed in the form of Civil Unions as an alternative to full Marriage Equality has essentially already been dismissed by the United States Supreme Court when it focused upon the civil rights of Black Americans. In other words, a "separate but equal" seat on a bus, or a "separate but equal" drinking fountain are inherently and utterly devoid of equality.
**Currently there are non-denominational watch-dog groups randomly attending services at all Churches and Temples to monitor whether or not US laws regarding specific political reccomendations are being followed and upheld .
***The Catholic Church is waging a publicity battle against Gays regarding the child abuse scandal. The facts of child abuse clearly show that the majority, in the high nineties statistically, are heterosexual men. This is true within the priesthood as well as out. Child abusers are very often non-selective in the gender of their victims. The current campaign by the Catholic Church to once agian mislead the Faithful, and the world, by declaring that eliminating Gay clergy and seminarians will eliminate the sexual abuse of chidren is the proverbial 'ostrich with its head in the sand.' It will, in essence, only leave the priesthood without many fine spiritual leaders whom seek to serve Christ by serving others.
****Only the United States, Australia and the Vatican State still stand among Westsern countries represented at the United Nations in opposition to listing Gays and Lesbians among persecuted minorities and allowing legal and charitable organizations supporting Gays and Lesbians U.N. political representation.
Today, Mr. Larry Cirignano, the former prominent anti-gay leader of a Catholic Church affiliated Massachusetts group, Catholic Citizenship, was notified that he will be arraigned before a Magistrate of Massachusetts on February 20, 2007, for his unprovoked physical attack upon a pro-gay demonstrator, not only for physical assault but for civil rights violations. The young woman was participating in a legal rally, supporting the currently intact same sex marriage law of the State of Massachusetts, which Cirigano's group, Catholic Citizenship, is attempting to have overturned by voter referendum in the State. The Massachusetts same sex marriage law can only be voided by a Massachutsetts Constitutional Amendment supported by this State's voters.* (Ciriganon, who is no longer a member of this particular anti-gay group, has high-tailed it to Washington DC, where he now leads a similar band of
anti-gay men and women.)
As Cirigano was leading his anti-gay same sex marriage rally in Worcester, at the City Hall, on December 16, 2007, he is alleged to have leapt from the dais to assault a woman holding a pro-gay marriage placard. Ms. Sarah Loy, who was standing in a designated area as part of a group of protesters, held the placard which read: "No Discrimination in the Constitution". As Cirigano finished leading the anti-gay group in the Pledge of Allegiance, Cirigano is said to have run from the stage and attacked Loy, physically forcing her to the ground, and shouting: "You need to get out. You need to get out of here right now!".
As Loy lay on the ground, bleeding, and with bruises appearing from where she was struck, Cirigano apparently left Loy on the street and without assisting her in any way, or apologizing for his violent behavior, simply proceeded back to the lectern as if nothing at all had occurred.
Loy, who incidentally is heterosexual, was helped to stand-up after the attack by her husband, and others, whom had come in to Wocester City Hall to support the rally against anti-gay discriminatory language being added to the Massachusetts State Constitution.
The announcement of a Civil Right's Violation charge being levied against Cirigano, in addition to the already standing assault charge, is a very welcome finding for those of us who have looked with astonishment at Cirigano's statements that he did not attack Loy. The number of witnesses present who can cohoberate that the attack took place has helped to bring about the additional charge.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
These attacks, which have become ever more prevalent as the GLBT community makes legal strides towards equality in a number of arenas, are very frightening. The unfathomable hatred upon display within groups like Cirigano's 'Catholic Citizens' and Fred Phelp's so called 'Church' remind us of a number of prior horrific attacks. Following the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion in Roe vs. Wade, 1972, attacks upon members of the legal and medical communities who were involved in a woman's right to choose abortion led to deaths and injuries by clinic bombings, gunshots and the intimidation of doctors and patients at abortion facilities. Also brought strongly to mind is the terrible backlash against African Americans, as well as their Northern White supporters, who sought racial equality in the civil rights arena of the 1960's. The gunshot murders of both Black and White social activists, lynchings in swamps and the bombing of Black Churches, resulting in the horrific murder of innocent children, still prey upon our collective conscience. We can only hope and pray that such violence against the Gay community will be stopped now, before it grows beyond the horrendous proportions of those many other sad incidents - some still coming to light and trial today.
Additionally, as I have said here before, it has been the traditional position of the Catholic Church to be a Voice of Conscience in the matters of Faith and Morals, but to strictly prohibit political intervention. I note again the strongly worded Vatican reprimands to clergy - priests and brothers, nuns and laity - who intervened for the poor and underprivileged against the systematically cruel class-based legal systems of South America in the 1970's, which supported only wealthy land owners and their corrupt politicians. The Vatican took a very dim view of all such assistance by it's clergy in what has been coined as 'Liberation Theology'. Liberation Theology mandated that it was the duty of those who served the spiritual needs of the Catholic Laity had also a duty to serve their physical needs - in particular in the face of such brutal and wholly unethical acts as kidnapping, torture, intimidation, unlawful imprisonment and political executions and murders. Many priests and nuns who felt it was their duty to assist the poor opposed the direct orders of the Vatican. Their intervention on behalf of the many disenfranchised citizens of these totalitarian regimes saved lives, but soon many of them suffered the same vicious fates at the hands of these South American dictatorships. Here we are some thirty years on or better and we now find that the Vatican, formerly in opposition to politically assisting the lowliest of Christ's flock through any means other than prayer and the Sacraments, is actively purporting that American and European Catholics especially use every political means available, including smear tactics (i.e. John Kerry being refused communion in particular by US Bishops because he supports Gay Civil Equality, though other candidates supporting agendas which included abortion and stem cell research, also equally abhorrent to Catholics, were left unscathed of any personal attacks) to oppose the legal recognition of Gay marriage,
Here is what the Vatican and many US Catholic Bishops and American Catholic Laity, newly in conjunction with right-wing fundamentalists, are supporting: unethical signature campaigns, often deceiving people about what they're actually signing; additionally, obtaining signatures from Catholics whom are attending Mass for the sole purpose of worship; clergy encouraged to support these signature drives before or after Mass which, if they do not actually break United States IRS laws (regarding direct political persuasion of parishioners by specific verbal support of certain candidates and/or of particular pending bills from the pulpit) by tax-free religious organizations**, are certainly treading a thin line. While many Bishops will deny involvement in such activities there is little doubt that the Church's hierarchy have had little, if any, compunction to be forthcoming in regards to what are likely illegal and illicit activities. Certainly immoral. It must be noted here that the child abuse scandal of the Cathoilic Church clearly indicates that the welfare of of others can easily become lost to the need of political expediency.***
These repeated attempts to blur the lines between Church and State by the Catholic Church, now in conjunction with the Protestant far right fundamentalists, represented by such groups as Focus on the Family, is in direct opposition, I believe, to Jesus' own statement of: "give unto Ceasar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's". Let me explain what I believe that statement means. Jesus is telling us that what is important to Him is the example we give to others, not in our outward visible promotion of what is politically beneficial to our appearance as exemplary Christians, but in how we live, love and help those in need, whether physical, emotional or spiritual - quietly, with understanding and love unexpectant of reward. I believe this applies in the context of my arguments above in a very straight forward way. It is not our place as followers of Jesus to, in false fits of pious outrage, publicly attack and politically viscerate those persons whose sexuality we do not understand or with whose sexual orientation we may deeply disagree, or with those persons who may support the civil rights of Gays and Lesbians.
Jesus gives us a specific example of this with His own behavior. He stopped the stoning of a prostitute by asking those in the process of committing her execution, "whom amongst you is without sin?" I imagine He received some nasty outward looks and some odious under the breath castigation for his defense of this common woman, whom in their eyes was a monstorus and corrupt public sinner. Yet, when he wrote in the dirt at His feet, and those stalwart leaders of society about Him read His words, well, they dropped their stones and with heads hung in shame, wandered away one by one.
My point is this. I am a Gay man in a long term relationship, some twenty years, and I and my family need the leagl protections of our civil government. Despite my failures in my marriage, it is genuine as a marriage of minds, hearts and bodies. I give my love, loyalty and commitment to this marriage wholly. Growing up Roman Catholic, as a man who loves God and believed for many years in all the Church taught about homosexuality, I finally could only make this one choice: to integrate my homosexuality, a loving gift from God to me, as being a normal and primary part of my state of being. I cannot separate my sexuality from the remainder of my personage without physical, emotional and spiritual illness. My decision was made over years with long, quiet deliberation, seeking both counsel in prayer and in words with clergy and therapists; and in fighting many years of my own unhealthy self-hatred for not being the celibate the Church said I must be to live within God's Grace. Therefore, to choose in personal conscience, to stand against all I was taught to believe about my sexuality, can be said to be my personal experience of wrestling Jacob's Angel. Never has a struggle been more profound for me until now: to choose to debate in open my sexuality has caused me great personal cost, ever I wonder whose love and respect I may lose and always, I wonder, just how many Angels am I to wrestle? Why do I now fight publicly for civil equality and to live openly as a sexually active gay man, when I am asked as a Catholic to be silent when I am in disagreement with Church teachings? The Church itself is now, using modern media and political expedience, attempting to win upon the battlefield of public opinion its own civil laws - perverting its own responsibility to our souls simply to hold sway in the temporal world; and because I see the harm this is doing to my own gay family, and the many gay men and women whom are my friends and their families, I choose (as those liberation theologists perhaps did) to fight for the wholeness and well being of not just our souls but of our minds and our bodies. If you have not lived in mortal fear of your safety trying to find a home or to keep a job, if you cannot relate to being bashed and spat upon either figuratively or in reality, if you have no basis for comparison for being denied access to your spouse by a hospital employee or your partner's family when he is ill, or to be loathed by an unknown person openly on the street, well, you can still understand what it feels like and what it means to be hated completely for whom you are as made by God.
Here's how. You can step back from your prejudices for just a moment and you can imagine that you are one of those men or women who now holds a stone above me or my partner, or our daughter or one of our friends; and you can, as a Christian, remember the New Testament and Christ's actions and words when, with great love and compassion, He intervened on behalf of the prostitute. You can remember, as I do when I wrongly choose to be someone else's judge, that whatever Jesus scratched in the dirt of Judaea some two millennia ago, that our sins, mine and yours, were very likely among them.And, if for one moment you wonder whether denying civil rights to me and my family warrants a pause and reconsideration, despite some tough propoganda from the Vatican and civil governments worldwide, than I will have done what I believe may, just may, have rightly saved one precious life and soul from the so called justice of men so that it may be left to Jesus and His Father in Heaven to decide what judgement to give upon his life.
Matthew Shephard, Gwen Araujo, Pfc. Barry Winchell, Amancio Corrales, Tyra Hunter, David Curnick, Michael Sandy, Scott Amadeur, Aaron Webster, Kevin Hale, Jody Dobrowski, Danny Overstreet, David Morley, Brandon Teena, Bill Clayton and many, many others have paid or are still paying for your intolerance in America and Europe. In the Middle East Gays are hung with mock trials. In Russia and Eastern Europe Gays are murdered and violently attacked without any legal recourse whatsoever - they cannot even assemble. In Africa, Gays are routinely slaughtered when it is discovered where they assemble - and while AIDS runs rampant among all sexual populations there, but especially amongst heterosexual women and children, many African governments and the Vatican refuse AIDS drugs, condoms and/or health workers in their countries. India and Pakistan also arrest and imprison without representation - as without question does China. Human rights abuses against Gays are so rampant worldwide it boggles the mind and yet, chief amongst those whom block ANY humanitarian relief and/or legal recognition of their plight at the United Nations are two States foremost: America and the Vatican. These two States, which have prided themselves upon a rigorous human rights agenda of compassion and love, fall short first, by using their significant veto powers, to deny legal recognition of gays, much less equality. Amongst all those countries whom could save Gay lives anywhere, it is the Vatican State and the United States of America which stand alone among all Western nations**** to oppose our legal recognition. It gives me pause as to what exactly being Catholic and American actually mean anymore? When it becomes so terribly all important to make a spiritual and moral compass our only view, let me remind you once again of Scripture - Christ said, instructing the Pharisees, that saving a man's livelihood by removing his sheep from a well, was more important than keeping the Laws of the Sabbath. Can any of us, then, actually believe that God will reward us when we do far, far less for the life, much less the livelihood, of a Gay brother or Lesbian sister?
______________________________________________________________________
*The debate over the voters having the right to amend the Constitution, at State or Federal level, to restrict instead of enhance, the legal standing of a minority group is a suprising first and definitely not in the spirit of what the US Constitution has traditionally stood to protect. The American Courts, being accused of overstepping their authority by providing equal marriage to gays and lesbians, are, in fact, doing exactly the opposite: by insuring that the Constitution is intrepretted in its broadest sense to protect ALL Americans, and in particular those Gay men and women in
this instance, for whom otherwise the prejudice of the many against the few leaves the few in great legal jeopardy on many essential levels. The idea of separate but equal, now being proposed in the form of Civil Unions as an alternative to full Marriage Equality has essentially already been dismissed by the United States Supreme Court when it focused upon the civil rights of Black Americans. In other words, a "separate but equal" seat on a bus, or a "separate but equal" drinking fountain are inherently and utterly devoid of equality.**Currently there are non-denominational watch-dog groups randomly attending services at all Churches and Temples to monitor whether or not US laws regarding specific political reccomendations are being followed and upheld .
***The Catholic Church is waging a publicity battle against Gays regarding the child abuse scandal. The facts of child abuse clearly show that the majority, in the high nineties statistically, are heterosexual men. This is true within the priesthood as well as out. Child abusers are very often non-selective in the gender of their victims. The current campaign by the Catholic Church to once agian mislead the Faithful, and the world, by declaring that eliminating Gay clergy and seminarians will eliminate the sexual abuse of chidren is the proverbial 'ostrich with its head in the sand.' It will, in essence, only leave the priesthood without many fine spiritual leaders whom seek to serve Christ by serving others.
****Only the United States, Australia and the Vatican State still stand among Westsern countries represented at the United Nations in opposition to listing Gays and Lesbians among persecuted minorities and allowing legal and charitable organizations supporting Gays and Lesbians U.N. political representation.
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