Previous post
This is what happens when you let the government start messing around with private industry — and if they’re allowed to start messing around with religion. This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom, that anyone could come here and practice their faith freely and without fear of repercussions. The Roman Catholic Church has been a staunch defender of the pro-life movement and of traditional marriage. In the America that our founders built, the government would not be able to put the church into such a tough position. Forcing a church, after all, to either betray some of its most precious, sacred beliefs or cut off approximately 68,000 people from the social services offered by Catholic Charities is despicable. But it’s the situation the Catholic Church is in now — and liberals, of course, are blaming the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.
“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”
Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.
The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.
Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.
“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.
The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.
“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.
The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.
The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue.
The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.
How pathetic. D.C.’s stance is basically that the Catholic Church should abandon its principles if it wants to keep working with the city, because this is going to pass whether they like it or not, and they have to make this awful choice — but they, of course, are the bad guys. This is, of course, the liberal meme, because anyone who is against gay marriage is prejudiced and backward and wrong and might as well be the KKK. Check out this explanation from Feministing:
The closing of a major homeless shelter and budget cuts have worsened the situation in a city already struggling to serve its poor and homeless residents. As someone who organizes for access to abortion I have obvious problems with gaps in the services provided by Catholic Charities. But that does not discount the vital work they do for the 68,000 D.C. residents who rely on Catholic Charities for shelters, health care, and food programs.
The Archdiosese is making a clear statement: it considers keeping rights from same sex couples more important than the needs of this city’s most vulnerable. Their willingness to use the lives and health of 68,000 people in need as pawns in their fight for the right to discriminate is unconscionable. D.C. needs more social services, not less. I hope the Archdiosese can put aside the politics of hate for a moment to recognize what I would think they would consider a moral obligation to do vital life saving work.
With all due respect, this isn’t a choice the church can fairly make. They didn’t ask for this bill, and their input was completely ignored when it came to amendments in the bill. The passage of this bill puts Catholic Charities in the worst kind of situation. For the Catholic Church, this isn’t a political situation, which is what liberals want to make it into. For the Catholic Church, this is a religious issue, it’s a moral one. The church cannot just abandon its principles, and that’s what liberals are forcing the church to do. And if the church caves on this, it won’t stop here. Liberals will start putting the pressure on about abortion, and performing gay marriages, and who knows what else. Where will it stop? It’s disgusting that liberals are putting the blame on the church here, when they are the ones being forced between a rock and a hard place. The church is not the one using homeless people as pawns; the city is. And it is wrong for the government to be legislating religious beliefs, which is basically what has happened here. This is, at its core, a subtle attack on our rights to religious freedom. And apparently, there is no one who is going to stand up for religion in this case.
If this is the change you voted for, then I hope you’re happy.
CaptDMO says: Tell me again about the part where the nice folks at F****isting, as well as all the strange bedfellows sporadically paraded out as and their allies when the mood suits, are charitably donating their after-tax income to pay for someone else’s….um… which “rights” were we discussing again?
They found another one.
Homelessness is not a woman’s issue…gay marriage is the opposite of a woman’s issue…abortion is not a woman’s issue. Actually, the last two of those three diminish, not enhance, the vitality of the role women play in a society. Homelessness, at least, is absolutely woman-neutral.
This stuff we call “feminism” doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with females anymore. It seems to be working day-and-night to find ways to get a society along day-to-day without females.
Mark says: Here’s a website dealing with how donations by well-meaning Catholics are diverted to organizations that are pro-abortion, even ACORN!!!
Don’t forget, the Catholic Church has been a big supporter of Obamacare. Why do you think the Stupak amendment was offered?
I was talking to a friend about this and he pointed out that indeed the government gets to have a say when government money is involved, that there are government “contracts” with the church. He also, I think, misunderstood the part about not extending benefits to gay couples … as if once a gay employee was, ahem, “gay-ly” married, that employee no longer got benefits, either. So here’s my expounderation on all this, along with that.
The government never should have gotten involved in the first place. The church stupidly took the government at their word. And the government got it wrong. Charity is not the role of the government, it is the role of the people. When it becomes the role of the government, it becomes the government’s role to say how much you will give, as an individual, and to whom it will go.
The current deal is that government wants to wrest charity away from private organizations – it wants to control charity. Private organizations are competition for sugar-daddy vote-getters.
And giving money to private charities is how they do it. At first, it was “cooperation” with private charities, many of which are religious. “No, no, we’ll let you run it the way you always have, just with more money …. For now….” It’s sold to the voters as a cost-saving measure. “See, we partner with these private charities and pool our resources”. Actually, I think a lot of this started with Bush 41’s “faith based initiative”. A progressive idea from progressive Republicans.
And what they’re saying is, yes, if you give us a choice between violating our beliefs or abandoning the deal, we’re going to abandon the deal. Which is why I say good for them.
As far as benefits for gay individuals … they treat them as single people, because in the church’s eyes they are not married. A “married” gay would be treated as a single gay, and benefits not extended to the partner – because again, it’s just a roommate as far as the church is concerned. No inconsistency there.
And as far as “not allowing” homosexuality … that would be like “not allowing” lying, stealing, etc. This is where most secularists disconnect with what Christianity really says. It says “these things are wrong”. It does not say “if you do any of these things, we kick you out.” Hate the sin, love the sinner. The just man sins seven times daily. The church is tolerant, but not accepting. It tolerates, as does God, the fact that we are not perfect and we do wrong. The Church holds up an ideal for us to strive toward, in full knowledge that we will fail occasionally. But we are better for the striving, as is the rest of society. That’s the theory, and I for one think there is much to it.
But were the church to recognize a gay “marriage” as a marriage, that would be a glaring inconsistency – as the church defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.
All charity should be private.
CaptDMO says: “All charity should be private.”
Indeed, and in fact, charity IS.
Once tax dollars, and gub’mint “oversight” are involved, it’s no longer charity, it’s welfare. All the implications of fraud, bureaucratic incompetence, waste, and disingenuous non sequiturpolitical manipulation, go along with it.
I’m very liberal and always have been but I appreciated hearing the argument from the other side, and have to admit that I can see its rationale. It’s a dangerous precedent to set.
6 Comments