USCCB Head Timothy Dolan Endorses Gay Marriage: Oh, Never Mind

The head of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference Timothy Dolan is fighting for marriage (still; again).  The title of a recent blog posting he has published about this fight: "Marriage: the core of every civilization."

And that title beautifully summarizes why gay and lesbian folks and our allies are fighting for our right to marry.

Oh, wait.  I am now reading further and I see that Archbishop Dolan didn't mean to endorse marriage as a core value for everyone.  It's only for heterosexuals.  It seems his blog title is a tad misleading.

What he really means to say is, "Heterosexual marriage: the core of every civilization."  With a subtitle: Catholic bishops' definition of marriage must trump civil law and its definitions.

Because we say so.  And because everything we teach about human rights and justice for all doesn't apply to gay and lesbian human beings. 

Because we say so.

Opposite-Sex Marriage and Deep-Rooted Cultural Tradition: Considering the Argument

And then there's this: last week, as I continued trying to find my way out of my latest little stint of selva oscura, I follow the thread responding to Michael O'Loughlin's good commentary at the America blog on the debate about civil unions for same-sex couples in Rhode Island.  Why I bother, I don't know, since I can write the predictable (and exceptionally banal) responses from most of the contributors to this blog in advance--the predictable male heterosexist responses, that is to say.

There's a watchdog group that has long monitored the Jesuits and America, and who intend to do everything in their (male, heterosexist, privileged, Republican) power to keep those leftie Jesuits in check.  To remind the Jesuits, if they even think about showing some solidarity with gay and lesbian people in their struggle for justice, that they'll pay a steep price for doing so.

And, predictably, one of these watchdogs, a Mr. Smith, who always chimes in when the gay issue is raised at the America site, says to Jim McCrea, a regular contributor to these threads who writes with good sense (and accurate theological background), the following:  

Marriage in the West means one man and one woman.  You upset such a deep-rooted piece of cultural tradition at your very great peril, especially when there are excellent alternatives, like reciprocal benefits legislation.  

And on the same day that I read this, I happen to be reading through the estate records of an ancestor of mine, a man named James Lane who died in eastern North Carolina in the summer of 1789.  (This is one of the ways I handle the selva oscura: I spend hours snooping into the lives of those who have gone before me, doing genealogical research, because it's in many ways very much like putting together the pieces of an intricate puzzle--and putting puzzles together has real therapeutic value for me.)

And I find this: when James Lane's estate is inventoried, the inventory shows the following items among his possessions as he dies: a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, a bible, and a Book of Common Prayer.  James is, in other words, not merely a casual churchgoer, an enculturated Christian who calls himself Christian because the established church had demanded up to the Revolution that everyone living in North Carolina be at least nominally a member of the Church of England.

He and his family are pious Christians, members of that solid middle class that, we're told by historians, built the nation through its hard work, devotion to moral principle, and commitment to church and churchly ways. And commitment to the "deep-rooted pieces of cultural tradition" about which Mr. Smith speaks, which we upset at our "very great peril," when they're rooted in long-standing Christian tradition.  And in the bible itself.

Like marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life.  (Except that that's not at all what the bible says marriage is all about for, oh, millennia of sacred history, when polygamy is the norm: one man with many wives.  But no women with many husbands.  And divorce permitted to men, who can repudiate their wives in the twinkling of an eye, by a word of renunciation, while no women are ever permitted to do the same to their husbands.  But never mind about all that: let's not confuse ourselves with facts while we do battle to uphold the "deep-rooted pieces of cultural tradition" that we envisage discarding to our "very great peril.")

And then I leaf through the estate records to the settlement of James's estate, and find the following: in addition to "the Negro Woman Named Moll" whom James had left in his will to son Ethelred and the "Two Negro Boys" whom the will had left money for James's widow Sarah to purchase, who, along with their increase, were to be "divided" among the youngest children of the family after Sarah's death, there were an unnamed "Negro Wench" and her child Zilla, Beck, Bett, Hannh, Silvia, and Jude, all disbursed as property among James's oldest children (including my ancestor Zilpah Lane and her husband Sumner Holland).  With stipulations that Jude and her increase were to be divided, following Sarah's death, among the older children.

Zilpah, by the way--in case you're wondering--was the name of a handmaid (read: slave) of Jacob's wife Leah, whose father Laban gave Zilpah to Leah.  Zilpah then marries Jacob, who has also wives Leah, Rachel, and Bilhah.  Rachel and Leah are sisters.  He ends up being married to both sisters because Laban deceives Jacob by switching Leah for Rachel when Jacob imagines he's marrying Rachel.  When Rachel and Leah compete to give Jacob sons, they then use their maidservants Bilhah and Zilpah in the son-bearing game, offering them to Jacob as wife material.  Some accounts suggest Bilhah and Zilpah are half-sisters of Leah and Rachel.

All in the family, don't you know.  The good, old-fashioned, God-fearing family . . . .

Deep-rooted cultural traditions.  Just like the traditions re: slavery that went hand in hand with Pilgrim's Progress and the Book of Common Prayer.  And the bible.  Traditions that James Lane and all the other upright Christians around him would have been shocked to learn anyone questioned or considered irreconcilable with Christian morality and Christian faith.

Since they had been practiced for centuries by good bible-reading, church-going Christians.  Since slavery is not merely allowed but presupposed and defended by the Jewish and Christian scriptures.  Since it was a deep-rooted part of the cultural heritage of those who wrote the biblical books.  

And, of course, despite the bible's support for slavery, despite the longstanding endorsement of this practice in both Judaism and Christianity, despite the continuation of slavery in Christian cultures right into the 19th century, we'd now be hard-pressed to find any Christian anywhere openly espousing a return to bible-based slavery.

Espousing bible-based slavery because we upset "deep-rooted pieces of cultural tradition" at our "very great peril," if we overturn them when they have biblical warrant.  When they've always been there.  When it's always been done this way.  When everyone around us takes this for granted, and only a tiny minority of people (the losers of history, and surely they can't be on God's side, since God's a winner) question how things have always been done.

We have discarded slavery because we have finally decided to take Paul at his word, when he tells us that "in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."  We've decided, in other words, that despite the countenancing of slavery in other biblical texts (including other texts attributed to Paul himself), the very heart and soul of the gospel is summed up in Paul's proclamation of the freedom and equality of all believers in Christ.

We've decided that the bible was not really ever about--not in its most essential proclamation about who God is and what God desires for the world--the subordination of one group of people to another, the subjugation of one group of people by another.  It's about, instead, a vision of a world in which every one who comes from the hand of God is treated with equal dignity and respect.  And has equal access to the goods of the world.  And to the rights accorded to everyone merely because she is a human being.

We have long since gotten this when it comes to the issue of slavery.  Why, I wonder, is it taking the Mr. Smiths of the world so long to get it when it comes to the issue of gender roles, and the power allocated to men and to women respectively?  And to the related issue of sexual orientation?

It's almost as if some of the men who rule us these days don't want to get it.

The graphic is Dutch Baroque artist Matthias Stom's depiction of Abraham with two of his wives, Sarah and Hagar.

Minnesota Theologian Gary Boelhower: Marriage Equality Is About Equality

And from Terry Weldon's outstanding Queering the Church blog yesterday, powerful testimony from a theologian, Gary Boelhower, teaching at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, Minnesota.  Terry links to an op-ed statement Boelhower wrote Monday for the Duluth News Tribune as the proposal to revise the Minnesota constitution to ban same-sex marriage, about which I blogged yesterday, goes to the legislature. 

Gary Boelhower prefaces his testimony by noting that the Minnesota constitution explicitly states, "No member of this state shall be … deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen."  As he notes, he and his fellow citizens who are also gay or lesbian are asking merely to enjoy the rights and privileges afforded by the state constitution (and the national one) to all citizens--by virtue of the humanity they share with other citizens.

Boelhower notes that there is a range of viewpoints among faith communities in his state about same-sex marriage and the morality of homosexuality.  His own union with his partner will be celebrated in a United Church of Christ later this year.  

But neither he nor other LGBT citizens of Minnesota who are asking for a right afforded to all other citizens--the right of civil marriage (which brings with it a significant number of rights and privileges from which gay families are excluded prima facie when civil marriage is denied to gay couples)--are proposing that any faith community be forced to accept same-sex marriage.  This is a debate about the human rights afforded to all citizens in a civil context, in the context of pluralistic secular societies in which the religious viewpoint of any group should not be enshrined in civil law:

I am not asking your church to change its teachings. In the U.S. we are free to express a diversity of spiritual traditions. Religious marriage will justly remain the prerogative of each faith tradition.

But the state of Minnesota is constitutionally bound to treat all citizens equally; that includes civil-marriage equality.

Last Tuesday, Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature announced plans to put a gay marriage ban before voters in 2012 (“Minnesota lawmakers push for gay marriage vote,” April 27). To ban gay marriage would institutionalize injustice in our constitution, which wisely emphasizes the rights of all citizens and protects against the discriminatory reservation of certain rights to only some citizens.

As we know from our history, it is not unusual for those in power or those in the majority to reserve certain rights and privileges for themselves. Not until 1920 did women have the right to vote. Not until 1967 were laws criminalizing interracial marriage ruled unconstitutional. It is not coincidental that strong religious arguments were used to enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships.

In seeking marriage equality, I am not asking for special privileges; I am simply claiming the same protections and responsibilities as my heterosexual married neighbors.

This is an admirably clear statement.  And, reading it, I have to wonder why some U.S. citizens and members of faith communities still don't see the point that is so clear here: this is a cultural debate about something that has happened over and over in American society as the foundational principles of our democracy are extended to groups that have been excluded from full participation solely due to indefensible discrimination.  The cultural discussion in which we're involved right now in American society, vis-a-vis marriage equality, is not a discussion about how and whether religious viewpoints should dictate legal norms in American society.

Religious viewpoints can't do that.  Not in a bona fide secular democracy.  Not in a pluralistic society normed by foundational documents that enshrine democratic principles in those normative documents.  

This is a debate about equality.  It's a debate about the full inclusion in our democratic society of a group of citizens stigmatized by prejudice, who continue to be excluded from the social mainstream by legalized discrimination that impedes their ability to contribute, to pursue their careers, to raise families, and so forth. 

What on earth does any Christian church imagine it's doing, defending the exclusion of some members of the human community from the social mainstream, solely because a church wants to envisage those human beings as less than human?  And in what way does the attack on those stigmatized human beings by leaders of any religious community--in Minnesota, notably the state's Catholic bishops--contribute to a healthy society that respects human rights?

These are questions that aren't going go to away anywhere in the United States anytime soon--anywhere including Minnesota.  No matter how much Catholic leaders shout to the rest of us that they're defending human rights by denying them to gay and lesbian people.

Minnesota Moves Towards Statewide Vote on Constitutional Ban for Gay Marriage

As an update to my several recent postings about the role the Catholic leaders of Minnesota are now seeking to play in the political life of that heavily Catholic state, particularly in attacking its gay citizens: at the end of last week, the judiciary committee of the Minnesota senate passed a bill that will call for a statewide vote to amend the state's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.  The bill now goes to the state legislature, which has been Republican-controlled since the 2010 elections, and is likely to pass at that level.

This is a step that Minnesota Republicans have been maneuvering to take for some years now, but which they've been thwarted in taking by Democratic legislative majorities in the past.   It is a step explicitly endorsed by the Catholic bishops in Minnesota, who want to assure that their state does not follow the example of the neighboring state of Iowa and permit civil marriage for same-sex couples.

It's difficult to predict the outcome of this statewide vote, if this constitutional amendment does, indeed, receive legislative approval.  Numerous historical examples demonstrate that, given the opportunity to do so, the majority will almost always vote to deny rights to minorities.  This becomes even more likely in times of economic and cultural difficulty, when the feel-good effect of finding a stigmatized minority on which to vent anger and even hatred is appealing for many citizens.  And when that feel-good effect is actively cultivated and even blessed by religious leaders, those calling for human decency in deliberations about the human rights of a targeted minority often find themselves not making much of a dent at all on the consciousness of many people.

Constitutions, and the court system in the U.S., are set up precisely to protect minority groups from the tyranny of the majority, by articulating foundational principles to which everyone must adhere in order to build an inclusive civil society, and by assuring legal protection for those principles when they are attacked--as they always are--by those intent on discriminating.

For those who want to follow the Minnesota situation and read about it in depth, Michael Bayly (who lives in St. Paul) is providing his usual stellar commentary at his Wild Reed blog and the Progressive Catholic blog.  A selection of recent articles by Michael that I recommend:

"Disappointing but Not Unexpected: 'Marriage Amendment' Bill Passes MN Senate Judiciary Committee"

"Calling All Supporters of Marriage Equality"

"Rep. Steve Simon on Gay Marriage and the Arc of History"

The day will come--and it is not far down the road in much of the developed world--when the leaders of the Catholic church in the late 20th century and first part of the 21st century will be judged very harshly for their active support of legalized discrimination against a vulnerable minority group.  As a majority of American Catholics turn against such discrimination, the willingness of the U.S. bishops actively to promote it and to see it enshrined in legal documents begins to appear less and less like a demonstration of Christian charity, and more and more like a political decision that is willing to make the lives of some human beings miserable to serve the interests and goals of an elite group within the society--to whom the leaders of the Catholic church have handed over their souls and forfeited the future of the church they lead.

In a state that has constantly been in the national news for several years now due to the number of teen suicides in which bullying because of perceived sexual orientation has played a key role, you'd think the leaders of a group looking to Jesus as its founder would find other ways to spend their time and energy.  Wouldn't you?

Austen Ivereigh on the Royal Wedding: Not the Gays' Show

To all you gay folks who imagine the royal wedding (or marriage in any shape, form, or fashion) might have something to do with you, English Catholic blogger and America contributor Austen Ivereigh is here to set you straight.  Ivereigh posts today about how the Kate and Wills show is "a winning combination of elements which film-makers strive after: on the one hand, what is totally 'other.' -- a dreamy, fairy-tale setting: the marriage of a prince, the making of a princess -- with what, on the other, is universal and human: boy meets girl; they fall in love; they marry."

But please be advised  that this show is for heterosexuals only--like Ivereigh and his wife:

And as some bishops have already been pointing out, what happens tomorrow is a great tribute to the institution of marriage -- the union of a man and a woman for the purpose of creating and rearing children. There are many "alternatives" to that model around us -- same-sex unions, single parents, divorced couples -- and advocates of equality would want us to be believe they are all equally valid. But they aren't. History, research and experience all point to a stable, loving marriage between a man and a woman as the best possible environment for a child -- measured by almost any outcome.

Be forewarned, gay folks who like glamor and pageantry.  The Kate and Wills show is not for you and your kind.  It's a "tribute to the institution of marriage"--to Mr. Ivereigh's kind of marriage, that is.  

You gays can just move on and find your glam elsewhere, thank you very much--even if you might have designed a dress here, made up a bunch of posies there, arranged some hair for the spectacular event, written some majestic music or signed up to play said music at the royal wedding.  Or if you might be sitting at the altar or in the choir stalls as the ceremony takes place.

No gays need apply.  Not your show.

Alan McCornick on King & Spalding: It's About the Right of People, Not Ideas, to Legal Defense

Second postscript: after I wrote yesterday about the King & Spalding decision to drop the defense of DOMA, I discovered that Alan McCornick has also posted about this topic this week, at his wonderfully thought-provoking Hepzibah blog.  As with everything Alan writes, this posting is dense, and I won't try to summarize it: I challenge readers to read it for yourselves, working carefully through Alan's well-constructed prose.

I do want to take note of one observation Alan makes, which casts light on my own argument yesterday, and which makes this point far more clearly than I did.  This has to do with the right of everyone to a defense.  As Alan points out, that right applies to persons and not to ideas.  Those now arguing that Paul Clement and Bancroft are doing something noble by asserting DOMA's "right" to a legal defense are confusing persons with ideas in precisely the same way that the U.S. Supreme Court wishes to confuse persons and corporations in its 2010 Citizens United decision.

Here's how Alan puts the point:

Doesn’t everybody deserve their day in court? Aren’t they right when they say if everybody in the executive branch of government decided cases a priori, wouldn’t that disturb the balance of powers? Should this not stay in court all the way to the top if necessary? That's Clement's argument, and that's why he resigned when his firm refused to pursue the case

Well, no.

First off, it’s people who deserve their day in court, not ideas. If by some cruel accident we elected a fascist to office (a few years ago that would have seemed a lot more ridiculous), and once elected he announced he wanted to make all the Jews in town wear a yellow star, and a class action suit grew out of this and he went to court over it, I’d say, yes, by all means, give bozo his day in court. 

And I agree.  To return to the life story I told yesterday as a parable--the story of my adolescent conversations with my father about the ethics of legal defense--I never disagreed with my father that everyone has a right to a legal defense.  The point of our contention was whether a guilty person being defended by an attorney has a right to a defense that seeks to represent that person as innocent rather than guilty. 

People have a right not to be judged guilty before their guilt has been proven.  And they have a right to a legal defense in which their guilt or innocence is ascertained within the court system.  They have a right to a court hearing even when they are guilty, though it seems to me that in this case, how their attorney defends them and deals with their guilt when it is clear to the attorney does deserve careful consideration.

Ideas are something altogether different.  I agree wholeheartedly with John Aravosis when he notes that no one today would seriously propose a court defense of laws reinstating legal segregation.  We've worked our way through the excruciating cultural debates that led to cultural and legal decisions in that area that are, most of us hope, now irreversible.  These debates--and the legal battles they entailed--are not to be revisited.

And we're rapidly approaching the same point in our culture, vis-a-vis the human rights of gay and lesbian persons.  Very soon, we will be at a point of no return at which social consensus decides that it is enervating, undemocratic, dangerous to civil society to revisit the notions of legally enshrined discrimination on which DOMA rests.  

And in my view, King & Spalding recognize this, and have rightly agreed that DOMA--the idea of legally enshrined discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens in the area of marriage rights--does not deserve a defense.  If we are not willing to argue that the courts ought to revisit questions of legal segregation on the basis of race, I wonder why some of us remain willing to argue that proposals to legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation deserve a legal defense.

To me, it seems obvious that what those defending DOMA's "right" to a court hearing, and applauding Paul Clement for his noble and principled stand about the right to a defense, are really saying is that powerful ideas and powerful people always deserve their day in court.  And that our society falls apart when the right of powerful ideas and powerful people to a court hearing is questioned.

And that presupposition touches, of course, on the ethical vacuousness that I repeatedly questioned when I discussed the legal profession with my father during my teen years.  The idea that lawyers should always be hired guns for those with the most power and money in any given society, and should call their willingness to defend power and wealth a praiseworthy representation of everyone's right to a legal hearing: that sticks in my craw.  It's, in my view, tantamount to defining a lawyer's work as a form of prostitution.

King & Spalding Refuse to Defend DOMA: Framing the Ethical-Legal Discussion

I'm finding the furor of many of those commenting on the recent decision of the King & Spalding law firm to drop the defense of DOMA fascinating.  As many readers may know, this Monday, the D.C. law firm whose services had been retained by Republican House Speaker Boehner to defend the Defense of Marriage Act announced that it will no longer be available for that service.  At that point, the King & Spalding point man assigned to the case, Bush solicitor general Paul Clement, resigned from King & Spalding and joined the firm Bancroft PLCC, which has announced it will carry on the DOMA defense.  Clement is a Republican who routinely donates to Republican candidates.

The anti-gay machine of the religious and political right is, predictably, reacting with outrage to the decision of King & Spalding to drop the defense of DOMA.  There's the usual talk of bullying gays threatening decent, God-fearing American citizens intent only on exercising their right to free speech and to freedom of belief.  Candace Chellew-Hodge surveys the field of arguments now being offered by religious right leaders against King & Spalding at Religion Dispatches today, noting their predictability.

But if Amanda Terkel's report at Huffington Post yesterday is correct, much of the pressure for King & Spalding to drop the DOMA case was internal.  It came from King & Spalding employees concerned about their futures, if they had been associated with a law firm known to defend a discriminatory law.  There was also concern about the fact that King & Spalding touts itself as a gay-affirming employer that values diversity, and concern that many of its contracts are with companies which have specific policies in place forbidding discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.  Some of these companies appear to have been leaning on King & Spalding to reconsider its defense of DOMA.

Clement is seeking to claim the moral high road as he continues the DOMA defense, and is noting that he is standing for the right of any client in the American court system to a robust legal defense.  A number of significant voices are being raised now to support Clement and that right, including that of Attorney General Eric Holder and influential gay blogger Andrew Sullivan, who is doing a series on his Dish blog about the tensions in the gay community between those who argue that discrimination does not deserve a legal defense, and those who argue as a matter of principle that everyone has a right to a defense.

John Aravosis at AmericablogGay, who is an attorney himself, disagrees, and has been posting a vigorous series of commentary defending King & Spalding's decision, and rebutting the arguments of Clement and his defenders that they represent principle and the moral high road.  As Aravosis has noted, it would be interesting to ask firms like Bancroft and all those defending the right of a client to a defense whether they'd defend segregation with the same alacrity with which they're now seeking to defend a law that many Americans regard as, on the face of it, discriminatory against a minority group. 

As I wade through these articles and consider both sides of the debate, I recall vividly a number of heated discussions I had with my father about precisely these issues when I was an adolescent.  My father was a small-town lawyer, and was determined that I would follow in his footsteps.

When it became apparent that I was not interested in the law (or the other approved professional study my parents persistently dangled before me--medicine), my father and I routinely locked horns in my final years of high school.  The repeated arguments centered around what he did as a lawyer, and why I ought to respect that and consider it my own future.

From my side, there was one constant, overriding argument about what my father and other attorneys I knew did: over and over again, I would ask my father how it was possible knowingly to defend someone you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt to be guilty of some heinous crime.  How do lawyers put themselves at the service of morally reprehensible, slimy groups and individuals, I asked my father repeatedly, while claiming that they are doing a noble thing in doing so?

In these showdowns, I've invent the worst possible case scenarios--a man coldly murders his wife to get his hands on her life insurance, then absconds with their daughter, a child, whom he rapes repeatedly.  Would you defend him?

And my father would routinely respond to each horrific scenario I could put before him, "Of course.  Everyone has a right to a defense."

Because we lived in a part of the country in which serious cultural and legal battles were being fought over the issue of integration--this was the 1960s, when the Civil Rights act finally broke the back of legal segregation--some of the scenarios dealt with questions about the Ku Klux Klan and known racial terrorists.  These were pointed and very existential questions for my father and me, and he knew this very well: as I think I may have mentioned in at least one previous posting on this blog, when I was in high school, my father ran for a judge's position in our area.

And when he did so, he made me go on the campaign trail with him.  On one occasion, as he was campaigning, he disappeared into the back of a local barber shop with a group of men and held a private meeting of an hour or so.  When I asked him later who the men were and why they had secluded themselves in the back of the barber shop, he told me they were Klansmen, and he had promised them that if they gave him their support, he'd look out for their interests as a judge.

This was an eye-opening experience for me.  It taught me (or reminded me, since I had already learned this in various ways as an attorney's son interacting with other attorneys and judges in our small town) that the judiciary is hardly ever free from the taint of prejudice, from the effect of backroom deals cut by candidates for judges' positions with shady groups fomenting hatred and defending discrimination.  I learned in interacting with my father and observing how he did business as a lawyer that lawyers (many if not most of them, I concluded) routinely side with and defend those who have the upper hand in their community, against those who are beaten down by the power structures of a community.

I learned, in other words, to view the claim that lawyers are doing a morally admirable and noble thing when they defend any and all comers for a legal defense with, shall we say, a somewhat critical and even cynical optic.  And I must confess that the shit-detector hermeneutic of suspicion I developed in my adolescent discussions of the legal profession with my father kicks in now as I read all the defenses of Paul Clement and Bancroft as the current moral heroes of the DOMA debate.

Please forgive me if I don't buy this rhetoric.  Not a bit.  Everyone may deserve a defense.  But not every cause deserves a defense.  We're clearly at a tipping point in American society akin to the one I lived through in the 1960s as legal segregation was struck down throughout the U.S., and it became increasingly unfashionable and even reprehensible to try to mount open defenses of racial prejudice and racial discrimination in American culture.

White Southerners fond of segregation--people like my own father and many members of my family--had aat that point, whether they liked it or not, to get used to the change in the moral climate of the country.  They had to get used to the fact that they were no longer the moral rulers of society, and that the rules by which they played were flawed--that these rules might serve their own interests, but not the interests of many human beings who were now being recognized by the law as fully human persons with the same legal rights any person deserves.

A similar cultural shift is now taking place in the U.S. vis-a-vis LGBT rights.  I would urge Paul Clement and all this who see him as a noble exemplar of the best moral values of our culture to get used to that shift.  And to stop already with the attempt to present themselves as high-minded people fighting for what is right and best.  Because not too long down the road, they're going to be seen by the vast majority of right-minded citizens as morally dubious agents who defended gross discrimination--every in the way we now view George Wallace or Lester Maddox or Bull Connor or Jesse Helms.

NOM's Louis Marinelli: Brian Brown "Trying to Intimidate Me to Stop Talking"

An update to a story about which I've blogged recently:

I wrote yesterday about former NOM activist Louis Marinelli and his break with NOM, after he began to recognize that the gay folks he and NOM bash and use as objects in political games are real human beings.  I noted that Marinelli has begun to disclose insider information about how NOM functions, and is revealing some of the sleazy tactics NOM uses to do its dirty work as it bashes the gays.  I concluded by saying it will be interesting to see just how much Marinelli is willing to reveal, from his years of close association with top NOM leaders.

And now I'm seeing a report by Joe Sudbay at AmericablogGay yesterday, in which he says Marinelli did an interview with Mike Signorile last Friday, where he stated that NOM's president Brian Brown has been threatening him with lawsuits trying to intimidate him into silence.  Marinelli concludes that NOM doesn't want the truth about the organization and how it does its dirty work to be told.  

And here's what's strange about NOM's interest in Marinelli and NOM's attempt to shut him up: after Marinelli broke with NOM, Brown indicated NOM wasn't concerned in the least about this defection, since Marinelli had just been a low-level "bus driver" for the organization.  In fact, Brown found the "tempest in a teapot" about Marinelli's conversion "hilarious."

Brown's not responding to requests for interviews about Marinelli's claim that Brown is seeking to intimidate and shut him up.

Why does NOM insist on pursuing its goals so secretively, I wonder?  Goals it identifies as morally admirable and essential to the moral health of society . . . . Why has NOM fought tooth and nail to prevent disclosure of its donor base, even filing suit in several states to withhold this information from the public when state laws require such disclosure?

Why are those who worked so hard to snatch the right of civil marriage from California's gay citizens with prop 8, telling us all the while that they were doing righteous work with this crusade, now trying in every way possible to keep videotaped coverage of the prop 8 trial under lock and key?

I don't get it.  These anti-gay crusaders have been telling us for years now that they represent the moral high road for the nation, and that they're engaged in a holy battle in which God fights with them.  People confident that they are doing good and right don't try to hide their identities and engage in legal battles to keep information about their donors secret.

Do they?  It's almost as if the insistence on doing their work under cover of darkness signals their awareness that taking human rights away from a minority community, and stirring animosity and prejudice against that community, are not noble pursuits at all.  Rather, shameful ones . . . .

Gay Marriage and the Philadelphia Situation: Two Blog Recommendations

And as a p.s. to my posting earlier today about what happened in Maine in 2009, I'd like to take note of a valuable compendium of resources that blogger Terry Denson of the Theology Degrees website sent to me recently.  It's a gathering of what are, in Terry's view, the top 10 blog sites offering resources for those interested in promoting marriage equality.

And since I'm taking note of blogs new to me, I'd also like to mention a blog site recently launched by Susan Matthews, a Catholic living in the archdiocese of Philadelphia.  This is the Catholics4Change site, which has been set up to monitor, talk about, and address the situation in Philadelphia about which area Catholics now know from the grand jury report there.  This looks like a very valuable new contribution to the discussion of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church.

Once Lost, Now Found: Louis Marinelli of National Organization for Marriage Has Conversion Experience

The story developing now with a former National Organization for Marriage head honcho, Louis Marinelli, is engrossing.  It's in important respects like a modern-day conversion story, a story of scales falling from the eyes, as a person suddenly begins to realize people he has demeaned and sought to treat inhumanely are human beings, in the same way he's human.

Marinelli explains his conversion experience in a posting at his blog entitled, "I Now Support Full Marriage Equality."  As he notes, he was the key player in NOM's 2010 Summer for Marriage tour, which took the NOM circus on the road and tried to drum up opposition to gay rights across the country last year.  As Jeremy Hooper at Good As You, who broke this story yesterday, points out, Marinelli also created NOM's offiical Facebook page.  Marinelli was, in other words, a big player in the NOM show.

And then here's what happened:

My name is Louis J. Marinelli, a conservative-Republican and I now support full civil marriage equality. The constitution calls for nothing less.

This is the conclusion to Marinelli's statement (first link above) about how he has gone from being a strong, active opponent of same-sex marriage to an advocate.  The rest of the post is about how he got there, and that's where the fascination of this story as a conversion narrative lies, for me.

Marinelli was a true believer doing what true believers do: he took the NOM show on the highway last summer to convince his fellow citizens around the nation to collaborate with him and with NOM in blocking rights for gay citizens, removing rights for gay citizens.  And then he began to meet real gay human beings, particularly in Atlanta, where the turnout on behalf of NOM was dismal, but the vibrant presence of folks protesting NOM was, he found to his surprise, "inspiring." 

And what he saw in that inspirational gathering began to work away in his conscience, with this effect:

Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly. For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing.

Knowing leads to empathy: making real human contact with people you've previously regarded as other and less than you is dangerous if you want to remain a true believer of the ilk who foments bigotry, since knowing opens the door to empathy, to a recognition of shared humanity.  

And now Marinelli is left with a problem: he has to confront the fact that what motivated him in his NOM crusades was not--as Maggie Gallagher and NOM like to pretend--primarily concern to preserve "traditional" marriage, but outright mean-spirited hostility towards gay and lesbian human beings, designed to hurt:

If there is an issue of shame [following my change of mind], it is a result of acknowledging the number of people I have targeted, hurt and oppressed.

And as the scales fell from Marinelli's eyes and he looked at the kind of discourse taking place in the comment boxes at the NOM Facebook page, he began to see that he had surrounded himself with hateful people, with people who were about nothing more and nothing less than hate.  Marinelli returned to the Facebook page as he was experiencing conversion (he had relinquished moderating duties to others), and here's what he now saw:

I was largely taken aback by the fact that the page I created had become such a hateful place. My comments and rhetoric paled in comparison to what that place had turned into. I began to understand why the gay community was out there claiming opposition to same-sex civil marriage was all about hate.

I soon realized that there I was surrounded by hateful people; propping up a cause I created five years ago, a cause which I had begun to question. 

And now I'm wondering if this leaves NOM with a big problem.  Do you suppose what Marinelli may really be saying in this testimony of conversion is that what NOM is really all about and always has been all about is hate?

Because if that's what he's saying--and who would know better than he does?--it contradicts the spin that Maggie Gallagher keeps trying to offer us about her organization.  Which has quasi-official status as a premier Catholic organization defending the sanctity of marriage.

Not attacking, demeaning, and removing rights from gay and lesbian human beings.  And certainly not fostering hate.

Which is tad bit difficult to justify as a Catholic value.

The graphic is Paul Granlund's 1967 bronze sculpture, "Damascus Illumination," at St. Paul's Lutheran church, Madison, Wisconsin.

Wik Wikholm Reviews "8: The Mormon Proposition": Must-See Viewing about Role of Religious Groups in Attacking Gay Rights

I meant a day or so ago to mention Wik Wikholm's fine 1 April review of the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition" at the glbtq website, and then forgot to do so.  A lazy Sunday evening is the perfect time for me to take note of this review before it slips away from my notice.  For anyone following the role of religion in the battles over gay rights in the U.S., this sounds like a must-see film.

Wikholm minces no words about what he thinks the documentary demonstrates: here's his opening statement,

The documentary film 8: The Mormon Proposition indicts the Mormon Church as the puppet master that orchestrated, funded, and deliberately concealed its role in what appeared to be a successful grassroots Evangelical and Roman Catholic campaign for Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that ended same-sex marriage in California when it passed on November 4, 2008.

The film frames its analysis, Wikholm notes, with an interview with Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who says that success with ballot initiatives like prop 8 in California demands money, volunteers, and a message that resonates.  The LDS church provided all three to take away the right of civil marriage for gay citizens of California, Kendell thinks.

Activist Fred Karger has succeeded in obtaining a set of internal Mormon church documents which show that the LDS church is aware that its image is an impediment in the public square, and for that reason, it allied itself secretly with conservative evangelical Christians and powerful Catholic anti-gay groups in California, supplying the bulk of the money and volunteers for the prop 8 campaign behind the scenes, while permitting the other two groups to appear to be spearheading the drive to repeal gay marriage as a grassroots initiative.

The documentary suggests that, having found this approach so successful, the LDS church is now strategizing with the largely Catholic National Organization for Marriage (NOM) to apply a similar formula--behind-the-scenes money and manpower, as NOM takes a high-profile public role with Mormon support hidden in the background--in states other than California, including Maine and Maryland.  As he notes,

The film suggests that the Mormon Church is engaged in what amounts to money laundering by concealing its funding of non-tax-exempt PACs like NOM so that the church's own tax-exempt status as a non-political religious organization is protected.

NOM, of course, persistently refuses to reveal its funders, even when federal and state laws demand such transparency, and it mounts legal battles repeatedly to keep its funding sources secret.  In the view of the documentary, the Mormon church has a strong interest in colluding with Catholic groups like NOM (and with the Catholic bishops) in attacking gay marriage because Mormon theology teaches that God, Heavenly Father, once had a human body and became a god when he died, and then married many spirit wives, populating the earth.

As Wikholm notes, "According to church doctrine, good Mormons will become gods when they die and populate their own planets just as their heavenly father did."  Hence the abhorrence of same-sex relationships and of gay people, since the theology of the LDS church is heavily invested in maintenance of traditional gender roles and in a model of family and procreativity that stresses the obligation to marry heterosexually and have children.  And though what Catholics and evangelicals call "traditional" marriage is miles and miles apart from this theological understanding, the shared hostility of some religious adherents in these religious traditions to gay and lesbian people leads them to make common cause with a religious group whose understanding of marriage (and of God) is strongly at variance with traditional Christian notions.

This sounds to me like a necessary film to watch, for those interested in the role that religious groups and (some) people of faith are playing in the American political context today to block gay rights and attack same-sex marriage.  And as I notice Wik Wikholm's review, I'd like to put in a plug for the outstanding glbtq website, which is one of the best online scholarly resources around for information about gay and lesbian people, lives, and issues.

Ross Douthat on Monogamy: Moving the Goalposts as Marriage Equality Advances

When I first read Ross Douthat's recent op-ed piece in the New York Times about why monogamy matters, I briefly entertained the idea of blogging about it, and then thought better of the idea.  I can't find it in me, to be honest, to take Douthat seriously as a thinker.


But then I read John Corvino's response to the essay and saw that, like me, he considers it an extension of Douthat's piece last August on the marriage ideal, which explicitly argues against same-sex marriage on the ground of male-female complementarity.  And at that point, I began to think that Douthat's latest musings on the theme of monogamy do demand a response, if only because they are intended to lay a foundation for a plausible sounding "rational" argument against same-sex marriage, which is not susceptible to charges of religious animus and prejudice.  But which ultimately has everything to do with religious animus and prejudice.

And now that I read Andrew Sullivan writing that as a gay Catholic, he's never felt hostility from his fellow Catholics, I'm all the more convinced that Douthat's essay deserves critical attention--because it articulates, in popular language, an increasingly influential (but ill-considered) new Catholic approach to same-sex marriage.  Which is overtly hostile to gays and lesbians.  And has perceivable deleterious effects on the lives of gay and lesbian people in many places.  More on Sullivan's comment in a subsequent posting.

As John Corvino points out, Douthat's latest piece turns on a distinction between premarital sex that is a prelude to monogamous marriage, and premarital sex that is mere promiscuity.  Douthat argues that, while premarital sexual activity is embedded in all cultures, and was even a strong feature of life in the halcyon years of the 1950s so beloved of American social conservatives, the premarital sexual activity of periods like the fifties was truly premarital, in that it envisaged a life of monogamous commitment for the couple engaging in premarital sexual activity.

And that resulted, Douthat maintains, in happiness: happiness for the couple that sowed its wild oats and then settled down to the sober yoke of marriage; happiness for society in general, whose stability depends on the strength of that yoke.  And happiness, above all, for women.  Since women need sexual stability in order to live happy and fulfilled lives.  

And so Corvino is right: with this essay, we're back on the same ground Douthat covered last August, when he maintained that societies fall apart when we don't have the strong yoke of monogamous opposite-sex marriage to tame the tiger of daddy's promiscuity and mommy's sly, cunning shopping around for the ideal male.  Embedded in Douthat's theory of monogamy is a model of male-female complementarity that inevitably (and deliberately) makes marriage all about a man and a woman.

And decidedly not about a man and a man and a woman and a woman.  Since the yoke of monogamous marriage is specifically designed to tame the two gendered tigers of male promiscuity and female hankering after ever more attractive alpha males.

And because this male-female complementarity argument about traditional marriage is becoming a new talking point for American conservatives opposed to same-sex marriage, those concerned to promote marriage equality for same-sex couples need to pay attention to arguments like the one Douthat is sketching in this diptych of essays about monogamy.  These two essays, in short, are not merely about monogamy or defending monogamy.  They're also about laying a philosophical foundation for understanding marriage that excludes same-sex marriage--or that places same-sex marriage on a footing of inferiority when it's compared to opposite-sex marriage.  

Essentially, here's what has happened fairly rapidly in the cultural and religious debate about same-sex marriage in the United States: initially, those opposed to same-sex marriage could fairly glibly argue that we can't, of course, countenance gay marriage without destroying traditional heterosexual marriage, because the latter is all about procreation.  And permitting socially or ecclesially sanctioned non-procreative marriages will radically undermine traditional marriages by calling procreativity into question as the central purpose of marriage.

However, as the arguments in the prop 8 trial in California revealed (and Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in that case, handed down only a few days before Douthat's first essay on monogamy came out, underscored this), this glib argument is increasingly difficult to advance, because it's clearly counter-factual.  No rational, coherent, persuasive argument can be made to exclude same-sex couples from the right of civil marriage when our society (and its faith communities) have long married heterosexual couples incapable of procreation.  Or heterosexual couples who have no intent of procreating.

And so the argument has had to be refined.  The search for a plausible-sounding and quasi-"rational" argument against same-sex marriage has had to continue.  The goalposts have had to be moved.  The goal remains the same: excluding same-sex couples from marriage.  What has shifted, as the goalposts have been shifted in the past several years, is how social conservatives are now choosing to go about attacking gay marriage.

They're now choosing to do so by advancing the argument that it's not so much the procreation thing that's at the center of marriage as a social institution stabilizing society.  It's the male-female thing.  It's the complementarity of males and females.  Without which you simply cannot have a real marriage.  And to endanger which by letting people of the same sex marry would expose society itself to serious danger.

Setting it on a slippery slope of promiscuity, since, without the shining, univocal ideal of monogamous male-female marriage standing before them, men might get the idea that promiscuity is the end-all and be-all of their lives.  And women might keep eternally shopping around for the higher-status alpha male.

And here's my take on the goal-post changing: this is what inevitably happens when the real intent of movements of social conservatism is not, as these movements characteristically claim, to keep society from falling apart under the pressure of anarchic movements for social change.  This is what inevitably happens when the real intent of movements of social conservatism is simply to keep justice at bay as long as possible--justice for an excluded, demeaned minority group.

With each advance that African Americans made towards full equality and civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, the goalposts shifted.  They moved a step further into the distance.  Every forward movement in the struggle for civil rights resulted in a consequent movement of the goalposts--a movement back, to make justice that much more unattainable.

Brown v. Board of Education mandated the desegregation of American schools with all deliberate speed, and school districts throughout the South announced that integration could not take place immediately (or ever) because social chaos would ensue if the changes mandated by Brown occurred hastily.  School districts like the one in which I attended school in south Arkansas put up one barrier after another to desegregation in the late 1950s and late 1960s.  One goalpost-shifting argument after another was proposed to explain why our speed at obeying the court mandate had to be at snail's pace--and why desegregation could not be accomplished for years to come.  Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stopped the insincere arguments and the goalpost-changing . . . .

To change metaphors: in his classic study The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn notes that scientific paradigms shift when so much new information has been amassed to call an existing paradigm into question, that one cannot incorporate all the new information into the old paradigm without exploding the paradigm.  Kuhn points out that when we have to begin adding explanation to explanation to account for new pieces of information, while seeking to keep in place a paradigm threatened by the new pieces of information, we might do well to begin thinking about the steep price we're paying for keeping the status quo intact.  And about the implausibility of the paradigm we're defending with ever more labyrinthine and complexified explanations, when simpler, more elegant explanations for how things behave are at hand.

In American society today, vis-a-vis same-sex marriage, the paradigm shift is well underway.  And as that shift continues, what will inevitably become crystal clear, as social conservatives and some people of faith resist this paradigm shift with new, ever more complex, goal-deferring arguments designed to keep justice at bay, is this: driving the resistance to same-sex marriage among American social conservatives and people of faith allied to them never has been an overarching desire to defend traditional marriage.  Driving this movement, which is willing to bend over backwards at each new juncture in the march towards equality for gay and lesbian citizens to invent ever more abstruse arguments for the superiority of opposite-sex marriage, has been sheer prejudice.  The intent to keep a stigmatized minority group in its place . . . .

USCCB President Timothy Dolan on Cuomo Concubinage Controversy: Tempest in Teapot

A day ago, Brian made a comment at my recent posting about the remarks of the president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, Timothy Dolan, re: the Obama administration's decision not to defend DOMA.  Brian's comment--which notes (rightly) that there's an inbuilt dialogic space exclusively for the powerful in the American Catholic church--points to a New York Times article on Tuesday, in which Nicholas Confessore discusses the response of Dolan to calls to exclude New York governor Andrew Cuomo from the eucharist.  Since, you know, he lives with a live-in girlfriend, Food Network talk maven Sandra Lee.  Without benefit of holy matrimony.

The push to exclude Cuomo from communion began with Edward Peters, a professor at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and a consultant to the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura (headed by none other than Cardinal Ray Burke, the "de facto pope of the Republican Catholic church" who called for U.S. Catholic bishops to ban "grievously anti-life"--read: Democratic--politicians from communion in the 2008 elections).  Peters denounced Cuomo's reception of communion as "objectively sacrilegious."  Because of, you know, Sandra.  And the live-in thing.  Which is concubinage.

And we all know what the Catholic church thinks about concubinage.  Especially for high-profile Democrats.  Who happen to support same-sex marriage.

And, of course, as the USCCB president and a high-profile Catholic bishop in the same state in which Cuomo lives, Timothy Dolan had no choice except to jump into the fray.  Dolan and several other bishops had lunch with Gov. Cuomo Tuesday, and here's the USCCB president's take on the Cuomo-concubinage-communion controversy following the lunch: asked whether the concubinage came up during lunch, and the question of communion, Dolan states,

Thank God it didn’t, because it was a bit of a tempest in a teapot.  We were just happy to be there, and he obviously was, too.  We got lunch out of it.

And isn't that nice of Archbishop Dolan.  And pastoral and all.

But here's the thing: as his recent remarks about the Obama administration and the defense of marriage act indicate, it's not a tempest in a teapot for the USCCB president when two committed gay people seek the right of civil marriage.  To, you know, solemnize and even consecrate (if a church or synagogue agrees) their union--to move it beyond mere concubinage.

Remember what Dolan just said about the Obama administration's judgment that DOMA--with its legalized discrimination prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying civilly--can't be defended constitutionally?  For Dolan, that decision to stop defending indefensible discrimination is an "alarming and grave injustice."

And remember what that hoary neo-culture war document seeking desperately to gin up new attacks on gay and lesbian Americans, the Manhattan Declaration--which Dolan signed and whose planning meetings he helped organize and host--says about marriage?:

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

But as the Manhattan Declaration goes on to argue, the real threat to the sanctity of marriage in our society today is not heterosexual couples living in concubinage, or divorcing and remarrying à la the Newt.  It's the gays.

It's the gays and their--get this--their desire to marry!  To live in stable, committed, blessed relationships.

That's what's undermining traditional marriage.

And that's why the gays and their desire to marry are definitely not a tempest in a teapot, but a real tempest, such that it is an "alarming and grave injustice" to question discriminatory laws that do not permit same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage.

But when a high-profile heterosexual Catholic lives in an extra-marital relationship and people ask whether his "concubinage" gives scandal and should cause him to be barred from communion, that's a tempest in a teapot.

Something seems not quite right about this picture, doesn't it?

Because remember that while the USCCB president finds the push to deny communion to Gov. Cuomo on the ground that his lifestyle gives public scandal and his reception of communion is "objectively sacrilegious" a bit of a tempest in a teapot, Catholic bishops in the U.S. keep denying communion to people who even dare to wear a rainbow sash or pin, simply to show solidarity with their LGBT brothers and sisters.  The most recent highly publicized case of that action involved Bishop Nienstedt in Minnesota last fall.

And remember that in Colorado last spring, the children of a lesbian couple who belong to a Catholic parish and are practicing Catholics were turned away from a Catholic school, with the blessing of Archbishop Chaput of Denver.  And remember that a Catholic college in Pennsylvania has just fired a faculty member, stating publicly that his being openly gay and partnered puts him at odds with Catholic teaching.   And remember that the U.S. Catholic bishops joined with other religious rights groups to send a letter to Congress last August asking for their continued "right" to engage in such discrimination in workplaces and institutions owned by faith-based groups.

As I say, a bit of a tempest in a teapot when people call for excluding Gov. Cuomo from communion because he lives in "concubinage," per the president of the USCCB.  But decidedly not a tempest in a teapot when it comes to discriminating against gay folks. 

Something's not quite right with this picture, is it?

Oh, and about the now-Catholic Mr. Gingrich?  And his three wives and the affairs and all of that?  It turns out they were all about his excessive love of his country.  Love of country made him philander.  And swap wife for wife.  And treat the discarded wives with shocking disdain.

I kid you not.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan Responds to Obama Administration's DOMA Decision: Redefining Discrimination as Justice

As a brief postscript to my posting earlier today reflecting on Richard Gaillardetz's analysis of the 2009 U.S. bishops' pastoral letter "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan," I want to take note of the response of the current president of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference, Timothy Dolan, to the recent announcement of the Obama administration that it will not defend the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). 

Several days ago, Archbishop Dolan released a statement condemning the Obama administration's  DOMA decision as an "alarming and grave injustice."  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the current administration "has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny."

Dolan's rejoinder to the Attorney General: DOMA "does not single out people based on sexual 'orientation' or inclination. Every person deserves to be treated with justice, compassion, and respect, a proposition of natural law and American law that we as Catholics vigorously promote. Unjust discrimination against any person is always wrong."

It's clear from Dolan's response that the question of discrimination--of answering charges that their position on civil marriage for same-sex couples is discriminatory on the face of it--is first and foremost in the bishops' attempt to deal with growing societal acceptance of same-sex marriage and of the right of same-sex couples to enter civil marriages.  As I noted when the bishops issued an immediate response to the Obama administration's decision through general counsel Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., what the Catholic bishops of the U.S. continue to push for is their "right" to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation, and to have this "right" enshrined in and protected by law.

The bishops also continue to ask for their "right" to define their radically unjust position--namely, that people of faith opposed to same-sex marriage should be permitted to block civil marriage for same-sex couples--as just.  In short, the bishops are asking for the right to redefine what the terms "discrimination" and "justice" actually mean, and to twist the meaning of both terms to make them mean the precise opposite of what both terms mean, when it comes to the bishops' response to same-sex marriage.

And so Dolan states,

It is hardly "discrimination" to say that a husband and a wife have a unique and singular relationship that two persons of the same sex -- or any unmarried persons -- simply do not and cannot have.  Nor is it "discrimination" to believe that the union of husband and wife has a distinctive and exclusive significance worthy of promotion and protection by the state.  It is not "discrimination" to say that having both a mother and a father matters to and benefits a child. Nor is it "discrimination" to say that the state has more than zero interest in ensuring that children will be intimately connected with and raised by their mother and father.

And so Archbishop Dolan concludes, "Protecting the definition of marriage is not merely permissible, but actually necessary as a matter of justice," he added.

Note how Dolan's response turns the facts about the U.S. bishops' opposition to same-sex marriage on their head, and how it seeks to redefine discrimination as justice.  No one is seeking to force any community of faith to redefine marriage or to accept any other definition of marriage than the definition held by that particular community of faith.

What is being contested, however, is the right of people of faith including the Catholic bishops to determine who may be civilly married, who has the right to enter into a civil marriage contract, and who can determine what civil marriage means.  The bishops are asking for the right not to debate questions of marriage in the public square, and to come to some agreement, based on open, free, respectful dialogue in the public square about how issues of marriage are to be handled by their society.

They are asking for their "right" to control the debate, to impose their definition of marriage on everyone in a pluralistic, democratic society.  And they're asking for their "right" to deny access to civil marriage to same-sex couples, even when a growing number of citizens of the country--now over half--support the right of same-sex couples to same-sex marriage.

Which means, in the final analysis, the bishops are asking for the right to redefine the terms discrimination and justice, since they are overtly promoting discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens that is no longer supported by societal consensus.  And in doing so, they are defining that discrimination as justice and are shouting that it is a "grave injustice"--to them!--not to permit them to behave unjustly towards a vulnerable minority group.

And to return to the discussion of Richard Gaillardetz's article: this is among the reasons many American Catholics are now walking away in droves from the Catholic church.  Doublespeak.  Injustice and discrimination disguised as justice and love.  The refusal to entertain questions and engage in dialogue when social consensus (and Catholic lay consensus) on various issues is shifting.  The insistence on dictating rather than listening and engaging in dialogue.

And all of this when the bishops are living in a glass house vis-a-vis their own moral  values and moral lives, in their handling of the abuse crisis.

Richard Gaillardetz on the State of American Catholicism: My Response--"I Was a Stranger and You . . ."

In the discussion thread following my posting about Andrew Sullivan's latest comments re: the abuse crisis in the Catholic church this past weekend, a sharp reader, Brian Gallagher, drew a connection between Sullivan's analysis and questions that Catholic theologian Richard Gaillardetz raises in a recent lecture he gave on the state of American Catholicism today.  Gaillardetz's lecture is online now at the National Catholic Reporter website. 

Gaillardetz gave the lecture recently at University of Toledo as part of the Murray/Bacik lecture series.  It's entitled “The State of the Church, 2011: Reflections on the State of American Catholicism Today.” 

For anyone concerned about the current state and future of American Catholicism, the Gaillardetz lecture is  well worth reading.  For a snapshot of the reflections of various Catholic thinkers of the center, including theologians, about the Gaillardetz lecture, see the response to Peter Steinfels's recent posting re: the lecture at the Commonweal blog site.

My intent here is not to summarize this lecture, or even to discuss it in toto--though I highly recommend it to readers and hope that those concerned to understand where American Catholicism may be headed today will read it carefully.  What I'd like to zero in on here is  what Gaillardetz has to say about the 2009 pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops entitled, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan."  (For my own reflections on that pastoral letter at the time it was issued, see these two postings from October and November 2009.)

Gaillardetz makes his comments about the 2009 bishops' document on marriage in the context of his broader argument that, even if American Catholicism shows some signs of flourishing today, nonetheless "something is amiss" and the church in the U.S. finds itself in "a state of unrest."  And to know how to understand and address this situation, we need to know how we have arrived at "this troubling, enigmatic moment in American Catholicism," and we have to think about where we intend to go from here.

Gaillardetz does an historical sounding to show how we've gotten to where we are today.  He surveys the birth and death of a pre-Vatican subcultural Catholicism rooted in ethnic enclaves that had not been fully enculturated in mainstream American culture, and to which there was often resistance on the part of the mainstream. He then examines how post-Vatican II American Catholicism seemed to enter into a period of flourishing as American Catholics entered the social mainstream and were encouraged by Vatican II to engage in fruitful dialogue with mainstream culture.  

And then came the backlash  in the period from 1990 to the present, in which a new model of leadership was imposed by John Paul II and his successor Benedict, with a strong emphasis on "reforming the reform" of Vatican II and on a restorationist model of the church that once again pits the church against the social mainstream and accents its role of countercultural resistance.  In this resistance, a new generation of bishop-leaders have been encouraged sharply to delineate the difference between authentic Catholicism and the values and ideas of secular society.

And I must note that while the preceding summary faithfully replicates Gaillardetz's framework of analysis and--I hope--his primary points within that framework, it also makes free use of my own categories of analysis to understand the trajectory he's sketching here.  Free use of my own categories for which I don't want Gaillardetz blamed . . . .

And the end result of that shift to a new model of episcopal and Vatican leadership with John Paul II and Benedict--the end result of the restorationist "reform of the reform"--is that we now find ourselves at this point:  as Gaillardetz notes, Pew Forum data in the spring of 2008, which I've cited repeatedly on this blog, showed that by 2008, one in three American adults raised Catholic has left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.  If all former Catholics in the U.S. were grouped into a single denomination, that denomination would form the second largest church in the country.  

And here's the lesson Gaillardetz draws from that study: 

The future of American Catholicism will depend in no small measure on our willingness to take seriously this mass exodus from the Church. We need to ask ourselves, what is going on here? 

In Gaillardetz's view, data gathered by the Pew report indicate that many of those now  leaving the Catholic church in the U.S. in this mass exodus are walking "because the quality of church life is poor and church leadership appears inattentive to their real pastoral concerns."  And it's in this context that Gaillardetz examines the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage--as an example of the poor quality of church life and inattentive leadership that are precipitating the mass exodus.  He writes:

Let me offer a simple example. In 2009 the American bishops released a pastoral letter on marriage titled, "Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan." When I first heard of the forthcoming letter, I was encouraged. I believe that in our current "upgrade" culture, two people remaining committed to one another for life is one of the most demanding things anyone could undertake. Pastoral assistance and support from church leaders was certainly welcome. The document that appeared includes very helpful and even inspiring passages, but its emphasis, regrettably, is on the intrinsic evils of artificial birth control and same-sex marriage. Now I recognize that these are official Catholic teachings and this is not the forum to debate them, but here is the problem. When my wife and I are going through a difficult patch in our marriage, it is not like at the end of some marital spat we look at one another and say, "boy, I wish those gay people weren't trying to get married, it would make our marriage a lot easier!" I understand the need on occasion to clarify official church teaching, but when a preoccupation with doctrinal orthodoxy, focused on a few select and controversial teachings, trumps expending the necessary energy to listen to the felt concerns of ordinary married people, well, you get our current situation. 

I'd like to draw attention to the preceding passage for two reasons.  The first is this: it makes a very compelling case for Gaillardetz's thesis that people are walking away from the Catholic church in the U.S. rapidly due to a poor quality of church life and to poor and inattentive leadership.

But, second, the prescriptive analysis embedded in Gaillardetz's discussion of the problem--his implied solution to the  problem--only underscores the problem, in my view.  It does not adequately address the problem and does not suggest a solution that will effectively address the problem at its base.  

Here's what I hear Gaillardetz saying: My wife and I were "encouraged" when we first heard that the bishops were going to issue this pastoral document about marriage in 2009.  We welcome teaching about marriage that helps us live our commitment as a married couple more faithfully.  We live in an "upgrade" culture in which the coinage of marriage as a lifelong commitment is being debased.  And my wife and I welcome the guidance of our church's pastoral leaders as we struggle to live our marital commitment within that cultural context. 

But the bishops' preoccupation with "the intrinsic evils of artificial birth control and same-sex marriage" hasn't proven helpful to us or other married heterosexual Catholic couples.  It seems absurd to us to imagine that, when we struggle to live faithfully as a married couple, same-sex couples impede us or threaten the sanctity of our marriage.

Good analysis, at one level.  The bishops' strange preoccupation with artificial contraception and same-sex marriage in a document whose ostensible purpose is to explain and defend the core values of marriage in a culture in which those values seem at risk makes little sense to many married Catholics like Gaillardetz.

I can understand this point. I welcome it.  I'm glad Gaillardetz is making it.

But there's this: for many of us, the announcement of the bishops in 2009 that they were going to issue a pastoral document about marriage was anything but welcome.  Because we don't belong to the church in the same way that Gaillardetz and his wife belong.  We are not welcomed in the church in the same way that Gaillardetz and his wife are welcomed.  We do not have the entree that they have.

And rather than strengthening and affirming our marriages, the document would--we knew beyond a shadow of doubt when we heard it was in the hopper--attack.  Undermine.  Exclude.  Condemn.

And so we who are not welcome, included, affirmed are far less apt than Gaillardetz and his wife are to yield to the magisterium the automatic right and privilege of declaring "official Catholic teaching:" about marriage --not while those doing the defining and declaring overlook our graced experience and ignore our contribution to the Catholic community as faithful disciples of Jesus.  We are far less inclined than are Gaillardetz and his wife to welcome a "pastoral" document whose intent is, for us and our brothers and sisters, anything but pastoral.  And we're far less inclined than are Gaillardetz and his wife to relinquish to the bishops the task of defining official Catholic teaching about marriage in this unilateral and exclusive  and non-dialogical way that ignores our lived experience of grace and our lives of gay discipleship within the Christian community.

The problem on which I want to zero in here is the dialogic problem.  It's a central problem of American Catholicism.  It is part and parcel of a much larger problem that underlies the current mass exodus from the church.  This dialogic problem has everything to do with the fundamental reasons that people are rapidly leaving the American Catholic church. As Gaillardetz himself says, there is, at base, a profound lack of hospitality, of welcome, in American Catholicism--and people are walking away as a result:

For every former Catholic who has left the church over a doctrinal question, I suspect there are many more who have left because of their concrete experience of local parish life. Insipid preaching, poorly planned liturgies, a basic lack of Christian hospitality—these are the realities that are driving people away. 

And here's the point I want to make, precisely, in response to Gaillardetz's analysis of the 2009 marriage letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops: there is nowhere in American Catholicism today any official dialogic space in which lay Catholics can sit down and talk together about the various experiences of glaring unwelcome that are quickly driving one person after another out of the church.  There are, almost nowhere in American Catholic parishes, universities, dioceses, organizations any welcoming dialogic spaces in which gay and lesbian Catholics can speak about our experiences as followers of Jesus, as faithful Catholics struggling to live lives faithful to the gospel within a church whose pastoral leaders have declared war on us.

Gaillardetz's lecture notes our obligation (and our need) to "wrestle" with the tradition.  And this is a valuable recommendation.  But wrestling with the tradition, in the Catholic context, requires communal wrestling.  It requires wrestling within the community, wrestling in dialogue with the tradition, with the pastoral leaders of the church, and with one's brothers and sisters in Christ.  It requires welcoming dialogic spaces in which Catholics with various life experiences and viewpoints can come together to talk.  And to share our lives.

There is no space at all, there is no dialogic space at all, within the American Catholic church today in which gay and lesbian Catholics are invited to wrestle with the tradition in dialogue with their brothers and sisters who happen to be heterosexual.  There is no wrestling space at all within American Catholicism in which the kind of dialogue on which I reported yesterday, where Steve and I met with an African-American church and shared our experience as a gay couple with them, takes place.

And Gaillardetz's own analysis of the shortcomings of the 2009 pastoral letter on marriage only deepens the problem--even as it rightly points to the tremendous pastoral shortcomings of the bishops' current stance on issues of marriage and sexuality.  Gaillardetz's analysis implies that the pastoral problem created by this stance primarily affects heterosexual married Catholics like himself and his wife--heterosexual married Catholics who would otherwise welcome and be "encouraged" by the bishops' "official" declarations re: marriage. 

For many of us who share Gaillardetz's analysis of the poor theology and anti-pastoral intent of the 2009 marriage document, the fundamental problem (and therefore the solution to the problem) appears quite different.  It's a problem of being unable to welcome or be encouraged by any statement issued by a group of pastoral leaders whose fundamental message to us has been, for some time now, that we ourselves are unwelcome. 

And that problem--which is to say, the deep, well-nigh intractable problem of unwelcome and lack of hospitality which is driving one person after another out of the church--is only compounded by our  heterosexual and married brother and sister Catholics, insofar as they continue to seem unable to grasp the dimensions of this problem.  Or what the experience of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters within the church has been and continues to be.

Or what deep damage the male-dominated heterosexism of our leaders, our community, and our institutions continues to do to all of us.

The graphic for this posting is artist Andrea Bowers' "Quilt of Radical Hospitality" from Susanne Vielmetter's Los Angeles Projects gallery.