Open Theism Discussion Board

Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Questions about Christianity > Bishop brings reason to issue of gay benefits

Forum Quick Jump

[ << Previous Thread | Next Thread >> | Show Newest Post First ]

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted Today 9:09 AM (GMT -6)

Bishop brings reason to issue of gay benefits

http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archi...703/110703q.htm
National Catholic Reporter

The latest skirmish in the culture wars -- what rights, if any, government should recognize for committed gay partners -- shows no signs of abating. Worcester, Mass., Bishop Daniel P. Reilly joined the discussion last month and, amazingly enough, emerged unscathed. Stronger even.

Reilly told legislators that the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, made up of the dioceses of Boston, Worcester, Springfield and Fall River, was unequivocally opposed to legislation that would recognize gay “marriage” or “civil unions.” But the church is open, he said, to discussing what public benefits should accrue to those in non-traditional living arrangements.

Marriage is a legal arrangement that carries with it civil benefits. Among them: pension and medical benefits, hospital visitation, and deference in child-rearing. “If the goal is to look at individual benefits and determine who should be eligible beyond spouses, then we will join the discussion,” said Reilly.

Reilly, thankfully, did more than assert church teaching to the legislators. He engaged the issue on the church’s terms, saying such benefits are a matter of “distributive justice.” His remarks came at a particularly fortuitous moment, as the last few months have been a very trying time for gay Catholics, their families and loved ones.

First, in early June, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith took up the question of “Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons.”

Said the congregation: “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

Then, in September, the 47-member administrative committee of the U.S. bishops’ conference declared their “general support for a Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Let’s take them one by one.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cites “experience” as the basis for the claim that gay partners are inherently ill-equipped for parenting, that by virtue of their sexual orientation, such couples inherently commit “violence” against children.

To which we ask: Whose experience?

America is full of lousy parents. Twelve-step programs, our overcrowded prisons, and the psychotherapy industry thrive as a result. But if “experience” is our only guide, then the Vatican bureaucrats who wrote the statement need to get out more.

Heterosexual Americans possess considerable experience with gay couples and their children. They go to PTA meetings with them, serve on parish councils with them, and share carpooling duties for overscheduled youngsters

The bottom line? Like the offspring of their heterosexual counterparts, some of the children of gay couples will keep therapists thriving for decades, while others -- by all outward appearances respectful and inquiring kids -- will grow up to be contributing members of society and, perhaps, their church.

And what of the bishops and their support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman?

One would think that a call by the nation’s largest religious denomination for a constitutional amendment on a controversial topic would be the result of broad discussion .

A wide array of constitutional scholars and experts on marriage would be consulted, gay and straight Catholics surveyed, Catholics in the pews polled, and the topic placed on the agenda for discussion by the full body of bishops.

There are, after all, many issues to consider:

Some say the most prominent current version would not have the intended effect. Prohibition didn’t end drinking and the 15th Amendment didn’t guarantee voting rights for more than a century after passage.
The hurdles to amending the Constitution -- passage by a congressional super majority and adoption by 38 of the 50 states -- are formidable.
Other means (legislation comes to mind) might achieve the aim without resorting to tinkering with the constitutional structure.
And, most important, is it desirable?
But rather than engage the debate, the bishops’ Administrative Committee emerged from its closed-door deliberations and declared the U.S. church in favor of the most extreme alternative currently on the table. No hearings, no input, no discussion. No one knows what the process involved. And the result, whatever their intention, aligns the U.S. church with the most extreme gay bashers imaginable, those whose vitriol is directed at both sin and sinner.

And then there’s Bishop Daniel Reilly.

“Some argue that it is unfair to offer only married couples certain socioeconomic benefits,” Reilly told the committee. “That is a different question from the meaning of marriage itself.”

“The civil union bill before this committee confuses the two issues, changing the meaning of spouse in order to give global access to all marital benefits to same-sex partners in a civil union. This alters the institution of marriage by expanding whom the law considers to be spouses. Let’s not mix the two issues.”

Reilly’s comments won’t please those who want no legal distinctions made between gay unions and heterosexual marriage. And he’s sure to draw fire from some Catholics and from the Christian right for acknowledging that gay couples and their children face unjust discrimination.

But his remarks were offered with a spirit of humility and Christian charity -- exactly what’s been lacking of late.

National Catholic Reporter, November 7, 2003

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/19/2003 11:48 AM (GMT -6)

Hearts & Minds
+++++++++++++++++++++
Gays and marriage: A middle way

by Jim Wallis

This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that gay and
lesbian couples in that state are legally entitled to marry,
thereby entitling them to the same "legal, financial, and social
benefits" as heterosexual couples. The topic now seems destined
to continue as one of the most controversial issues in America,
and will likely play a prominent role in next year's election
debates.

Over the past decade, this "family values" question has become
very difficult, and polarized by both the Religious Right and
the cultural Left. To move forward, we must simply refuse the
false choices being offered by both sides.

The Left has misdiagnosed the roots of our present social
crisis, mostly leaving out the critical dimension of family
breakdown as a fundamental component of problems like poverty
and violence. These issues are not just important to the
Religious Right, or simply bourgeois concerns. We do need to
rebuild strong and healthy two-parent family systems. We
desperately need more families with moms and dads and kids,
strong male and female role models in both "nuclear" and
extended family systems. It's not a matter of whether that
should be "the norm"; it simply is the norm in this society and
every other one. The question, rather, is how that family norm
can be a healthy one.

Right now family breakups, broken promises, marital infidelity,
bad parenting, child abuse, male domination, violence against
women, and the choosing of material over family values are all
combining to make the family norm in America more and more
unhealthy. A critical mass of healthy traditional families is
absolutely essential to the well-being of any society. That
should be clear to us by now, especially in neighborhoods where
intact families have all but disappeared.

But the Right has seized upon this agenda and turned it into a
mean-spirited crusade. To say gay and lesbian people are
responsible for the breakdown of the heterosexual family is
simply wrong. That breakdown is causing a great social crisis
that impacts us all, but it is not the fault of gays and
lesbians. It has very little to do with them. Their civil and
human rights must also be honored, respected, and defended for a
society to be good and healthy. It is a question of both justice
and compassion. To be both pro-family and pro-gay and lesbian
civil rights could open up some common ground that might take us
forward.

There is a middle way. We can make sure that long-term gay and
lesbian partnerships are afforded legitimate legal protections
in a pluralistic society without changing our long-standing and
deeply rooted concept of marriage as being between a man and a
woman. That should continue to be the theology of the church and
the way our society best orders itself.

But do we really want to deny a gay person's right to be at
their loved one's deathbed in a hospital with "family
restrictions"? Do we also want to deny that person a voice in
the medical treatment of his or her partner? And do we really
want all the worldly possessions of a deceased gay person to
revert to the family who rejected them 30 years ago, instead of
going to their partner of the last 20 years? There are
fundamental issues of justice and fairness here that can be
resolved without a paradigm shift in our basic definition of
marriage.

Read more commentary by Jim Wallis at:
http://go.sojo.net/ct/9716bpn1xBAA/

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 11/22/2003 6:10 AM (GMT -6)

David Brooks starts off by giving the gospel of marital monogamy and then argues that such should be culturally mandated for homosexuals.

I think the issue of political marriages vs. religious marriages are two separate issues. We already have churches that allow for Gay marriages. So the issue over civil unions/marriages is one of rights/benefits currently given by the gov't to married heterosexuals, and which are provided for partners in many cases. I know they were provided at the UofMich and Michigan State.

However, the real subject of dispute here is how the issue should be framed. I think both pro-gay and anti-gay sides have tended to view the politics of gay marriages as concerning the public approbation of homosexuality as equally-valid as heterosexuality. Brooks is framing it as if it should be the public approbation of marriage in and of itself and what it entails as an ideal that both homosexuals and heterosexuals should aspire to.

However, this glosses over much detail. Like, how would gay-marriages be structured legally, if the goal is to promote long-standing relationships. And, should the marital law for heterosexuals be reformed from the no-fault divorce that was passed in 1982?
If permitting homosexual marriages is about re-enshrining marriage then such a legal change should also prompt us to make legal changes regarding heterosexual marriages as well.

dlw

The Power of Marriage
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 22, 2003

Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

But marriage is the opposite. Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond. It demands that they make an exclusive commitment to each other and thereby takes two discrete individuals and turns them into kin.

Few of us work as hard at the vocation of marriage as we should. But marriage makes us better than we deserve to be. Even in the chores of daily life, married couples find themselves, over the years, coming closer together, fusing into one flesh. Married people who remain committed to each other find that they reorganize and deepen each other's lives. They may eventually come to the point when they can say to each other: "Love you? I am you."

Today marriage is in crisis. Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. Worse, in some circles, marriage is not even expected. Men and women shack up for a while, produce children and then float off to shack up with someone else.

Marriage is in crisis because marriage, which relies on a culture of fidelity, is now asked to survive in a culture of contingency. Today, individual choice is held up as the highest value: choice of lifestyles, choice of identities, choice of cellphone rate plans. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but the culture of contingency means that the marriage bond, which is supposed to be a sacred vow till death do us part, is now more likely to be seen as an easily canceled contract.

Men are more likely to want to trade up, when a younger trophy wife comes along. Men and women are quicker to opt out of marriages, even marriages that are not fatally flawed, when their "needs" don't seem to be met at that moment.

Still, even in this time of crisis, every human being in the United States has the chance to move from the path of contingency to the path of marital fidelity — except homosexuals. Gays and lesbians are banned from marriage and forbidden to enter into this powerful and ennobling institution. A gay or lesbian couple may love each other as deeply as any two people, but when you meet a member of such a couple at a party, he or she then introduces you to a "partner," a word that reeks of contingency.

You would think that faced with this marriage crisis, we conservatives would do everything in our power to move as many people as possible from the path of contingency to the path of fidelity. But instead, many argue that gays must be banished from matrimony because gay marriage would weaken all marriage. A marriage is between a man and a woman, they say. It is women who domesticate men and make marriage work.

Well, if women really domesticated men, heterosexual marriage wouldn't be in crisis. In truth, it's moral commitment, renewed every day through faithfulness, that "domesticates" all people.

Some conservatives may have latched onto biological determinism (men are savages who need women to tame them) as a convenient way to oppose gay marriage. But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender. We're moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried."

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

Marriage is not voting. It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination.

Forum Information

Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 2:25 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads

Need Support? | Forum Help Manual