• Nearly three-quarters of Catholics favor either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or
allowing them to form civil unions (31%). Only 22% of Catholics say there should be no legal
recognition of a gay couple’s relationship.
• Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Catholics favor laws that would protect gay and lesbian people against
discrimination in the workplace; 63% of Catholics favor allowing gay and lesbian people to serve
openly in the military; and 6-in-10 (60%) Catholics favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt
children.
• Less than 4-in-10 Catholics give their own church top marks (a grade of an A or a B) on its handing
of the issue of homosexuality; majorities of members of most other religious groups give their
churches high marks.
• A majority of Catholics (56%) believe that sexual relations between two adults of the same gender is
not a sin.

<Snark> Perhaps this data came about because Catholics are more likely than the general public to know a gay man: their local priest. </Snark>

In all seriousness, this is probably further confirmation that Catholics look to their own consciences rather than to the teaching of their church when deciding what’s right and wrong.  In other words, they’re effectively Protestant.

Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women – with some surprising successes.

So far, 11 marriages have been performed. Haaretz conducted an email interview with one such couple, Etti and Roni (not their real names ).

Etti and Roni, both religious, were married five years ago. Though they were honest with each other about their sexual orientations from their first meeting, to the outside world, they portray themselves as a normal heterosexual couple. Today, they have two children, and are thrilled with the results.

This might work for some gay people, but perhaps not most.  One of the unsurprising problems that arises:

“Most of the couples agree not to have relationships with members of their own sex, but if there are ‘lapses’ once every few years, they don’t see this as a betrayal,” he said. “Generally, it’s between them and their Creator.”

It seems to me that it would be easier just to marry someone you genuinely love—perhaps I’m too old fashioned.

Think for a minute: Why do people oppose same-sex marriage in the first place?

They do so because they fear that otherwise America’s young people will end up like … Bristol and Levi: having sex and raising children without regard to marriage.

Karol’s response is my own:

For all the reasons I’ve heard that people oppose gay marriage, I have never, ever, heard that one. Because, see, having sex and raising children without marriage is what gay people are doing now. And, even without gay marriage, so are Bristol and Levi.

To: The Gay Rights Movement

From: Nick Machiavelli

Re: Fear, Love, and Hate

I note, with some approval, that some of you have read my little work about how leaders should behave, but caution that what works for a prince might be counterproductive for queens.

When I wrote The Prince, bear in mind that I never expected the masses to read my work.  Further, I advised that the masses should remain ignorant of a prince’s ulterior motives.  It’s one thing if people fear rather than love a prince (so long as they don’t hate him); it’s a very different thing when an entire group of people attempts to be feared rather than loved; they’ll surely be hated.  Besides, I might be a sixteenth century Florentine, but even I know that the queer community is perpetually in danger of being seen as mere comic relief.

Your real problem, of course, is that most straight people don’t make the same fine distinctions amongst you gays as they do among their fellow straights.  More bluntly, they think of you as a squalling interest group that should stay at the kids’ table, away from the grown ups.  No adult cares much what goes on at the kids’ table–indulge or discipline but don’t take ‘em seriously–and most straight folk feel much the same way about you.

You do need a strategy change if you seek equality, but remember that change can always be for the worse.  Consider the black civil rights movement for a moment.

Any aggrieved minority can produce an explosive character like Malcolm X.  (For sake of this memo, I speak of the black supremacist X, rather than as he was at the end of his life, when he renounced racism and left the Nation of Islam.)  Had the civil rights movment produced nothing but Xs, Jim Crow laws would probably still be on the books, and may well have spread outside the states of the old confederacy.  Malcolm X was feared and hated.  Militancy in minorities is a quick route to provoking a harsh reaction from a threatened majority.

The civil rights movement succeeded because their dominant figure was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  They were peaceful and patient, but they spoke with firm moral authority.  They marched in their Sunday best rather than feather boas.

Serious dress and thoughtful argument are outward and visible signs of inner grace–which is precisely what the straight majority thinks your community lacks.  Until you can demonstrate such grace, you are doomed to remain at the kids’ table.

We take very different positions on gay marriage. We have had heated debates on the subject. Nonetheless, we agree that the time is ripe for a deal that could give each side what it most needs in the short run, while moving the debate onto a healthier, calmer track in the years ahead.

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

Read it all.  (H/T)

I always believed you were born gay, even before that became the only acceptable opinion on homosexuality.

I now know FOUR gay people who have “gone straight” and married women.

I also know one straight guy who, after a bad break-up with a woman, decided to only date men.

What’s up with that?

Sexual orientation is complicated.  My own theory is that it’s shaped both by genes and the environment.  One ex-boyfriend of mine has since married a woman; I’ve lost touch with him and have no idea if they’re still together.  (No comments from the peanut gallery about how I turned him straight, please.  First, I’ve probably heard it already; second, this man had quite a few other issues.)  I also dated a transman for a time; when a friend asked me if this made me gay or straight, I suggested that either way I was queer.

I don’t think that “born gay” is the only acceptable opinion on homosexuality, but activists on both sides are intent on framing the issue as either involuntary or voluntary.  That something can be complicated is too advanced an idea for the gay and anti-gay rights activist alike.

Catholic charities in Massachusetts once handled many adoptions, and they refused to place children in the homes of same-sex couples, which got them sued.  When they lost the lawsuit and the court said they could not “discriminate” against same-sex couples, the Catholic charities shut down rather than be forced to go against their faith.

Hypothetical question: could a same-sex couple get married in a Catholic church?  The church would argue that since they don’t recognize same-sex unions, they could not.  Quite a few gay Catholics would love to pick a fight over this.  As surely as George W. Bush will mangle the English language, someone is going to file a lawsuit about this. 

Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) foresaw this question and proposed a thoughtful and humane way to deal with it:

[T]he churches should reconsider their roles in authenticating marriage. Governments issue birth certificates; churches issue baptismal certificates. Governments issue death certificates; churches pray the funerals. Governments issue divorces; Churches annul. Both work within their separate and necessary spheres, serving the corporeal and the spiritual. It is only in the issue of marriage that church and state have commingled authority. That should perhaps change, and soon. Let the government certify and the churches sanctify according to their rites and sacraments.

Given that expensive litigation is as American as arrested development, we probably won’t do it her way.  Let the ugly begin.

For gays to demand that sincere Christians cease lobbying Washington about the increasing liberal drift of government policy shows colossal historical amnesia. For pity’s sake, it was the flamboyant, thunderous activism of evangelical Protestant ministers in the 19th century that powered the abolitionist movement and led to the end of slavery in the United States. (Of course, these massively documented facts were concealed in Steven Spielberg’s Liberal Hollywood Lite version of “Amistad.”)

Abolitionist ideas, traceable to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, came to America from England via the Quakers in the late 18th century. It was thanks to the Quakers’ religious presence in Pennsylvania that Philadelphia became the birthplace of the first Anti-Slavery Society. Within five years of its founding in 1833, there were more than 1,350 such organizations in the United States.

Similarly, eloquent Protestant ministers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson have been central to the modern Civil Rights Movement, which secured voting rights for African-Americans and opened the way to the election of a rising number of black politicians at the local, state and federal levels.

So gays should quit bitching about Southern Baptists exercising their constitutional right to free speech about homosexuality, which is indeed condemned by the Bible, despite the tortuous casuistry of so many self-interested parties, including clerics. I have been warning and warning for years that the insulting disrespect shown by gay activists to religion — which has been going on for 20 years virtually unchecked on TV talk shows, with their biased liberal hosts — would produce a backlash over time.

La Paglia wrote this over a decade ago, and she’s still right.  What seems to have happened is that gay activists have relied so heavily on the courts to push their agenda that they’ve forgotten (or perhaps never learned) how to make an argument that will convince ordinary people rather than judges.  And ordinary people, God love ‘em, are rightly suspicious when unelected judges start attempting to remake society.  The common consensus about marriage these days—as much as a consensus that can be made—is that the institution is in bad shape.  Conservatives and liberals alike probably agree on that much.  The consensus breaks down over why this important institution is faltering.

Perhaps there will never be a full consensus over what to do, but right now it’s hard for both sides to disagree without being disagreeable.  A few stories.

Several years ago, I was floored when I heard an black grandmother refer to Strom Thurmond as a lovely man.  I asked how she came to that conclusion about the old segregationist firebrand, and I’ll try to put it as she did.  “He didn’t understand us.  He didn’t understand how it hurt.  But after all those civil rights bills passed that he opposed, he backed them.  He hired black folk to work for him, worked as hard for us as constituents as he did for the whites.  To him, he was a segregationist then, and now he wasn’t, so what was the big deal?  And I realized that he never understood the pain, that a small thing to him was a huge thing to us, maybe he never would, so how should I deal with it?  I know a lot of people, some of them my family, were mad, and stayed mad.  But I don’t like doing that.  When a man starts doing right, it’s time to let the anger go.”  It’s usually a bad thing to be angry, but it’s usually a good thing to be as big-hearted as she was.

Another story.  A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a conservative activist.  This woman was irked about an advertisement that showed a same-sex couple, and didn’t I think it was appalling?  No, I replied, but then I happen to be gay.  Her reaction was to explain that she was sorry, to hug me, and suggest I change “or else.”  That condescension enrages.  It certainly means well, but it also implies that a superiority on her part that doesn’t impress me.  It’s the sort of story that just about every gay person has, and it explains—but does not excuse—the rage of the No on Prop 8 crowd.  I considered raging against the activist, and then I rememberd that grandmother.  To the woman I was dealing with, my huge issue was a little one for her.  I let it go.

Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) documents the fury of both sides and proposes a solution over at Pajamas:

A willingness to disregard established freedoms of expression and worship in pursuit of new freedoms will ultimately destroy more than it creates. Or, as Pope Leo the Great wrote, “Those who are not good to others are bad to themselves.”

That sounds simplistic, but it is also correct. Tearing others down does not build up. Instead of bullying the electorate, the gay community needs to calmly make their case, ask for support, and bring it to a vote as many times as it takes. If the Christians are wrong to proselytize without actually getting to know their neighbors, well, the gays are also wrong to browbeat, intimidate, or ruin others, instead of working within the democratic process.

The Christians at Castro need to remember that Jesus joined others in community. Excusing nothing, he loved others, even in all their faults and — only when asked to — he healed them. He never just said, “Hey, I’m going to whip a little faith on you, whether you want it or not.”

Meanwhile, the churches should reconsider their roles in authenticating marriage. Governments issue birth certificates; churches issue baptismal certificates. Governments issue death certificates; churches pray the funerals. Governments issue divorces; Churches annul. Both work within their separate and necessary spheres, serving the corporeal and the spiritual. It is only in the issue of marriage that church and state have commingled authority. That should perhaps change, and soon. Let the government certify and the churches sanctify according to their rites and sacraments.

Mrs. Scalia’s proposal is a good one.  In the mean time, I’ll hope (probably in vain) for civility.