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| Well-known Omahan Marlon Brando, who didn't fool around, except when he did. If you know what we mean... |
Dear Father,(Sources)
You will soon learn from the local media about an effort that is underway to repeal the City of Omaha's sexual orientation anti-discrimination ordinance. The sponsor of this initiative - the Heritage Coalition - must collect 12,000 signatures from October to November to place the ordinance on the spring (2013) mayoral ballot. The sponsor believes that if given the opportunity, Omahans will vote to repeal this ordinance.
Representatives of the Heritage Coalition may try to solicit your support. As pastor of your parish, you are free to exercise your discretion in determining if and how you want to involve yourself or your parishioners in this effort which addresses an important moral issue. Examples of your involvement may include speaking about the issue in your parish, giving petitioners access to your parish events, scheduling information nights at your parish to discuss the issue, providing informational handouts to your parishioners, etc. If you and your parishioners choose to participate in this petition drive, I ask that there be no undue disruption of parish liturgies, nor distraction from the important moral issues at stake in national and state elections this fall.
You can contact Deacon Tim McNeil if you have questions about this ballot initiative. In the meantime, thank you for the care you provide the souls entrusted to you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Archbishop George Lucas
I'm kind of wondering where in the Bible it says that religious people should go out of their way to harm gay people, and discriminate against them?
ReplyDeleteThis archbishop seems to have missed the lessons on tolerance and empathy. The level of hatred and animus these people direct at gays makes me sick to my stomach... and makes me even more glad that I'm not religious. I don't think I could bear to be this evil.
Where in the Bible does it say homosexuality is the one sin that deserves to be singled out?
ReplyDeleteIs it discrimination to want to protect our way of life? Why should we have to hire anyone if they wish to carry on in ways which are in clear contradiction to natural law and our moral teachings? It is one thing (i.e. not a problem) if someone is gay, lives a chaste life and doesn't promote any sort of homosexualist activism. It is quite another thing if someone were to flaunt this "lifestyle" and expect us to smile and nod as if everything is just peachy. We merely recognize the harm done to misuse of sexuality-whether it be heterosexual or homosexual. While homosexual/bisexual/transgender/etc. behavior is not condoned, neither is heterosexual extramarital sexual behavior.
ReplyDeleteTrue tolerance is allowing something bad in order for greater evils to be prevented. Right empathy is being able to recognize the emotional or spiritual state of another in their human dignity, as a precursor to compassion. Neither of these entail agreement with or promotion of a lifestyle or activist position.
What is morally reprehensible is that disagreement with a position is labelled "hate", "bigotry" or "homophobia" and every other spittle-flecked invective one can conjure up. There are none so intolerant as the self-anointed Tolerant.
A "natural law" against homosexuality? You mean like the "natural law" resulting in 7-9% of male sheep wanting nothing to do with female sheep, generation after generation?
DeleteOh well — if you can follow an invisible sky-god, and a set of 3,000-year-old desert prejudices that you call a moral code, but which you only partially observe, because many of the precepts (see Leviticus) are batshit crazy, then why wouldn't you also invent something as absurd as the oxymoronic concept of "natural law," right?
What this boils down to is the shameless, acquisitive, self-granted entitlement of Christers, to whit: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine."
In other words, gay people (or atheists, for that matter) don't have the right to refuse employment to bigoted, proselytizing Christers because religious zealots are a protected class and can sue to protect their "way of life." (See Westboro Baptist Church or the mendacious Father Kubat, of the Lincoln Diocese, whose YouTube chicanery before the Lincoln City Council can be found via the search box in the upper left corner of this blog.)
But when gay people also want to be included as a protected class (because, for example, they are the #1 victims of hate crimes in this country, according to the FBI), suddenly Christers become, somehow, "victims."
Find more persuasive arguments, if you can.
Especially when "protecting our way of life" seems to mean (to Christers) trashing the original motto of this country, (E Pluribus Unum) and replacing it with a religious bumper sticker (In God We Trust) and amending the original Pledge of Allegiance by adding "under god" in order to turn it into a religious litmus test and oath administered in supposedly public schools even to the children of atheist parents.
Pushy Christers need to find less intrusive ways of "protecting" their way of life. The 30,000,000 nonreligious Americans are really starting to get fed up. And their ranks are growing much faster than those of most churches, especially that Catholic sect.
progressive is right. btw, why arent some of these politically active churches not losing their tax exempt status. if churches want to be political, I say pay taxes.
ReplyDelete