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Catholic Church Spends $550,000 to Repeal Gay Marriage Law in Maine
November 5, 2009 By 65 Comments
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“There is a law against divorce”
I’m sorry, what law is that, exactly? Did we wake up in the 1500s this morning?
He’s confusing religious “law” with actual, governmentally placed laws. He’s an idiot.
I like how he claims that we’re “losing” the ability to stay married. In the last three decades, the divorce rate has dropped, not risen, so what the F are these people flapping about?
http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html
*steam comes out ears*
The church DOES NOT have the right to define the word “marriage”! They have every right to prevent same-sex couples from getting married in Catholc churches, but NOT to prevent them getting married altogether! Arseholes, just arseholes.
Exactly.
Bigotry sucks.
And it seems fairly obvious that it’s specific, targeted bigotry, when nobody’s complaining about atheists getting married. Surely that defiles the sanctity of the institution as well.
Or Muslims. Or Buddhists. Or, hell, ninjas.
But noooo, it’s the homos that are destroying marriage. You know, those who want it so bad they actually fight for it…!
or pirates
nice point.
I can’t think of any better way to spend over half a million dollars then to deny people you don’t like their basic human rights.
Hey, it beats paying it out as damages to choirboys.
Well, they’re legal civil rights, not basic human rights. Rights defined by and for a secular society. A society that has separation of church and state on the books. And that is what the problem is. The church has no business being the engine, the machine behind making or repealing civil legislation, as the bishop freely and smugly admits it was in this decision.
They have once again crossed the line.
In 1964, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that the right to marry the person of your choice (assuming, of course, that you were also their choice) was a basic human right, essential to the pursuit of happiness, and that it was unconstitutional for the government to prevent any given couple from marrying.
Marriage is essential to happiness? Damn, those Supreme Court judges clearly never met my mother and father ;)
Is that what Jesus would do?
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
This guy is such a bullshit artist – but then again he does do it for a living.
I think gay marriage needs to go in steps. Do an everything but marriage law first and then when things calm down, go for gay marriage. Washington is winning the everything but marriage law currently (up by 3%). Not everyone is ready. If you can give them little by little it might be able to go by quietly like it did here. Gay marriage is just failing all over the place, time to rethink how we are going to approach it.
It certainly is a shame that so many people care so much about having more rights and opportunities than others. The point of your statement has been rattling around in my head quite a bit over the last few weeks. (Why is the don’t ask/don’t tell policy still around?)
I thought it was quite great and amazing that our president signed a bill to extend protection to gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled groups under federal hate crime legislation.
With that action he took a big step toward accomplishing all of the other more public equal rights arguments in the GLBT community. Now, committing a crime against someone because of their perceived sexual orientation will be the same as if the crime were committed because of their perceived ethnicity or religion (at least on the federal level).
I think it is a good, strong, early step in this battle for progress. It states that they as a group are owed equal protection under the law from bigots that harass or harm them. Whether using symbols, verbal threats, or violence, the aggressors are sending a message that the target is not welcome, despised, and will not be protected by law enforcement. Well now they will be protected.
With such legislation in place, these many other forms of discrimination may seem to stand-out a bit more. If crimes committed against them because of their perceived sexual orientation are considered hate crimes, how can they be kicked out of the military because of their perceived sexual orientation? How can they be restricted from equal rights strictly because of their sexual orientation?
Even logically it seems to satisfy me (a bit). Legislatively, wouldn’t protection under the law from harassment, violence, and fear come first or be more pressing than equal marriage laws? With the protection in place, other legislation can follow and those who seek to strike fear in the hearts of those individuals seeking equality will suffer legal consequences.
“Not everyone is ready.”
Not everyone was ready to outlaw slavery either. We can’t wait around for bigots to decide on their own to stop being bigots. You have to cram it down their throats and then wait for their hate to die with them, all the while hoping the new generation doesn’t get poisoned by it.
HERE, HERE! WORD! and DITTO!
^+1
^+2
Every state that makes a law saying it is legal though, they put it to a vote and it gets shot down. We need a new strategy then what we doing. Maybe it is saying it is legal across the US and force people to deal (most likely the best way to do that). I am not the one to ask, but we need a new strategy
That’s not true. Obviously (imo) gay marriage will eventually be legal, it’s just a matter of time. I do live in a liberal bubble (WA), though.
I don’t think we should boast too much about our liberal bubble. R-71 just squeaked by. I do, however, think that the strategy has been a good one and should be emulated. We’ve won the everyting but marriage because we took off that inflammatory word. We’ll win the next one with marriage more easily as people realize it’s okay and the world didn’t end with R-71. I think it’s the same strategy the fed is using. They’ve got to pick their battles one at a time and I don’t think the administration ever did abandon gay rights.
Well, we’re not voting on it here in Massachusetts. (And it had best stay that way.) They went through the whole petition thing, and the legislators basically said “thank you for your interest, we’ll put this in the circular file.” And we do have actual, real gay marriage with no weasel words. Somebody somewhere needs to wake up and smell the Constitution. It is illegal to be voting on the civil rights of a minority group, and it’s about damned time someone in power stepped up to the plate and said so.
Gay marriage is going along well here, btw. There’s only ever that one guy the newspapers haul out when they need a dissenting whine. He’s the guy who was pretty much the driving force behind the petition. He heads some hate group called “family” something or other. And he’s SOL. But the sky hasn’t fallen here yet.
It’s stuff like this that keeps me living here in this horrible climate. If people in other areas are cool with voting away gay people’s civil rights, how long will it be before they decide to vote mine away?
Meanwhile, Facebook keeps trying to get me to join a bunch of LGBT groups. Apparently I’m not supposed to be straight and care about gay rights. I’m not sure if I should be amused or annoyed. So far I’m both.
Btw, since this church has $550K to spend on hate politics, I feel like they can afford to be paying taxes.
It is illegal to be voting on the civil rights of a minority group, and it’s about damned time someone in power stepped up to the plate and said so.
Great point!
YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!
The church has fought civil rights and equality since its inception. They are always the bigots left fighting for oppression long after the rest of society has left those barbaric notions behind. Then later, they claim credit for helping to develop civil rights. Like with abolition, suffrage, etc. Slavery was condoned by the bible. Women had thier “place” in the bible. Equality was SIN SIN SIN! Just like homosexuality today. Maybe in 100 years, the church will be saying that they are the ones who fought for the right for gays to marry. F&cking pathetic, to spend that much time and energy to oppress one group. Disgusting.
“And the guts of the last priest let’s strangle the neck of the last king.”
Jean Meslier (1664 – 1729)
“[Gay marriage] is an experiment we can’t afford to take.”
Fuck you, you shit-eating grin pastor. Fuck you.
That man blinks a lot when he lies.
I just don’t understand how preventing people from getting married increases the number of people who are married. Does he subscribe to some crazy logic where preventing something from happening causes it to happen more? If so, then why do we prevent certain people from smoking and drinking alcohol? Or more importantly, why do we illegalize murder? Under his logic, the illegalization of these things should increase their occurrence.
why didn’t they take that $550,000 and uh – i don’t know – feed the poor?
God helps those who help themselves!
…To sweet tons of cash, apparently.
Our bodies are not important. Poverty, starvation, misery…those are only of the flesh. This great man is talking about immortality! To prevent gays from marrying, well…you go to heaven for that! Right? And this life is only a blink of an eye, so saving the environment, being kind to people, ensuring equality, etc., are simply not important because they are only of this carnal world. Isn’t this the thinking of fundies? It certainly was in the fundie household I grew up in. “Only the soul matters”. Funny thing – I found out much later that my “soul” had practically been destroyed by the lies and destructive messages of christianity.
By donating to the repeal gay marriage campaign, they’re essential involving themselves in political matters. There’s supposed to be a seperation of church and state. If they want to start giving their money to these anti freedom campaigns then they should start paying taxes.
The word “marriage” has become convoluted. The interviewer touched on a point that gets lost in this debate over and over. All “marriages” should be civil unions and should give the persons involved all the traditional legal rights that a married couple enjoys, regardless of gender. The civil-unionized couples are then free to refer to themselves as “married” or “partners” or whatever the fuck they want. Then if people would like to add a religious bond to the equation, have at it. Individual religious institutions are more than free to accept or reject any couple for a religious marriage ritual as they damn well please. Those couple having religious weddings can consider themselves super-married or extra-god-double-stuffed-married or whatever they want, just as long as it stays a religious ritual and no additional rights or privileges come with it.
I don’t see how this is even controversial to religious nuts. I truly believe the only obstacle to this obvious, effective resolution is the hang-up on the word “marriage.”
As a married man, personally, I can tell you that being married ain’t that great. (Just kidding, honey.)
This always got me. I always thought it very strange that marriage could be simultaneously considered a state and religious union. It has to be one or the other. Currently, marriage is allowed only between two people, and in most states, only two people of different genders. This sounds like a profoundly Christian understanding of marriage. In many religions, marriage can include multiple wives per husband, and sometimes multiple husbands per wife, and is not in general heterosexual. So I actually think the current legal status of marriage violates the establishment clause of the first amendment.
I might get a lot of disagreement over this, but that’s really how it seems to me. If the state wants to sponsor a union that resembles marriage but only recognizes the associated legal and financial rights and allows for homosexual and polyamorous relationships, then I don’t have a problem with it, but until that happens, I think state-sponsored marriage is unconstitutional.
Marriage between two people is a long way from being “biblical” mariage! Unless the woman was rape by the man and forced into it, of course, then it’s just as biblical as anything.
I always wondered why polygamy was a bad thing. I’m not saying I’d got out and do it, but if it’s between consenting people on all sides, who cares? The only thing wrong with it, as far as I can tell, is that it’d be a nightmare to work out taxes.
I think the problem is that experience shows polygamy to occur in patriarchal religious societies, which in practice means the women will be worse off than women in monogamous societies – they’ll get less education, less choice, less chance to make themselves heard.
The women may consent to polygamy strictly speaking, but don’t underestimate the power of peer pressure in such male-dominated, religious societies.
I’ve often said that about women wearing the Burqa/Hijab. They may want to wear it, but that’s because they’ve been indoctrinated since birth to believe that they should.
This is correct. Even in non religious polygamous relationships the male benefits a lot more than the women do. It’s a bit of a contested feminist issue.
But he didn’t say polygamy. He said polyamory – that means there could be a woman and two men, or three men, or three women, or two men and two women, or any combination thereof. I’ve seen people – on TV, but still – a woman and two men – who seemed to live in perfect harmony in their polyamorous relationship.
polygamy would complicate far more than taxes. Can you imagine child support/custody in such relationships? Practicality and the smooth running of society would prevent such arrangements.
The most ironic thing about this is the simple fact that the pastor is African American. Not fifty years ago his people were oppressed in a similar fashion to homosexuals today. “Gay marriage is an experiment we can’t afford to take” sounds an awful lot like those nuts who wanted segregated schools to protect white children. Amazing how quickly people forget, isn’t it?
There were states in the US where mixed-race marriage was illegal until the late 70s.
The only argument is “it’s wrong“, isn’t it?
*60s
There was an interracial couple last month (Beth Humphrey and Terrence McKay) who were refused a marriage license by a Louisiana JP. He said he was thinking of the children.
Horrible to see “The Rainbow Coalition” turn in on itself when one part of it gets what it wants :-(
And they still blather on and on about how gay marriage endangers hetero marriage, about how it endangers children. And they still have not come up with a single study or coherent argument supporting either point. They know they fuel and spred bigotry, they know it’s based on personal disgust, they know there is no other reason behind it. The despicable hypocrisy, the plain evil of this makes me speechless. The sad fact that majorities fall for this completely vacuous and hateful rhetoric is depressing. And, fuck you Mr. Godwin, yes it worked well for the Nazis and the Church knows its own best.
I do recognize the fact that the bishop’s repeated answer to the question what exactly it is that he claims his Church is ‘pincer-moving’ against divorce, is stuttered nonsense that avoids the point completely. This man is morally rotten to the core, an internally stinking slimy festering skinbag.
Um what? Did he really just roll out some statistics about the percentage of women in DC who “will never be married” in order to support his stance against the redefinition of marriage? Really? Maybe he thinks that if gay men aren’t allowed to marry other men, they will resign themselves to marriage with a women? And that his would be acceptable? If this wasn’t the angle he was aiming for, what was he trying to say?
Never mind the fact that such statistics ignore couples in stable relationships who don’t “tie the knot”. What, he thinks because they never got the J-stamp of approval, they are missing out on something?
Oh, and there’s a perfectly rational economic reason for people getting married later. It’s called “gender equality”. That’s right folks, women now have better things to do with their early adult life than rear hundreds of children, while their husbands go cruising for that homosexual relationship denied them by a holey man.
That’s exactly what he is saying. In fact, it isn’t a very different point of view; I’ve seen lots of fundies say that “gay people can marry, as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex”. There’s even one dude in this site who keeps arguing that state-sponsored marriage is solely procreative and thus shouldn’t be extended to gay people.
Fundies care more about appearance – nuclear heterosexual family with lots of children – than about the happiness and love of those involved. It doesn’t matter if people are miserable – if they are married and have lots of kid and don’t divorce, they’re OK with it.
Fundies do seem to think those are sinners. I’ve had a maid that was denied baptism because she isn’t married – nevermind she’s been with her partner in a very stable and very successful relationship for over 30 years!
Yeah, but don’t forget these people are also against gender equality. It scares me, really.
Great post!!!!
You mean that women might have other goals than just getting married and having kids??? GASP. Not to mention that in many cities worldwide it is impossible to afford housing on one salary alone!
The horror…!
Which is an excellent argument for polyamory, dontcha think?
Never thought of it that way… It would be, but I thought that women in polygamous relationships were only there to satisfy their husbands, thus having children and thus back to not being able to have goals or afford housing. It’s a vicious cycle!
“… an experiment that we can’t afford to have at the expense of children in schools around the country.” What?
But at least it’s good to know that you can still buy legislation if you’re prepared to not spend the money on helping the poor.
It gay marriage so angers god, that it will force the quick return of Jesus to the earth, then Christians should support.
But no, they would prefer the America to bomb Iran instead and start World War 3
oops, forgot this
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/10/13/poor/
It must be such a rewarding life making others’ lives miserable*.
*Sarcasm used.
Numerous posts point out the glaringly obvious hypocrisy of the viewpoints expressed in that video. What drives me crazy is that I’m pretty sure most of the hypocrites *know* they’re being hypocritical and bigoted. It’s so bleepin’ obvious.
I can’t tell you how pissed off that makes me.
“We have a whole generation of children to re-educate”
I assume he meant to say “de-educate” there?