Church responds differently to same-sex marriage laws

It will be Catholic families, not governments, that will force the Church to recognize the marriages of their gay children.

The purpose of marriage under the law (including Canon Law) is NOT procreation, but the creation of a separate family unit. It separates two people from their families of origin and joins them into a new family. The Book of Genesis says as much about what happens when a man marries -how he leaves his family and cleves to his wife (and now his husband or her wife).

It's not just about health insurance. If it were that simple, Leveda's choice would have been correct. Instead, it is about saying who your family is and is not. When I married my wife, I left my family and she left hers. We are owned by each other, not our families. When my brother married his husband, he should have the same protections from his siblings and mother. Put another way, his husband and my wife should be on equal footing with regard to familial rights and this footing should be recognized everywhere, and for the sake of both our Catholic family and my brother-in-law's Catholic family, this union should be celebrated in the Church.

ARE WORDS IMPORTANT? WORDS ARE POWERFUL!
Let the Church abiding people have the word 'marriage' signifying that the union they recognize is one that is between a man and a woman AND blessed(?)or made sacred in their eyes and is the only one that is capable of generating new life.

Let those not so inclined have the word 'matrimony' signifying a union between same-sex people committing to spend their lives together as partners AND enjoying legal entitlements of 'married' couples.

It renders to each(church & government) dominion over what each perceives as excluseivly theirs

We all sin and come short of the glory of God.

From a very early age I was taught that sin was sin. There is no sin that is greater in God's eyes, as as sin is equal. We confess our sins, and as humans try to be better people. We reach out to each other for support and expect decency and respect. As a creation of God, we all are made in his image.

I would like for you to do an exercise. Take a "hello my name is...." nametag sticker and write down your sin on it. You know, that secret sin that you continue to do and for some reason, you just cannot stop.

Place the nametag on your shirt where everyone can see it. Wear it for a day and walk around. Have everyone that comes in contact with you have the ability to see your sin and react to it by just looking at you.

As a gay man, this is what I experience on a daily basis. People whom I do not know look at me and judge me solely based on what they see. Unlike God, they do not know my heart. They do not know how I live my life or how I touch other people by what I do or say. All they see is that name tag listing out my sin publicly, all the while their sin is hidden and secret.

I get threatened by violence. I get called names. I get bullied. I get spit upon. I get people trying to pass laws against me to limit my rights as an equal tax paying citizen. Yet, I am commanded by God to love them. To treat them as I would like to be treated. It does not matter that they claim to be following God, I am responsibile for my behavior, not theirs. I will answer to God for what I do, not what they do.

I can see their nametag. They have sin too. They are also created in God's image and deserve the dignity and respect that any human being should have.

When Jesus was on earth, he spent the majority of time ministering to the needy, the poor. He spent time with prostitutes, thieves, and assorted criminals. He healed lepers and gave food to those whom were hungry.

Where is the church now?

Civil marriage law was put in place to assure a legal contract to assure the man to have legal rights to the property of the woman..."one man, one woman" has never been universally accepted nor practiced in our world.

Faulty reasoning comes up with faulty conclusions. Canon law or no Canon law, Marriage makes two into one. One body out of two to be viewed as a single entity to be revered and protected. As far as cleaving to one another, that can be problematic in any marriage for many reasonssuch as desire, physical impairment, illness, age, incarceration, separation, politics, economics. The list can go on. Maybe we also should consider no marriage for anyone and just see what happens. We can become a world of singles and celebrate that state as a noble position for the images of God.

I do not know but cannot help wondering if the change rom the church's approach in San Francisco to that in DC today reflects (among other things) the increasing cost of health insurance and the financial crises facing many dioceses. (Word here in Brooklyn is that the diocese faces bankruptcy in less than a year.) It's one thing to advocate expanding coverage in an healthy economy and another to make such a move in a recession.

You write:
The church teaches that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and supports traditional marriage as the building block of society and the best way to nurture and protect children.

True, but not fully true. The sentence should read:
NATURAL LAW teaches that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and supports traditional marriage as the building block of society and the best way to nurture and protect children.

This is a variety of issues.
I agree with Archbishop Leveda that there is a need to provide appropriate health insurance benefits to domestic partners.

It is my opinion that faith groups, religions, churches, etc. should get out of the civil marriage business. Why don't we just acknowledge that like a church annulment a church marriage has no civil effect. The state can classify civil unions any way they want. Each faith group, religion, church, etc could conduct marriages in accord with their particular rules. In some states no ceremony is required. You purchase a license, sign it and return it to the clerk and you are married. This solves the problem of couples who are living in sin because of their age and their social security benefits. They could come to the church, marry, no longer be living in sin, and yet the state would say that they are only living at the same address. Their pension benefits would not be changed on iota.

A friend of mine who is an Episcopal priest sends a bill to the county clerk with every marriage license he turns in. The bill is for completing paperwork for the county. His logic is that he should only have to do paperwork required by his church.

Just my opinion. I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.

What I don't hear in any of this debate is the various agencies and diocese's postions on offering benefits to spouses when the marriage does not fit the Churches definition of marriage. Specifically, an employee who has remarried after divorce but without getting an annulment.

I think at some future point in time, the Catholic church will be forced to recognize gay unions, much as I dislike the idea. It's a matter of justice. This will happen from the bottom up, with the bishops and cardinals the last ones to come on board. It will be divisive and painful, and may well split the Catholic church into completely new forms with little resemblance to what we have today. I love the church, but I fear for its future over this issue.

Article Heading Is Not Accurate

From the article, it seems it is the states that are responding differently to same sex marriage, not the church.

Why don't Catholic dioceses ask their respective local/state governments to give them exemptions from compliance with laws that require them to give benefits to straight marriages when one or both parties to the marriage have been divorced?

Why don't they do the same for straight marriages when one or both parties are incapable of having children, when the supposed purpose of marriage is to have & raise children?

No, the Church hierarchy isn't honestly angry that they have to do something against Church teaching. This opposition to marriage equality is a big red herring to distract people from a hateful, anti-gay culture perpetuated by a bunch of close-minded men who don't emulate Jesus one bit. The sad part is, many if not most of said men are gay themselves, but have so much internalized homophobia that they choose to deal with it by hurting other gay people.

Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. The church is now teaching love can only be expressed in marriage to some and not others. God made me gay and no one can make me anything else. I do not understand why some bishops think they must now punish communities by discontinuing their adoption and other social services. Who are they hurting? Themselves!

When Catholic Charities sent out their appeal recently I wrote that I could no longer, in good conscience, donate to their organization due to the narrow minded regulations coming out of the institutional church. I stated that my charitable donations were being made elsewhere. Perhaps if enough of us hold back donations to all church and affiliated organizations, the powers that be will get the message.

Gay marriage

My concern is that more and more gay men get STD. It seems that gay men is easier to get an STD.
According to the report from the largest STD dating site == Positivefish. com ==(if I spell the site correctly), the gay subscribers
increased continually. Most of them are sexy.

This was my Archbishop's first real test in the Nation's capital and, unlike Cardinal Levada in San Francisco, Archbishop Wuerl blew it. Now no spouse of anyone who works for Catholic Charities, gay or straight, will have health insurance coverage for their spouse or children. It is crazy. Already a former head of Catholic Charities here has pronounced the policy as absurd, saying that, just as providing services to alcoholics doesn't condone alcoholism neither would providing health insurance to the legal spouses of gays condone homosexuality, it's a question of unconditional love and service to all God's children, no matter their level of spiritual development. Archbishop Wuerl has made a big mistake and it has caused great consternation and upset to many Catholics, including the dedicated employees of Catholic Charities, wonderful people all. Maybe he thinks this decision will win him points in Rome. It won't. Rome hates it when prelates make a political mess and cause a scandalous upset for the faithful as the recent cashiering of Archbishop Burke and Bishop Martino shows. Bishops are supposed to handle these things discreetly and with pastoral compassion as Cardinal Levada did in San Francisco. Sadly, this decision shows my archbishop, Wuerl, is over his head here in DC and I expect Rome will see it the same way.

In Washington, Archbishop Wuerl made this issue the mess it is by his behavior. As San Francisco shows, the matter can be settled quietly and reasonably. That is how things are normally done in DC, behind closed doors. But Wuerl wants to use this issue is his campaign to become a Cardinal.

In my opinion, there is too much time being spent on this issue. If someone is not attracted to find a mate of the opposite sex, then the sacrament of marriage is one they will never celebrate. If someone is never found to be attractive to someone else, they also are left out of the marriage sacrament. If one's attraction is same-sexed, then one is left out again.

It is the same as women who have always been left out of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Sometimes we just do not receive what we really wnat or deserve.

Amen.

Domestic Partnerships are common in California cities and counties now, and they do include health insurance benefits. Which is good. What they do not do is allow the partnership to file joint tax returns, do not allow the partnership to go to the tax assessor to get their property reevaluated without paying a lawyer to take one partner's name off the deed, get the reevaluation, then paying a lawyer to put the partner's name back on the deed. These are just two of the discriminatory issues that GLBT couples have to deal with, that they would not if allowed the civil ceremony called marriage.

It is these non-religious discriminations that GLBT partners want to get out from under. What do these have to do with the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Nothing. They are a purely civil rights issue, and as such should not be opposed by the churches.

If Jesus was so appalled by homosexuality why did He never mentioned it? Doesn't this tell us something? If not -- it should.

One of loudest voices in the world for persecution of homosexuals is the biggest organized haven in the world for closeted homosexuals. no wonder it is dysfunctional.

Did the Washington Diocese provide benefits to heterosexual spouses when the marriage was a second marriage following a divorce? If so, this also contradicted church teaching. Somehow, I doubt this was ever an issue. This is less about church teaching than about animus towards gays.

I think we can all agree that religion and homosexuality have always given birth to heated debate and never really "got along".

Quick clarification: The San Francisco compromise applied only to Catholic Charities employees, not all archdiocesan employees, a fact discovered only when trying to add a legally domiciled domestic partner to health insurance.

PELVIC THEOLOGY-
as concocted by allegedly practicing celibate hierarchs seems to be more than a bit of a contradiction in terms.

Benedict's message of hate continues!!! To allow Rome to dictate to us is sad!!