DownWithTyranny!: It's to be expected that solons and soldiers of organized religion mostly get their friends and enemies backwards

""It is imperative that we come together against the anti-gay bishops. . . . The anti-gay, anti-marriage activism of our 'shepherds' is appalling and brings discredit to the Body of Christ, which should be about the Father's business of saving souls and building the kingdom, not obstructing civil rights."

-- Catholics for Equality founding board member Eugene McMullan

by Ken

Last Saturday I titled a post "If the defenders of the institution of marriage secretly mean ridicule the institution of religion, they're doing great!" And it's hard not to wonder whether the leaders and spokespersons, especially the most outspoken ones, for organized religions aren't in fact moles committed to destroying those religions from within.

Take the Catholic Church (please!). Sure, the pedophile-priest scandals, now rolling out worldwide, have been not just a nightmare for the Church hierarchy (who gives a damn about them?) but, more important, an eye-opener for the laity, the people who have always thought of themselves as good Catholics. But there's hardly any issue where the Church hasn't been every bit as offputting to anyone who cares about values, morality, and the state of the world we live in.

Just as the solons of the Republican Party seem to have set out to restrict their reach to unreconstructed Confederates of the South and the whacked-out survivalists of the West (it was really only by the dumbest luck that they stumbled into the bonanza of the teabagging loons), the Church fathers (for once we don't have to worry about gender neutrality; it's emphatically the Church "fathers," not "fathers and mothers") seem determined to strip the Catholic Carnival of any sane, principled worshippers.

Oh, they're not headed quite for extinction. The Church will always have some appeal to two groups: people who like to boss other people around, and people who like to be bossed around. But with all those other Crap Christian denominations competing so vigorously for the hearts and minds of those constituencies, the Catholic hierarchy may find itself struggling to hold onto its own enthusiasts of authoritarianism, let alone to attract new ones to replace the ones who are leaving the fold and dying off.

As I keep trying to explain, I don't think religion is inherently good or bad. Like most all human institutions it can be either, depending on who's running the show and who's in the audience. As best I can see, you can get pretty much the same split among the good, the bad, and the large middle among self-professedly religious folk that you do in the human race generally.

To the extent that organized religions promote genuine morality and humane values, they can certainly be forces for good, and the record shows that a lot of people have been drawn to each of the established religions for those reasons, and have been inspired by their faith to live lives of principle and decency, and have thereby contributed to making the world a better place for all. On the other hand, the record of evil committed in the name of religion is pretty extensive and pretty horrible.

I don't know if it's ironic, or maybe just symptomatic, but the organized religious, considering how under siege they claim to feel all the time, are staggeringly unperceptive as to who their enemies are, and who their friends. A case in point, again with reference to the Catholic Church, can be found in the response of two pillars of the Catholic Carnival of Ignorance and Hate to the advent of a group called Catholics for Equality.

I've been meaning to write about Catholics for Equality, which launched officially on September 14, for a while now. In the interim Chuck Colbert has done a nice piece for the Bay Area Reporter, which begins:

The voice of Catholic Church hierarchy from Maine to California is shrill but clear: Oppose all LGBT equality, especially same-sex marriage.

And yet support for full LGBT equality – even same-sex marriage – among Roman Catholics in the pews seems to be on the rise, according to recent public opinion polling.

So what's a pro-equality Catholic supposed to do?

Get active and be political with a new national organization that seeks to mobilize "the more than 62 percent of Catholics who support freedoms for all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity," according to a news release from Catholics for Equality based in Washington, D.C.

For obvious reasons, the new organization has no direct access to fellow Catholics where they worship,

Instead, Catholics for Equality is relying on "a state of the art website and a strategic use of social media" – including a soon-to-be-rolled-out smartphone app – to provide as board member Aniello Alito said, "American Catholics with role models, facts, and tips on how to have a family discussion, how to challenge misinformation in our parishes, and how to ensure as Catholics their voices are heard."

Initially, Catholics for Equality plans to rely on the power of social media.

"We've built our website so that every page a supporter views, every time a user takes action, he can share that with friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, and other popular social networks and services," explained Alito. "Our main goal from now until the end of the year focuses on encouraging and providing support for Catholic families, parishes, and communities to have honest and rational discussions about LGBT equality."

Catholics for Equality has received assistance from several national LGBT organizations, including Dignity, a group for LGBT Catholics, and the Human Rights Campaign.

HRC spokesman Fred Sainz said that the organization lent Catholics for Equality meeting space and "supported some of their start-up costs at less than $10,000."

A former HRC staffer, Phil Attey is presently the unpaid acting executive director for Catholics for Equality.

Already the group has hit on one ingenious way to spread the dialogue it hopes to foster among ordinary Catholics: brunch.

A specific way to facilitate conversation, Catholics for Equality suggests, is for supporters to host parish brunches or coffee hours in homes and restaurants where "people-in-the-pew" Catholics, what organizers call the "moveable middle," can hear from community and parish leaders and supporters of LGBT equality.

In Maine, for example, Religious Coalition Against Discrimination has obtained a grant to set up conversations among parishioners, meeting in small groups after Mass during coffee hour.

"The idea is to bring gay and lesbian couples and straight couples together one-on-one," with the objective of reaching "people not opposed to marriage and LGBT rights, but who are uncertain what that would look like," said board member Anne Underwood.

"We are finding creative ways to have dialogue in places where it is being suppressed," said Attey.

"What we are doing," says Father Joseph Palacios, an adjunct professor of sociology at Georgetown University and priest of the Los Angeles Archdiocese who is a founding board member, "is public action and public education on public issues. We are helping the Catholic movable middle rethink their positions. They are a fair-minded people. They want to do the right thing from their American core values and the heritage of Catholic social justice values."

A specific way to facilitate conversation, Catholics for Equality suggests, is for supporters to host parish brunches or coffee hours in homes and restaurants where "people-in-the-pew" Catholics, what organizers call the "moveable middle," can hear from community and parish leaders and supporters of LGBT equality.

In Maine, for example, Religious Coalition Against Discrimination has obtained a grant to set up conversations among parishioners, meeting in small groups after Mass during coffee hour.

"The idea is to bring gay and lesbian couples and straight couples together one-on-one," with the objective of reaching "people not opposed to marriage and LGBT rights, but who are uncertain what that would look like," said board member Anne Underwood.

"We are finding creative ways to have dialogue in places where it is being suppressed," said Attey.

"It is imperative that we come together against the anti-gay bishops," says San Francisco doctoral candidate Eugene McMullan, described as "the founder and lead organizer for Catholics for Marriage Equality in California (http://www.jointhecatholicimpact.com), who "serves on the board of the local Dignity chapter and is a parishioner at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in the Castro." McMullan continues:

We have to do it for ourselves, as a matter of principle, and to save the church we love. The anti-gay, anti-marriage activism of our "shepherds" is appalling and brings discredit to the Body of Christ, which should be about the Father's business of saving souls and building the kingdom, not obstructing civil rights.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Catholics for Equality in its young history is rousing the wrath of truly one of the vilest, most worthless and repellent life forms in the country, William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Donohue, in case you're not familiar with him, is a pile of filth who has made a career of promoting hatred and persecution in the name of doctrinal paranoia. He devotes his time to searching out any comment that can be perceived as, or twisted into, anti-Catholic sentiment, and blows it up into a war on his Holy Church -- all of which is really a cover for promoting his political views, which are substantially to the right of the late Genghis Khan.

Here's how the Catholic League has responded to the advent of Catholics for Equality:

"CATHOLIC" GAY GROUP REBUKED

September 22, 2010

His Excellency, Timothy Broglio, the Archbishop for the Military Services, released a statement to the Catholic News Agency responding to a letter from Catholics for Equality; the gay advocacy group pleaded with him to support the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:

On June 1, Archbishop Broglio released an excellent statement recounting the Catholic Church's opposition to homosexuality. He called on Catholic chaplains in the armed forces to show respect for the dignity of homosexuals, but he also implored them to "never condone—even silently—homosexual behavior."

On September 17, a new dissident group, Catholics for Equality, wrote a letter to the archbishop that was not only critical of his Catholic position, it reeked with smugness and arrogance: "We are ready to help you and Catholic chaplains in the transition to full acceptance of gays and lesbians in the military and respectfully request a meeting with you…." So thoughtful of these malcontents to offer their help in transitioning the bishop to oppose the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality.

Archbishop Broglio's response pulled no punches. He wondered how Catholics for Equality got the authority to identify itself as a Catholic entity, maintaining "it cannot be legitimately recognized as Catholic."

He's right. While any group can slap the label Catholic on itself, bona fide Catholics are under no obligation to acknowledge it. And by bona fide, I simply mean Catholics not in open rebellion against the teachings of the Magisterium.

Archbishop Broglio deserves the respect and support of all lay Catholics. His courage and erudition make all Catholics proud.