Being both an activist and a news junkie, I check more news websites, belong to more LGBT listservs, and subscribe to more email news aggregators and digests than any normal human being should. When I start my work day every morning, the very first thing I do is check these sources and social media to see what I may have missed on the previous day or overnight. Sometimes it isn’t much, once in awhile it’s something major, and other times certain headlines or stories just jump out at me.
This morning, it was a headline from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that caught my eye:
Gay marriage [sic] “simply can’t happen” — Catholic pastor.
The article (which you can read here) profiles Rev. Kurt Nagel, the pastor of Holy Family Parish in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. Unlike several other priests in the Seattle archdiocese whose parishes have opted out of Archbishop Peter Sartain’s anti-same-sex marriage campaign, Nagel told churchgoers in a homily last Sunday that his parish would participate, agreeing to collect signatures to try and force a referendum on Washington’s marriage equality law because, in his words, “Gay MARRIAGE [sic] is simply not possible. . . [it] is not evil. It simply can’t happen at all.”
Here’s what I have to say to that:
Impossible? Can’t happen? Check the ring, dude.
Sorry Kurt, but you’re talking to a world that no longer exists. Marriage equality is a fact of life. You can try to deny it or pray it away until you’re blue in the face, but no amount of denial, wishing, or praying will be able to erase my marriage (six years and counting, baby) or the hundreds of thousands of other loving marriages between same-sex couples around the world. You’ve even lost your fellow Catholics — 71% of them support marriage equality, and that number is growing. So by all means, continue your divisive, mean-spirited, misguided spiritual bullying campaign against LGBT people. Just know that by choosing to do so, you’re hastening your own irrelevance.
Another unmarried man pontificating about civil marriages, using his religious beliefs to trample on the religious and non-religious beliefs of others, using the Eucharist, which is a celebration of unity, to divide.
Why are some of these Roman Catholic leaders gathering petitions about only this one issue? Why are they so obsessed with the civil marriages of lesbian and gay people? Why are they not leading campaigns against poverty or war or capital punishment, or hunger, or for universal health care?
Their campaign shows much more about them and their obsessions than it does about lesbian/gay couples.
To: frnagel@hfkparish.org
Subject: In Re: Your stance on same-sex marriage
From:
Scott Rose
Mr. Nagel:
I note that you have a German family name.
It is not the least surprising to hear gay-bashing bigotry coming from the mouth of a Catholic priest.
After all, when Father Jaime Duenas of the Bronx was arrested on charges that he repeatedly molested a 16-year-old girl working in the rectory, Dolan took to his blog and trashed the 16-year-old girl. (That’s called witness intimidation, fyi).
Dolan and the Catholic Bishops routinely fight, tooth-and-nail, against proposed legislation that would lift the statute of limitations on prosecution of child rape.
And of course, the Vatican signed the Reichskonkordat treaty with Hitler, at a time the racial laws against Jews were already in effect in Germany. Why, Mussolini granted the Vatican independent nation status in exchange for its not criticizing his racial laws. The Vatican helped Nazi war criminals escape justice after the war, through the “rat lines” to South America. And, the Vatican basements are full of art stolen from Jews — the Pope won’t allow reporters in to sort out what’s what.
You and your gay-bashing institution are not coming from any place of moral authority, and your duplicitous b******t on marriage equality is exactly that; duplicitous b******t.
Scott Rose
In the article, the gay-bashing priest says ““The problem is that this obscures the fact that dogmas describe how the universe really, objectively IS.”
Yeah, like the Church never had a Galileo problem with respect to “how the universe really, objectively IS.”
How can he even believe the BS that comes out of his own mouth?
SOUTH LONDON CATHOLIC SCHOOL URGES PUPILS AS YOUNG AS 11 YEARS OLD TO SIGN ANTI-MARRIAGE-EQUALITY PETITION:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/04/25/exclusive-catholic-school-urged-pupils-as-young-as-11-to-sign-anti-gay-marriage-petition/
Are there no depths to which they will not stoop?
Disgusting.
“Gay marriage simply can’t happen” happened in Canada in 2005. The list of countries grows annually.
snap
Yup — my husband and I were married in Toronto in 2006. We love Canada!
Why does anyone take relationship advice from a Catholic preist?
“Gay marriage [sic] “simply can’t happen.”
Oh, really? Then please explain the fact that my wife and I–both of whom are WOMEN–are in fact legally married.
Cant happen? Says who!?
Haha.
So many priests and bishops and ministers need to study their bibles!
The problem with traditionalists is that they are taking passages at face value and not actually putting in the time to study these versus. Solidly based on their own Personal feelings about homosexuality. That’s not their buissness to decide what god thinks or says about homosexuality.
They don’t get to lie. Hate. Deceive. Ugh!!! So many pushing people away from god instead of drawing them in.
All that said!! I PROPOSED to my GF!! She said YES!!! And guess what?!!! Imma marry her!! Legally! Here in Canada!
Guess that means it DOES happen.
Good for you Tara! Congratulations!
Catholic priests are hot on the topic of gay marriage because (1) they are using it as a distraction from the sexual abuse scandals in the church, and (2) the are seeking to use civil law to influence society in a way that their beliefs no longer do. Sure the Catholic church is still influential, but they are losing influence, especially as they are now seen reacting quickly on marriage, contraception and gynecological issues, where their response to sexual abuse revelations was painfully slow, obviously evasive and primarily concerned with maintaining the good name of the church. These misjudgments have resulted in a bigger, deeper scandal than anything that would have come from a frank acknowledgment of the truth.
These priests and popes and bishopric(k)s are largely homosexual (not gay, please!) who are hopelessly self-loathing, thoroughly closeted and constitutionally conservative black & white thinkers. They have used the church as a path of self-redemption from their self-hating, and see their hard “earned” privileges and homosocial culture being endangered by women and LGBT people becoming free from the political constraints of the church. Its really quite perverse, but misogyny and self-hatred fuel these attempts to keep nuns and women and LGBT people in their place while protecting the patriarchy. The catholic church has proven highly skilled over the centuries of preserving the status quo & its own power and prerogatives: its the last functioning remnant of the Roman Empire! Don’t underestimate what they will stoop to when threatened.
Why isn’t the Catholic church putting the same efforts into banning civial marriage? After all civil amrriage allows any heterosexual person to marry, divorce and re-marry as many times as they like.
[...] This sign might not be remarkable except for the fact that it unmasks, in my opinion, the deep, ugly contempt that Catholic leaders have for the loving marriages of same-sex couples like my husband and me. They don’t simply oppose the recognition of our marriages, they deny even the fact that our marriages exist. [...]
[...] we’ve documented extensively here at TWO, the American Catholic bishops have made the preservation of marriage discrimination and the spiritual bullying of LGBT people and their allies a top [...]