Good News In Maryland, Bad News In New Jersey

By Francis De Bernardo, New Ways Ministry

Yesterday, the Maryland House of Delegates approved a marriage equality bill, virtually guaranteeing it would become law, since the bill is likely to pass the Senate, and Governor Martin O’Malley, a Catholic, has promised to sign it.

Yesterday in New Jersey, however, Governor Chris Christie, a Catholic, vetoed that state’s marriage equality bill which had passed both Assembly and Senate. The legislature has until January 2014 to override the veto.

MARYLAND

The Baltimore Sun report rightly noted O’Malley’s role in the bill’s success in Maryland, and quoted him saying:

“We are a good people. We all want the same things for our kids.”

The Washington Blade’s story carried a quote from O’Malley that reflected the Catholic social teaching principle behind the issue of marriage equality:

“Today, the House of Delegates voted for human dignity.”

Earlier this week, The Baltimore Sun carried a news report on a talk O’Malley gave in which he described the evolution of his thinking on marriage equality. New Ways Ministry’s Sister Jeannine Gramick is quoted in that article about her thoughts to O’Malley’s support of the issue. Sister Gramick said:

“I’m proud of him for being a Catholic and for witnessing real Catholic values. … I’m so glad he’s supporting the marriage equality bill.”

Last night, Bondings 2.0 posted New Ways Ministry’s response to the vote, along with a link to The Washington Post article about the news.

Even after the bill would become a law, the struggle would still not be over, as opponents have promised to mount a referendum campaign

NEW JERSEY

In The New York Times account of Christie’s veto, they explain that

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“The governor’s veto was conditional, asking the State Legislature to amend the bill, so that rather than legalizing same-sex marriages, it would establish an overseer to handle complaints that the state’s five-year-old civil union law did not provide gay and lesbian couples the same protections that marriage would.

“Mr. Christie also affirmed his call for the Legislature to put a referendum on same-sex marriage on the ballot in November. . . .

“At the same time, Mr. Christie repeated what the State Supreme Court said in 2006 — that same-sex couples deserve the same benefits enjoyed by married couples. Answering testimony that same-sex couples in civil unions had more trouble than married couples in matters like obtaining mortgages and making health care decisions, the governor said he wanted to set up a new ombudsman to make sure gay and lesbian couples did not suffer discrimination.”

Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, responded in the Timesstory to the ombudsman idea by calling it

““the equivalent of gold-plating a separate water fountain for a specific class of people.”

In a posting two days ago, Bondings 2.0 noted that Washington State’s Catholic governor Christine Gregoire, who this week signed a marriage equality bill into law, sent a letter to fellow Catholic Christie, offering to discuss her evolution on the issue. Christie had not responded.

In their editorial column, the Times opined about “Governor Christie’s Misguided and Intolerant Veto,”

“Sadly, there was no surprise to Gov. Chris Christie’s veto on Friday of the same-sex marriage bill that cleared New Jersey’s Assembly and Senate this week. Mr. Christie had said all along that he would block the measure as soon as it reached his desk. That does not change the message of intolerance or lessen the pain for gay residents and their families. Mr. Christie compounded the insult when he dismissed the Legislature’s support for the rights of gay people as merely ‘an exercise in theater.’ The only one who deserves that accusation is Governor Christie, who is clearly pandering to his own conservative base. . . .

“This isn’t about theater and shouldn’t be about politics. Marriage equality is a basic right.”

“Love is an unalienable right” – Martin O’Malley (sairasays.wordpress.com)
Maryland House Passes Marriage Equality Bill (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
A Catholic Case For Same-Sex Marriage (dgsma.wordpress.com)
Washington Makes Seven (mhasegawa.com)
Maryland House of Delegates passes gay marriage law. Senate a sure thing. (dailykos.com)

Liberals vs Conservatives- A Graphic

Feb18 by D Gregory Smith

Click graphic for link to the fascinating story- and a bigger graphic

Gonorrhea And The Antibiotic Wake-up Call

Feb17 by D Gregory Smith

I’ve been talking about this for a while now, but it’s now being seriously discussed in the mainstream media.

From the Los Angeles Times:

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On the growing roster of antibiotic-resistant diseases, gonorrhea is the one that has most recently captured the attention of public health officials. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned last week that 1.7% of certain types of gonorrhea infections show little response to treatment, even with cephalosporins, the last line of antibiotic defense.

At this point, no matter what happens with cephalosporins, resistant gonorrhea is on its way to winning out over available antibiotics, making it one of many worrisome bacterial strains, such as total-drug-resistant tuberculosis and MRSA,or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Resistant infections are emerging faster than new antibiotics. According to the nonprofit Pew Health Group, from 1935 to 1968, 13 classes of antibiotics were created; since 1968, there have been only two. Antibiotics are hard to develop and the profit margin on them is low because, unlike antidepressants or medications for high blood pressure, they’re not usually taken on a long-term basis.

The demand for such classes of antibiotics is clearly growing- but outside of one of the board members of Merck or Abbott or Pfizer gets untreatable gonorrhea or MRSA- you can bet it won’t happen without a struggle.

Full story here.

Gonorrhea Could Join Growing List of Untreatable Diseases (blogginghounds.wordpress.com)
When STDs Are Untreatable (theatlantic.com)
Warning! Gonorrhea Threat Is Real (dgsma.wordpress.com)

Watch Our Mardi Gras Interview On KBZK

Feb16 by D Gregory Smith

Here!

The event information:

A Catholic Case For Same-Sex Marriage

Feb16 by D Gregory Smith

Friends Jeannine Gramick and Frank DeBernardo from New Ways Ministry had an excellent Valentine’s Day Op-Ed in The Washington Post. In one of the most well prepared (both theologically and sociologically) essays I’ve read, they make the case for marriage equality:

This month in Maryland and the state of Washington, an extraordinary dynamic is playing itself out: Two Catholic governors are prodding legislators to pass bills legalizing same-gender marriage. Like Govs. Andrew Cuomo in New York and Pat Quinn in Illinois — whose states recently legalized same-sex civil unions — Govs. Martin O’Malley and Christine Gregoire are acting against the strongly expressed opposition of their church’s bishops.As Catholics who are involved in lesbian and gay ministry and outreach, we are aware that many people, some of them Catholics, believe that Catholics cannot faithfully disobey the public policies of the church’s hierarchy. But this is not the case.The Catholic Church is not a democracy, but neither is it a dictatorship. Ideally, our bishops should strive to proclaim the sensus fidelium , the faith as it is understood by the whole church. At the moment, however, thebishops and the majority of the church are at odds. A survey published in September by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 52 percent of Catholics support marriage equality and 69 percent support civil unions.Those numbers shouldn’t surprise people who are familiar with the Catholic theological tradition. For example, Catholic thinking dictates that we should use the evidence we find in the natural world to help us reach our conclusions. Many Catholics have reflected on the scientific evidence that homosexuality is a natural variant in human sexuality, and understand that lesbian and gay love is as natural as heterosexual love.

In forming our consciences, Catholics also consult scripture and our theological tradition. Here, again, there is little firm reason to oppose marriage equality. The Bible presents us with a marital landscape that includes polygamy, concubinage, temple prostitution and Levirate marriages (in which a man is bound to marry his brother’s widow.) Jesus disputed the Mosaic law on divorce, saying that what God has joined man must not separate, but this dictum was modified in the letters of St. Paul.

When we see the manifold changes that marriage has undergone throughout history, many Catholics wonder why our bishops believe that heterosexual marriage in its current 21^stcentury state is a matter of divine revelation.

Those who delve into the theology of marriage will encounter the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, who articulated what Christians have come to call “the goods of marriage.” These are enumerated in contemporary terms as partnership, permanence, fidelity and fruitfulness. Same-sex couples demonstrate all of these attributes just as opposite-sex couples do, unless one defines “fruitfulness” narrowly as the ability to procreate. But many heterosexual couples cannot or choose not to procreate, and the church marries them anyway.

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The deeper one looks into the church’s core teachings, the more one realizes that the bishops are not representing the breadth of the Catholic tradition in their campaign against marriage equality. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of Catholic social justice teaching.Catholic social teaching requires that all people be treated with dignity, regardless of their state in life or their beliefs. It upholds the importance of access to health-care benefits, the protection of children, dignity in end of life choices, and, most importantly, the promotion of stable family units. Marriage equality legislation would be an obvious boon to same-sex couples and their children in each of these areas, yet the bishops are spending millions of dollars opposing it.

Brilliant. If you’re a pray-er, these two deserve all you can give them.

Full story here

Catholic Case for Same-Sex Marriage Is Part of Religion’s Next Great Awakening (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
Washington State Governor Signs Same Sex Marriage Into Law (crooksandliars.com)
NYT/CBS Poll: Catholic Religious Leaders Out Of Touch (dgsma.wordpress.com)
Majority Of New Jersey Voters Support Marriage Equality (thinkprogress.org)
If You Really Want Marriage Equality in Washington, Then Pull Out Your Wallet (slog.thestranger.com)

Utah Legislature Avoids Messy Facts, Science; Advances Bill Dropping Sex Ed

Feb15 by D Gregory Smith

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Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, Utah’s Legislature is moving forward on HB363, a piece of legislation that would effectively end any comprehensive sexual education in Utah schools. The Salt Lake City Weekly:

House Bill 363 sponsor Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden, argued that teaching contraception only encouraged immoral behavior, so his bill would allow for schools to teach abstinence-only or to opt out of teaching sexual education entirely. Wright said teaching sexuality wasn’t a priority in education. “This is not like all our students are going to die if they don’t learn promiscuous behavior,” Wright said. (emphasis mine)

Yes. That’s what he said.

In an editorial for the same paper, Rebecca Walsh opines

Anti-sex-education crusader Bill Wright would have loved me.

In seventh grade, I was just like the tiny blond granddaughter the Republican legislator from Holden hauled up to Capitol Hill last week as a prop for his legislative campaign, House Bill 363. I was the pristine product of a sex-free Utah public education and Mormon parents—innocent, naïve, clueless.

Then one day, I overheard a boy in the hall at school crudely describing the mechanics of copulation. In an instant, Troy rendered irrelevant my parents’ denial that we needed to have the talk and showed me the limits of my teachers’ silence. It was the end of innocence, delivered by a pimply teenage boy.

And that’s the problem with Wright’s (and my parents’) plan: It’s not rooted in real life.

American teens are shockingly misinformed about their bodies, birth control and pregnancy—Utah kids even more so.

A 2008 study by Self magazine and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found many young adults had “magical thinking” when it comes to sex—unsure of how often to take birth-control pills, unfamiliar with 28-day fertility cycles.

And that was among young adults with some level of sex education. In the information vacuum created by Utah lawmakers, sex ed ranges from abstinence-only programs in four school districts—Alpine, Canyons, Jordan and Nebo—to oblique references from frightened biology and health teachers in others.

When are we going to wake up to science and truth? High school students are having sex. Right now. Probably without condoms, birth control, and in Utah, without rudimentary knowledge of biological processes.

While this “teaching kids about sex causes them to have more sex” nonsense avoids the reality of the situation: as a society, we are ridiculously stupid about sex.

Ridiculously.

And if this bill gets through, that ridiculousness will be enshrined in Utah law.

Sex ed: How young is too young? (goerieblogs.com)
Begin Sex Ed in Kindergarten, Says New ‘National Standards’ Report (truthsupport.wordpress.com)
Nick Offerman Talks Sex Ed With Wife Megan Mullally (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
Sex Re(Ed): I Was Duped Into Teaching An Abstinence-Only Curriculum at 15 (blisstree.com)
Abstinence-Only Sex Educators Think They’re Teaching People To ‘Say No’; They’re Wrong (blisstree.com)
Utah’s teen mothers lacked crucial knowledge, survey finds ()

Rehberg Invites Rumsfeld

Feb15 by D Gregory Smith

…presumably relying on Montanans’ short memories. From the Montana Democrats:

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Failed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to be in Montana later this month to stump for multimillionaire Congressman Dennis Rehberg–a move that highlights Rehberg’s strong support of the failed policies of former President George W. Bush.

Rumsfeld, who resigned from office the day Jon Tester won his Senate seat, is known as the architect of one of the greatest misunderstandings of military intelligence in American history. Rumsfeld was also a key supporter the controversial Patriot Act, which Congressman Rehberg has supported repeatedly.

“Donald Rumsfeld is almost as out-of-touch as Congressman Dennis Rehberg when it comes to reckless decisions about our freedoms,” said Ted Dick, Executive Director of the Montana Democratic Party.

Rumsfeld is holding a February 25 fundraiser near Bozeman for Rehberg, who recently got caught hiding tens of thousands of dollars he’s taken from out-of-state lobbyists.

“Donald Rumsfeld was a key figure in an administration known for its secrecy and lack of facts and transparency,” Dick said. “After Congressman Rehberg tried to hide his lobbyist cash, it’s no surprise he’s now embracing Secretary Rumsfeld’s support.”

Yeah- a no-brainer.

Rehberg’s “Year Of Disaster” (dgsma.wordpress.com)
“Where Are You?” (dgsma.wordpress.com)
A Rehberg Tax Reminder (dgsma.wordpress.com)

NYT/CBS Poll: Catholic Religious Leaders Out Of Touch

Feb15 by D Gregory Smith

Today’s poll on President Obama and the economy also gauged voter’s take on two key religious “hot buttons”- and it turns out they’re not so hot:

Mosaic cross ~Lobby of New West Catholic gym (Photo credit: laudu)

Despite the deep divide between some religious leaders and government officials over contraceptives, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll found most voters support the new federal directive that health insurance plans provide coverage for birth control.

In addition, most voters said they favored some type of legal recognition for same-sex couples, at a time when the New Jersey Legislature is set to vote on gay marriage and after a federal appellate court ruled that Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage in California was unconstitutional.

A majority of Catholic voters in the poll were at odds with the church’s official stance, agreeing with most other voters that religiously affiliated employers should offer health insurance that provides contraception. Jennifer Davison, 38, a Catholic from Lomita, Calif., agrees with the federal requirement. “My opinion is that it is a personal issue rather than a religious issue,” she said in a follow-up interview.

Unlike Catholics, white evangelical Christian voters were more divided, with half objecting to requiring the health insurance plans of religious employers to cover contraceptives; 43 percent supported it. “It is a religious issue with me,” said Jessica Isner, 22, an evangelical Christian from Elkins, W. Va. “I believe that providing birth control is O.K. if the hospital is not religiously affiliated.”

Gay marriage is another debate in which the Catholic laity disagrees with church doctrine. More than two-thirds of Catholic voters supported some sort of legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships: 44 percent favored marriage, and 25 percent preferred civil unions. Twenty-four percent said gay couples should receive no legal recognition.

Click here for graphic of full poll results

TWO THIRDS. This is bearing out that the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful) is much more “common” (read ‘in touch’) than that of the magisterium. And the gap of common sense just seems to be getting wider….

Read the complete NYT story here

Poll Finds Support for Contraceptive Policy and Gay Couples (nytimes.com)
Pew poll: Public not particularly happy about Prop 8 decision or contraception mandate (hotair.com)
Chris Christie’s Gay Marriage Dilemma (blogcritics.org)
Federal Appeals Court Holds California Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional (outsidethebeltway.com)
Support For Gay Marriage Surpasses 50 Percent in New Jersey (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)

Couple’s Love Inspires A More Equal Montana

Feb14 by D Gregory Smith

By Caitlin Copple

This Valentine’s Day season, many Montanans are blushing about their current crush or building a relationship with that special someone. For same-sex couples here, the butterflies and bliss of true love is often met with a cold, hard legal reality. Only six states and the District of Columbia offer equal marriage rights, and Montana is not one of them. Groups like ACLU of Montana, a recent grantee of The Advocacy Fund at Pride Foundation, are trying to change that by taking a relationship recognition lawsuit to the state Supreme Court.

Kellie, Denise and Morrgan

One of the couples in the ACLU case is Kellie and Denise. They live in Laurel, population roughly 7,000, about 20 miles west of Billings. They are one of six couples who are plaintiffs in the ACLU’s current Guggenheim v. Montana case currently before the state Supreme Court.

Kellie and Denise have been together for 11 years. They’ve raised Kellie’s two children from a previous marriage, and recently jointly adopted Kellie’s 5-year-old nephew, Morrgan. Denise, 47, is a middle school science teacher and a basketball coach. Kellie, 48, worked for many years at a juvenile detention center, but is now on disability because she suffers from a rare brain condition that has required 56 brain surgeries and over 300 spinal taps over the past decade.

Heterosexual married state employees automatically receive 10 days of bereavement leave when a family member or in-law dies, but Denise was denied bereavement leave by her employer when Kellie’s father died last April. This was despite the fact that the couple had a private commitment ceremony in 2001, witnessed by about 30 friends and family members present. They are just like most Montanans – they are active at church, and they love to travel, camp, and fish. Unlike most Montanans, their relationship doesn’t “count” according to state and federal law.

Kellie credits Denise standing by her for being able to make it through her health problems: “She never left me when I was so sick,” she says. “I endure her relentless love of sports and she endures my need for dogs. I love her to infinity and beyond!”

“Kellie and Denise have been incredibly helpful with their participation in Fair is Fair events,” said the ACLU’s LGBT organizer Liz Welch, who is based in Billings. “One of the most touching things to watch is the tenderness and protectiveness they have for each other while at these public events. I admire these two and their affectionate, playful relationship all the more because of the obstacles I know they have had to overcome.”

Guggenheim v. Montana is currently before the Montana Supreme Court. Both sides have submitted briefs and multiple amicus briefs have also been filed in support of both side of the case. Supporting amicus are 65 Montana Religious Leaders, American Psychological Association, Legal Voice, Montana Human Rights Network and Gary J. Gates and MV Lee Badgett. According to Welch, the ACLU expects a court date to be set in the very near future.

Here’s to hoping this is the last Valentine’s Day Montana’s same-sex couples spend being treated unfairly under the law.

To keep updated on the case, as well as other projects of the ACLU of Montana, please visit:www.fairisfairmontana.org or email lwelch@acluofmontana.org to volunteer or sign a petition in support of the lawsuit.

Caitlin Copple is the Montana Regional Development Organizer for the Pride Foundation. Feel free to email her at Caitlin@pridefoundation.org with blog ideas or to volunteer.This story first appeared in Pride Foundation’s Blog.