I’m glad to know they’ve got their priorities straight here:
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.
“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”
Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.
So, the tax-exempt, non-profit Catholic Church has been flexing its political muscle quite a bit lately: funding the “Yes on 1” campaign in Maine (successfully removing the right to marry from same sex couples), strong-arming pro-life Democrats into passing the Stupak-Pitts amendment and now trying to defeat a same sex marriage rights bill in Washington D.C. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the church is not stopping its activities in Texas to protest the state’s use of the death penalty or putting pressure on pro-war legislators.
Obviously the best way to influence people is to stop charitable works and become a political organization. I think it is really important for the Catholic Church to do this because everyone in the U.S. is Catholic, there is no Constitutional separation of church and state and we all believe that an organization of never-been-married, abstinent mostly older men knows what’s best for the rest of us.