Aspiring Catholic Priest Quits Church in Protest of LGBT Firings
Aspiring Catholic Priest Quits Church in Protest of LGBT Firings
Benjamin Brenkert has written an open letter to Pope Francis urging him to stop the firings and speak out against discrimination.
Trudy Ring
Conservatives Don't Want You To Vote For Pro-Marriage Equality GOP Candidates
Conservatives Don't Want You To Vote For Pro-Marriage Equality GOP Candidates
Three leading conservative organizations said Thursday that they will “mount a concerted effort” urging voters to refuse to cast ballots for three Republican candidates who support legalizing same-sex marriage.
As BuzzFeed first reported, the presidents of Family Research Council Action, the National Organization for Marriage and CitizenLink sent a letter to Republican leaders in both the House and Senate voicing their opposition to Senate candidate Dr. Monica Wehby and openly gay congressional candidates Carl DeMaio and Richard Tisei.
Tisei is running against former Marine Seth Moulton (D) in Massachusetts, DeMaio is challenging Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Wehby is working to unseat Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
“We cannot in good conscience urge our members and fellow citizens to support candidates like DeMaio, Tisei or Wehby,” the letter reads. “They are wrong on critical, foundational issues of importance to the American people. Worse, as occupants of high office they will secure a platform in the media to advance their flawed ideology and serve as terrible role models for young people who will inevitably be encouraged to emulate them.”
The letter calls the three candidates “antithetical” to the Republican Party’s platform.
“While we acknowledge that a national party must accommodate varying points of view on matters of prudence, we also believe a party must stand for certain core principles that it expects its candidates to defend,” the groups explained.
DeMaio and Tisei could both make history this cycle as the first openly gay Republicans elected to Congress. Wehby announced her support for marriage equality earlier this month.
Charlie Szold, a spokesman for Tisei, suggested to The Huffington Post in an email that he thought factions within the GOP should focus on economic issues rather than inter-party fights over issues like marriage equality.
“Richard has never been afraid to take on members of his own party,” Szold said of Tisei. “When Mitt Romney was governor, Richard looked him in the eye and told the governor he was wrong about marriage equality. The Republican Party is best when it promotes freedom, and focuses on fixing the economy and lowering the cost of living for hard working middle class families.”
DeMaio spokesman Dave McCulloch called the group’s letter “destructive” in an email to HuffPost.
“While unfortunate, the destructive actions of these intolerant groups come as no surprise,” McCulloch said. “They know Carl DeMaio is a leader working to make his own party more inclusive and positive, rather than focused on divisive social issues that are none of government’s business in the first place.”
Wehby’s did not respond to a request for comment.
Just under one-third of conservatives support marriage equality, according to a May Gallup poll, though a March Pew poll found that 61 percent of Republicans under 30 favor it.
HRC Panel Highlights Issues Facing Bisexual Youth
Watch As Marie Osmond Is Transformed Into Madonna, Marilyn And Elizabeth Taylor
Watch As Marie Osmond Is Transformed Into Madonna, Marilyn And Elizabeth Taylor
During her ’70s heyday, entertainer Marie Osmond was a paragon of wholesomeness while singing a string of popular pop songs, often with her teen idol brother Donny. Therefore, it’s little surprise she’s ready to demonstrate her sex appeal in her popular Las Vegas production The Donny and Marie Show. For “Showstopper” a new production number in the show at the Flamingo Hotel, Marie pays homage to a number of other icons with a decidedly more sensual reputation. The Mormon-raised Marie, who gets eternal props for being such a supportive mother to lesbian daughter Jessica, pays tribute to 24 other famous ladies, including “Vogue”-era Madonna, sultry sex symbol Marilyn Monroe and that eternal vixen Elizabeth Taylor.
Be amazed at Osmond’s transformation below.
Jeremy Kinser
Catholic Church Music Director Fired For Same-Sex Nuptials Speaks Out: VIDEO
Catholic Church Music Director Fired For Same-Sex Nuptials Speaks Out: VIDEO
After getting married to his partner, Minnesotan church music director Jamie Manzi-Moore [top right] was forced to resign from his congregation in St. Victoria, MN. He’s on his honeymoon, and hasn’t commented on the firing — until now.
Speaking with CBS Minnesota, Manzi-Moore is unequivocal that “Archbishop Nienstedt was the person requesting [his] resignation.”
The Archbishop has claimed that the church reached out to him for advice, but Manzi-Moore tells another story. He says that after coming out to his community, his church’s Father White reached out to the Archbishop, telling him the church wanted to keep Manzi-Moore on staff, regardless of his sexuality. Manzi-Moore says Archbishop Nienstedt never responded to this request.
While Manzi-Moore says he felt “heartbroken” when he heard the news of his firing from the church, and he does not have another job lined up, he was not exactly surprised by the news — his comments sound more resigned than angry:
I have known ever since going to work for the Catholic Church that this could be a possibility at some point in time […] It might take me a while to quote unquote, ‘come back.’ But I was born and raised Catholic and I love the Catholic faith.
Watch a CBS Minnesota report on the story, AFTER THE JUMP…
It bears repeating that Archbishop Nienstedt has a history of anti-gay remarks and recently refused to leave his post despite allegations of sexual misconduct and covering up the sexual abuse of children.
Jake Folsom
www.towleroad.com/2014/09/gay-church-employee-responds-to-church-on-firing.html
Policing the Perimeters: Andrea Richie on Police Misconduct against the LGBT Community
Hundreds Rally in Philadelphia in Support of Hate-Crimes Legislation
Hundreds Rally in Philadelphia in Support of Hate-Crimes Legislation
Hundreds gathered in Love Park despite the rain to demonstrate the need for hate-crimes law revisions.
Jorge Rodriguez-Jimenez
www.advocate.com/crime/2014/09/26/hundreds-rally-philadelphia-support-hate-crimes-legislation
That's Just Not Fair
That's Just Not Fair
“Well, that’s just not fair!” cries the indignant 8-year-old. “Fairness has nothing to with it!” says one of his dads. It’s a dialogue that occurs at least once a day in our house, especially around bedtime. As soon as our youngest son can talk, I’m sure we’ll hear it in stereo. Ah, the concept of fairness! To most Americans, it’s sacrosanct. Corruption, bribery and gross institutional inequality, commonplace in the developing world, are mostly newsworthy aberrations to us, albeit with some significant pockets of resistance. (Remember, I live near Chicago.) To most of us, fairness is something we seek in every aspect of our dealings with others, sometimes even with our children.
A few words of advice: If you choose to build your same-gender-parented family through adoption or foster-to-adoption, fairness is a concept with which you will have a tortured relationship. It’s not just the arbitrary and personal occurrences of unfairness that creep up. All the “isms” of the world, which are usually kept to corners of our ordered world, come out swinging. Gross examples of sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, elitism and their numerous cousins abound.
Between both our sons’ adoptions, I can’t count the number of times we uttered, “Well, that’s just not fair.” Such as when a birth mom chooses the heterosexual couple that just finished their application after your two-year wait. Or when an estranged maternal grandmother suddenly asserts her point of view as you pace anxiously in the hospital waiting to meet a newborn. Or when the birth mom with whom you’ve corresponded for weeks abruptly stops communicating. (All of this happened to us during our placements.)
We became familiar with the all the unfairness on the other side as well. How social agencies seem to favor some birth mothers over others, how our healthcare industry miserably fails to serve the poor, how so-called faith families abandon their own when an unplanned pregnancy happens, and how men (who are biologically 50% responsible for each pregnancy) often seem unconcerned with the actual responsibility of that pregnancy. (All of which happened to our birth mothers during our placements.) The silent and persistent answer to all these questions was “fairness has nothing to do with it.”
During our last placement, we became aware of the unfairness of “urban food deserts” when we searched for a few comfort foods requested by our birth mom. After striking out at tiny bodega after tiny bodega, we found an overpriced and understocked grocery store in a blighted part of town, which featured aisle after aisle of processed, low quality foods and a produce section that could easily fit in our bedroom. Remembering that she had no car, we wondered how she managed to buy groceries. Prior to that, our grocery store grievances had centered around the lack of parking and finding local organic produce in winter. No, it seemed that fairness has nothing to do with it.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it all changed when our sons were placed in our arms for the first time. All of the unfairness we encountered seemed to disappear. As the English poet Robert Browning wrote, “God’s in His heaven / All’s right with the world.” Like the pain of childbirth, you begin to forget and settle into the new “unfairness” of sleepless nights, the outrageous cost of diapers and the inequalities of preschool entrance procedures. It’s a joyous forgetfulness.
But we strive to remind ourselves that pain and loss are only pointless if we don’t learn from them. We remind ourselves of those unfair moments, those we felt ourselves and those we felt for others, so that the memories become parts our family’s adoption stories. Like contrasting notes that balance a complex dish, our sons’ adoption stories will be richer if we keep those unfair moments in them. No story worth telling is completely devoid of sad moments.
As our sons grow up and learn to tell the stories on their own, we hope they will sense the injustices we experienced to become their dads. By truthfully talking about those challenges we will help our sons understand the beautifully complex and imperfect world in which we live. Maybe they will carry those experiences and seek to make the world they inherit more fair for everyone. Maybe they will look back and appreciate their adoption stories more genuinely and take nothing for granted. Maybe…
But for now, bedtime is bedtime and fairness has nothing to do with it.
This post originally appeared GaysWithKids.
“Modern Man Manners” with Steven Petrow
“Modern Man Manners” with Steven Petrow
Journalist and author Steven Petrow has been busy the last few months.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/modern-man-manners-with-steven-petrow?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
