Catholics Wrestle with Teachings as Gay Employees Dismissed

Pope Francis refined his vision for the church last week when he said long-spurned divorced and remarried Catholics should be welcomed with "open doors." And he has famously parsed centuries of thought on homosexuality into a five-word quip: "Who am I to judge?"

Yet the Archdiocese of Philadelphia opened its door only briefly when married gay teacher Margie Winters, trailed by supporters, arrived Monday with 23,000 petitions seeking reinstatement to her job at a Catholic elementary school.

"The school and the Sisters of Mercy allowed me to work there for eight years. Once the diocese was notified, something changed," said Winters, who was disappointed that a security guard, and not a church official, took her petitions at the chancery door.

Winters, 50, lost her job at Waldron Mercy Academy in June after a parent complained about her 2007 marriage to a woman. Her case highlights the shifting fault lines over gays in the church — and in church workplaces — just before the pope visits Philadelphia next month for the World Meeting of Families.

Jesuit-run Fordham University is standing by its theology chairman whose same-sex marriage made the New York Times wedding section this year, while Seton Hall University, with ties to the Newark, New Jersey, archdiocese, recently dismissed a chaplain who denounced gay bullying and later came out as gay.

Around the country, more than 50 people have reported losing their jobs at Catholic institutions since 2010 over their sexual orientation or identity, according to New Ways Ministries, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics based in Mount Ranier, Maryland.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, wading into the issue amid Winters' case, stressed that Catholic schools are responsible for "teaching and witnessing the Catholic faith in a manner true to Catholic belief," referring to the church's condemnation of homosexual activity. He said the Mercy officials showed "character and common sense" for sticking to church teachings.

"A great number of people like to pick apart the remarks of the Holy Father and manipulate them to drive their own agendas," his spokesman, Ken Gavin, said Thursday in response to questions about the pope's latest comments. "Keeping the doors open does not mean that basic church teachings will be changed. ... The Holy Father has not given any signals that teaching on the meaning and sanctity of marriage will be changing."

Via: NewsMax

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The Big Gay Lie

While gays are our siblings in Christ, the gay lifestyle is nothing like the straight lifestyle. That’s why we have to condemn the gay lifestyle because we love gays as people, just as we condemn smoking out of love for smokers.

One of the key reasons that gay “marriage” has won as much public support as it has is that few people understand how harmful the massively promiscuous gay lifestyle is. 

The Big Gay Lie (BGL) is that the gay lifestyle is the same as the straight lifestyle. The BGL has a number of facets including:

• Lots of people are gay
• Gay relationships are just like straight ones; they want long-term commitment
• Being gay isn’t bad for your health
• Gays are born that way

The BGL has made the debate over gay marriage like a debate about smoking where no one realizes that smoking causes lung cancer.

Before looking at what scientific studies tell us here’s some anecdotal evidence that people may already be familiar with:

• When AIDS first struck gays fought tooth and nail to keep the bathhouses -- where gays go for anonymous sex with strangers -- open. Gays are so addicted to sex that even in the face of a fatal disease they didn’t want to curb their promiscuous lifestyle.
• AIDS. While we’re constantly told that it’s not a gay disease the reality is that in the U.S. almost no one but gays get AIDS from sex. Yet even though condoms don’t stop the spread of AIDS gays continue to risk their lives to have sex with strangers
• While everyone condemns crimes by priests and ministers against children, the fact is that 81% of the victims of priests have been young boys; the problem is a gay one.
• NAMBLA -- which advocates sex with 3 year olds -- is an accepted part of the gay community. The organization marched in the SF Gay Pride parade for years before pressure from straights got the organization booted out due to bad optics.

Very few people are gay:

The debate about gay marriage has been skewed by a gross misrepresentation of the number of gays in America. While the average American thought 23% of Americans were gay the real number is 1.6% with only 3.8% of the population being LGBT.

Via: American Thinker

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CA’s Remarkable and Powerful Gay and Lesbian Political Leadership – What is Next From Them?

 For some years Californian’s have given gay and lesbian politicians extraordinary leadership opportunities and power in the state. The power these politicians possess in state government is from stronger positions and relatively larger numbers than that of many other minority groups, including Asian elected officials, in a state where Asians comprise 14% of the population, and they arguably possess more political power than African-American politicians, whose affinity group represents close to 7% of the state population. California’s gay and lesbian elected officials have wielded this power even as those same California voters disapproved gay marriage at the ballot, as in 2008, when just over 52% of voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage.  (The same voters gave Barack Obama over 61% of their votes in the same election.) But times are changing, and California’s highly influential gay and lesbian elected officials, who have been so successful on civil rights issues for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and have worked so hard on issues like same-sex marriage, have surely played a role in the remarkable changes in California public opinion since 2008.  According to a September 2013 Public Policy Institute of California poll (taken well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision approving same sex marriage as a Constitutional right), a record high 61% of Californians and 64% of likely voters favored allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry, and in apparent remorse for the 2008 vote on Proposition 8, solid majorities of Californians (59%) and likely voters (63%) approved of the U.S. Supreme Court’s earlier decision to let stand a lower court ruling that put a “stay” on Proposition 8′s ban on same-sex marriage in California. One might guess that public opinion in California in favor of same-sex marriage is even more popular today than in PPIC’s last survey.

Who are these notably powerful gay and lesbian leaders? They are almost all liberal Democrats, and have served in responsible leadership positions (some retired only because of term limits) in the last decade and include current Assembly Speaker (the state assembly’s most important position) Toni Atkins of San Diego, the state’s first out lesbian Speaker, and her immediate predecessor John Perez of Los Angeles, the state’s first out gay Assembly Speaker.  Included also are former State Senator Sheila Kuehl from Santa Monica, now serving in the significant position of Los Angeles County Supervisor, current State Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, the State Senate’s first out gay State Senator and a possible successor for Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional seat,  former State Senator Carole Migden of San Francisco, along with retired State Senator Christine Kehoe of San Diego and retired Assembly member Jackie Goldberg of Los Angeles. Congressman Mark Takano of Riverside is an out gay, as is San Diego County Supervisor Dave Roberts. They are all Democrats and are joined by many more gay and lesbian elected officials throughout the state in other state and local offices.

Via: California Political Review

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[FLASHBACK 2012] What percentage of the U.S. population is gay, lesbian or bisexual?

A survey released Tuesday by the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports:

Based on the 2013 NHIS data [collected in 2013 from 34,557 adults aged 18 and over], 96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual. The remaining 1.1% of adults identified as “something else[]” [0.2%,] stated “I don’t know the answer[]” [0.4%] or refused to provide an answer [0.6%].

More specifically, 1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual.

The results are generally in the same ballpark as past estimates — and far below the long-debunked 10 percent estimate. But past data that I’ve seen had suggested that there were about twice as many gay or bisexual men as lesbian or bisexual women; this data suggests that there is no such gender gap.

Via: Washington Post

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Gov. Jan Brewer vetoes Arizona’s religious freedom bill: ‘Creates more problems than it purports to solve’

Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer announced she would veto a bill allowing those with religious objections to refuse service to gay people, saying the proposed law “creates more problems than it purports to solve.”

Brewer held a late afternoon news conference on Wednesday to reveal her decision, which was broadcast on Fox News. (RELATED: When ‘leave us alone’ became ‘bake us a cake!’)

The governor expressed her disappointment that despite the problems facing her state, “this was the first policy bill that crossed my desk.” She claimed the bill “does not address a specific of present concern related to religious liberty in Arizona. I’ve not heard one example in Arizona where business owners’ religious liberty has been violated.”

“The bill is broadly-worded and could result in unintended and negative consequences,” she continued. “After weighing all of the arguments, I have vetoed Senate Bill 1062 moments ago.”

She held out an olive branch to those disappointed by her ruling. “I understand that long-held norms about marriage and family are being challenged as never before,” she noted. “Our society is undergoing many dramatic changes. However, I sincerely believe that Senate Bill 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve.”

“Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value,” she concluded. “So is non-discrimination.”

The governor had been under tremendous pressure — including by many in the business community and within her own party — to veto the law.

Via: Daily Caller

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Male or Female? Uh uh. Bellevue College Now Gives You Seven Gender Choices

Recently, Ron's wife was filling out an application for Bellevue College when she noticed something interesting. Instead of the standard "Male" and "Female" boxes that one checks on applications, there was the question: What is your 'gender identity'? And seven different options: Feminine, Masculine, Androgynous, Gender Neutral, Transgender, Other and Prefer Not To Answer.

Under that is the question: "What is your sexual orientation?" Where you can then check Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Queer Straight/Heterosexual, Other or Prefer not to answer.

After Ron showed us the application, we wondered why they were collecting this data. So I went down to Bellevue College and got some answers from the LGBTQ Center adviser, Colin Donovan.

"We started collecting the data this fall quarter. It's about being able to track how well GLBTQ, and gender variant students, are doing in school and how we can design better services, better classes, better programs to make sure these students succeed. Up until this point there has been no way to track how that's done."

The data is 100 percent private and not shared with anyone, and for now will only be used internally. This new data collecting system was accepted by all community and technical colleges in Washington state.

Petri Muhlhauser is involved in the school's LGBTQ Center leadership program. She says sometimes LGBTQ students have different needs.

Via: MyNorthwest

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Students at All-Girl College Promote Gender-Neutral Pronouns: 'Ze,' 'Sie,' 'E,' ''Ou' and 'Ve'

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.

It's an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the "shes" and "hers" that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with "they," ''ze" and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender.

"Because I go to an all-women's college, a lot of people are like, 'If you don't identify as a woman, how did you get in?'" said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. "I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn't ask me for my gender."

Via: CNS News

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