I could spend a lot of time dissecting this weird new screed from Maggie Gallagher, wherein she trumps up a whole bunch of nothing about a supposed anti-religious effort to ban male circumcision in Massachusetts, and then, of course, veers into a whine about how the Catholic Church in DC are victims of the big mean gays who now have equality there. I could stomp all over this passage:
What was the point of these kinds of government impositions on Christian institutions? The Catholic Church’s position on gay sex and gay marriage are well-known, or should be. Surely it should come as no shock to a potential employee to discover that a Catholic organization is not the right place to pursue their career if they want gay marital benefits? What gay person in D.C. is practically better off as a result of this mean-spirited and successful attempt to drive the Catholic Church out of the public square in key ways? If this were left up to ordinary gay people, I’m betting it would all turn out very different. Live and let live is the American impulse across ideological and moral disagreements.
Right, because Maggie’s career is so “live and let live” when it comes to marriage equality. And, um, all the loving gay couples that got married/are getting married? Their lives are practically better. And the Vatican is still standing!
But anyway, I could spend a lot of time on this, but I’m not going to, because Thers at Whiskey Fire has said everything I could say and more, so just go read him. Here’s a taste of Thers, reacting to the above passage:
The point was that homosexuals would have equal rights, even the ones who are not Catholic. Or, as St. Augustine once notably observed, “duh.”
And the gay person who is “better off” is the one who can say “I have publicly & officially celebrated my commitment to the love of my life.” Which is no small potatoes — I got to do that for the love of my life, and if I had been told I couldn’t, I’d have been pretty pissed off.
But this is a hilarious paragraph anyhow; savor the idea that Catholic organizations could possibly function without their gay employees. For instance, I am given to understand that in certain Protestant “faith traditions” it is possible to discover a heterosexual capable of arranging a competent liturgical musical program, but I have never personally observed the like in all my decades as an (admittedly annoyed) Irish Catholic.
Read it all, read it all, read it all. Especially the last passage.
Thers is my hero.
