What's love got to do with it?

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League and asshole extraordinaire, went on TV last week and explained that marriage is not about love or happiness, but is solely about creating a family.

It's been a number of years, but my first marriage occurred when I was still a Catholic, as was my first bride, and for the life of me I could have sworn the word love was mentioned a time or two in the ceremony.  So I  googled the rite of marriage in a Catholic ceremony, and lo and behold, the word "love" is mentioned eight times in the ritual, and creating children is mentioned once (and the children clause is optional for the priest to include in the ceremony).

If the Catholic Church continues to let people go on national TV and tell people that their relationships really aren't so different from those of horses on a stud farm, they're going to need a miracle on par with Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead to resurrect their fortunes here in America.

Peace,
emaycee

Slip out the back, Jack

In the summer of 2002, I was at mass one Sunday when the priest began a sermon in which he excoriated then Democratic nominee for Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm for being a pro-choice Catholic.  I listened politely for a few moments, until it became increasingly clear that the priest was telling the flock for whom to vote (not Granholm).  At which point I stepped out of the pew, genuflected, and left.

I have never been back.

Since the Catholic Cardinals elevated John Paul II to the papal throne the Church has drifted ever rightward unabated.  I have never understood the need for progressive Catholics to remain in the Church fold hoping for some miraculous change to be enacted in the Church.  If the Cardinals electing the even more conservative Pope Bendict XVI wasn't the final catalyst, maybe these utterings by Catholic League leader Bill Donohue should be.  Donohue (he of the misogynistic, racist, homophobic wing of the Church) says he would be more than happy, and Bendict agrees, and that the Church would be better off if the roughly half of its parishioners who do not fall in strict line with Catholic Doctrine were to be booted out of the Church.

What more motivation could progressive Catholics possibly need to leave that increasingly irrelevant organization?  Get out the door already, for Christ's sake--stop tacitly supporting a Church that doesn't even want you.

Peace,
emaycee

A master campaigner

Say what you will about President Obama coming out in favor of gay marriage, but as is often the case with his election team, it was a masterstroke of campaigning.  To wit:

• It takes the sting out of the crushing loss Amendment One suffered in North Carolina.
• Because it's an election year, Willard Romney will look like the lame-ass he actually is trying to answer questions about it without looking like a bigot.
• Makes republicans look wasteful--a constitutional ban against same sex marriage?  Really?  Because for a party that swears austerity is the way to go, spending millions to get this voted on when there is so much more we can be spending the money on makes republicans seem a tad hypocritical.
• Makes republicans look intolerant--could the Catholic Church possibly put a worse face forward than the Catholic League's Bill Donohue?  He wants the law to discriminate against gay people?  That ought to help with Independent voters--and shore up the Church's sagging parishioner numbers.
• Makes republicans look petty--too many bozos to comment on.
• Makes republicans look overwrought--Santorum thinks it's a "tragic" day for America?  What the fuck?  Let me tell you, November 22, 1963 was a tragic day for America.  September 11, 2001 was a tragic day for America.  That one-sixth of our population lives in poverty is tragic.  That foreclosures are at all-time highs is tragic.  That we have more hunger in America than since the Great Depression is tragic.  The President supporting equality in marriage?  Not so much.
• Shores up the youth vote--voters who overwhelmingly support marriage equality.
• Provides red meat to the base (who turn out to vote in the biggest numbers)--I lost count of all the "attaboy" e-mails I've collected in the last two days, from Move.On to the ACLU to Democracy for America.  Turnout counts and this definitely will help Dems on election day.

I've seen a few who think this will hurt Obama--it may cost a vote or two, but I highly doubt it will be significant.  The people most against marriage equality weren't going to vote for Obma anyway, under any circmstance.  And this isn't 2004--gay marriage isn't quite the bogeyman it once was.

Now if we could get the President to lead and govern the way he campaigns--we'd really have something then.

Peace,
emaycee