Anyway, Catholic charity, as a value, is taking a beating lately, what with the reaction to Washington D.C. legalizing gay marriage: The Archdiocese of DC has decided to deny benefits to all spouses, so that they can't be forced to give benefits to partners in gay marriages.
Specifically, they're not going to add any new spouses to their benefits. Folks already on the rolls get to stay on.
This is a curious stand. The reason given is to "remaining consistent with the tenets of our religious faith." The most interesting argument about this that I saw was that there are lots of other ways people might violate Catholic tenets...but it's gay marriage that gets you locked out of benefits.
I found those ideas in a report of a Catholic school refusing to admit a kid because the kid has lesbian parents.
"I don't think they interview to see what parents are divorced or what parents are using birth control or other things that are against the teaching of the Catholic Church," one protester said.
This is one of those things that we're all going to find very strange a hundred years from now, the way slavery seems today. I mean, I find it strange now, but our kids are going to slowly internalize the idea that gays are just people and wonder why people were so crazy.
What's interesting to me is that the diocese is more afraid of being accused of violating federal anti-discrimination laws in its hiring practices than it is afraid of alienating its future hires by denying them benefits.
ReplyDeleteIn the old days, they would just have tried to find out if people were gay and not hired them for some trumped up excuse. Are they really not doing that today? I'd have to think that they are being just as bigoted in their employment practices, but they can't reliably tell who is gay and who isn't when they hire them or while they're employed.
And doesn't that just reinforce the point that the distinction they're drawing is based not upon performance, ability, or character, but upon their own supernatural prejudice?
By supernatural prejudice, I mean bigotry based upon a supernatural justification, that being the proclamations (or what they've interpreted as proclamations) from their chosen deity, rather than upon any rational justification.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, fundamentalist Christians are always happier excluding and condemning people than they are actually embracing them, and I suspect this is true of most mainstream faiths, with the possible exception of Buddhists.
I hope lightning doesn't strike your blog.
You might enjoy this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mattbors.com/2010/03/pedophiles-grossed-out-by-lesbians.html