Robert McCartney really, really thinks same-sex marriage is a good idea. Back onDec. 10 the Washington Post columnist took the D.C. Catholic dioces to task for thinking otherwise, and now in his latest column "celebrating" D.C. giving gays their "first-class due," McCartney elevated "local influential gay-rights advocates" to the status of America's most revered figures.
McCartney described one of the men, 84-year-old Frank Kameny, as the "founding father of the gay rights movement, at the level of a Thomas Jefferson or John Adams." Perhaps McCartney got a little carried away - after all, no rational person could analogize coining the slogan "Gay is good" with founding the greatest system of government yet devised, right?
McCartney also bragged that Kameny is an "in-your-face-militant" that once solicited sex from radio listeners, "especially police chiefs and prosecutors," during a guest appearance on an Alexandria radio show. John Adams indeed.
This "life of advocacy," McCartney said of Kameny, has led to "personal triumph." Triumph such as being on a "first-name basis with President Obama." (And apparently the Library of Congress was "thrilled" to get his "77,000 pages of papers and memorabilia.")
"It's like a storybook ending," Kameny told McCartney.
Of course McCartney didn't mention in his article that it isn't a storybook ending for everybody. With the legalization of same-sex marriage, D.C. city laws now require employers to provide benefits for spouses of same-sex couples. Organizations seeking grants or contracts from the D.C. city government that do not recognize same-sex "marriage," such as the many charities of the Catholic Church, have to certify that they comply with city laws before being considered for grants or contracts.
Even the liberal ACLU voiced its concerns with the bill's treatment of religion when it was first placed before the D.C. City Council. In a Nov. 17 WaPo op-ed last year, Archbishop Donald Wuerl noted that "the American Civil Liberties Union, the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington and nationally recognized legal scholars all called for stronger protections for religious freedom in their testimony on the bill."
Wuerl outlined specifically how the legalization of same-sex "marriage" would effect Catholic Charities:
The proposed legislation offers little protection for religious beliefs, including no protections for individuals, as is required under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Under the bill, religious organizations would be exempt from participating in ceremonies or from teaching about same-sex marriage in religion classes and retreats in accord with their faith beliefs, but they would be required to recognize and promote same-sex marriage everywhere else, including in employment policies, and adoption and foster-care policies, against their beliefs.
Instead of acknowledging this, however, McCartney instead accused the Catholic Church in his Dec. 10 column of "trying to cast itself as a victim of secular authorities' intolerance of religious teachings" and suggested that the Catholic Church "cut a deal" by allowing same-sex "spouses" to receive benefits but give them a different label. That doesn't sound like a compromise at all. To quote a fellow more equal to the likes of Adams and Jefferson, "What's in a name?"
Three months later, McCartney didn't even bother anymore with a feeble "deal" in his stampede for gay rights. He simply disregarded the entire controversy in his March 7 column, steam rolling ahead and asking Kameny about how he deals with "the regrettable fact that voters have rejected same-sex marriage in every state where it's been put to a referendum." Kameny's response, " ... be more forceful ..."
McCartney has to be just chomping at the bit to write a follow-up for that one.
