The GOP Jihad Against LGBT Citizens

Some days the viciousness of the GOP is truly stomach wrenching. A case in point, Wisconsin's GOP governor, Scott Walker, who apparently believes that same sex life partners are not entitled to something as simple as the right of hospital visitation. Naturally, Walker is being cheered on by the hate filled Christofascists at Wisconsin Family Action who strive daily to make LGBT citizens less than human under the law. It's part and parcel with the opposition these falsely pious and self-congratulatory monsters mount whenever and wherever efforts are made to enact anti-bullying laws that could save lives and end the deliberate torment of other human beings. Both the GOP and Christianity have become something foul and ugly at the hands of people like Walker. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has coverage on Walker's move to cease defending Wisconsin's domestic partnership registry law. Here are some highlights:
*
Madison - Gov. Scott Walker believes a new law that gives gay couples hospital visitation rights violates the state constitution and has asked a judge to allow the state to stop defending it.
*
Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.
*
Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.
*
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the lawsuit, saying he agreed the new law violated the state constitution. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, hired Madison attorney Lester Pines to defend the state. Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle in January and fired Pines in March. On Friday, Walker filed a motion to stop defending the case.
*
In 2006, 60% of state voters signed off on changing the constitution to ban gay marriage and a "legal status identical or substantially similar to marriage" for same-sex couples.
*
Wisconsin Family Action advocated for the amendment. The group first sued the state over the same-sex registries shortly after they were created in 2009, taking its case directly to the state Supreme Court in hopes of getting a quick verdict. The high court declined to hear the case, and the group then filed a lawsuit last year in Dane County circuit court.
*
Once again, I cannot help but believe that the world would be a far better place if Christianity - or at least the Christofascist version - were a dead religion. If there is a God, I suspect many of the reserved seats in Hell will be for the Christianists and not the gays.

Pope Admits Mistakes; Catholics Decline in Wisconsin

As I have noted in other posts, membership in the Roman Catholic Church is falling in many areas of the country. While an influx of Hispanic immigrants principally in the Southwest has so far protected the Catholic Church from overall significant declines in membership, I suspect that as those immigrants become assimilated and in some cases more educated, devotion to the Church will wain as in other demographic groups and regions of the country. A Church leadership that continues to have a 12th century mindset and which takes positions in direct contradiction with medical and scientific knowledge will almost guarantee that alienation of the new immigrant group will occur over time. The Pope's grudging admission that he made mistakes - and is clearly NOT infallible - in connection with his dealings with Holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson, doesn't even scratch the surface of things about which Benedict XVI and the Church hierarchy need to admit error. The Church's treatment of gays is certainly another area where profound wrongs have occurred yet the Church continues to denigrate and demonize LGBT individuals. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:

*

LONDON, March 12 -- Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging "mistakes" that he "deeply regretted," issued an unusual letter Thursday attempting to quiet a storm of protest over his embrace of an excommunicated bishop who denied that Nazis killed Jews in gas chambers. The letter also appeared to be a broader attempt to answer recent criticism of his papacy.

*

The pope suggested that the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson could have been avoided with a simple Internet search. Church critics have said that his handling of the issue exposed a bungling Vatican bureaucracy and that this and other recent errors threatened to disillusion some of his followers.

*

In an interview before the letter was published, George Weigel, a papal biographer and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said the Vatican operation is "dysfunctional." Benedict "is not well served by the apparatus at the Vatican," Weigel added. "I think it is going to change. It has to change."

*

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center, said that it was "insane" that the Georgetown basketball team had a bigger media operation than the Vatican. . . . Reese said that one out of four Catholics born in the United States has left the church, which should be "working on how to make the Gospel intelligible to people in the 21st century." But the handling of the Society of St. Pius X, he said, makes it appear that the pope is consumed with a small group who seek a return to old Latin rites.

*

Meanwhile a story in the Greenbay Press Gazette illustrates the hemorrhaging of members that is occurring in many parts of the Church in the USA., fueled I believe by the Church's refusal to (a) punish members of the hierarchy involved in the sex abuse cover up and (b) move into a 21st century level of knowledge and modernity. Here are some highlights:

*

Wisconsin's fish fry tradition at Catholic churches has no problem reeling in large crowds, but a national religion survey shows that fewer people are filling pews in churches of all faiths. The American Religious Identification Survey, released this week, shows a 10 percentage point decline in the past 18 years in the number of Wisconsinites who identify themselves as Catholic — 29 percent compared with 39 percent in 1990.

*

The changes have long been evident. Parochial schools are consolidating. Some parishes have dissolved, and the church continues to grapple with a shortage of priests. Nuns, who at one time ran local hospitals and schools, have all but vacated their posts.

*

Disillusionment with the church in the wake of the clergy sexual abuse scandal and some financial scandals also have contributed to declining rates of Catholics in Wisconsin. The state has had its share of cases, most recently with the 2004 sentencing of Father John Feeney for molesting two youths in 1978 while he was at St. Nicholas Parish in the town of Freedom. "The church looks like a hypocritical institution for some," Carey said.

*

I continue to believe that only sustained massive losses of members (and money) will force the Catholic Church to make long needed changes. The chances of such changes occurring under Benedict XVI I rate as somewhere between slim and none.

Wisconsin Family Council - Unloving and Un-Christian

Proving herself in my view to be a mean, cold hearted bitch, Julaine Appling, Chief Executive Officer of Wisconsin Family Council (pictured at left), wants Wisconsin same sex couples who marry in other states and then return to Wisconsin prosecuted under an old 1915 law - which most likely was aimed at preventing inter-racial marriages - which imposes up to a $10,000 fine and nine months of jail time. That's the report made by WKOW-TV 27 at least. But then, I guess I should not be surprised by Ms. Appling's attitude. If one listens to the various mouth pieces of Christianist organizations from Daddy Dobson on down, they NEVER have a message of love, peace and/or joy. Rather, it is ALWAYS a message of hatred towards someone, be the target group gay, brown skinned immigrants, Muslim, or whatever. The message is always the same: prosecute them, limit their legal rights, persecute them, or just disseminate lies to demonize them.

*

No wonder only a fairly recent Barna Group study found that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%). The study group also found that young people - both those inside the church and outside of it - said that something was broken in the present-day expression of Christianity. Here are some highlights from WKNOW:
*

An obscure law makes it a crime for Wisconsin residents to enter marriage in another state if that marriage is illegal here. It carries a fine up to $10,000 and nine months in prison. Julaine Appling, Chief Executive Officer of Wisconsin Family Council, says violators of the law should be charged with fraud. "You purposely left the state for another state and you get married and you know it's not going to be legal where you reside and you have every intention of returning, that's defrauding the Government," Appling says.

*

"The law is from 1915, five years before women could vote," says Fair Wisconsin Executive Director Glenn Carlson. Fair Wisconsin says majority of their members don't care about the law, saying they would rather be prosecuted then persecuted. . . . . The prosecution of violators would be up to district attorneys and Fair Wisconsin doesn't believe any district court would go after same-sex couples who marry in California. Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard said doing so would be a "poor use of scarce prosecution resources."