A Catholic Case for Same-Sex Marriage

An 81 year old Catholic woman, Erma M. Durkin, Glen Arm , has written an amazing and heart felt letter to the Baltimore Sun wherein she argues why as Catholic she has to support same sex marriage. In doing so, she displays more wisdom, decency and charity towards other members of humanity than one will find among the ranks of the bankrupt Church leadership and the far to numerous sheeple in the pews who dread anything that would require thought and true moral analysis of issues. I reprint Ms. Durkin's letter to the editor in its entirety with my emphasis in bold face:
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For all of my 81 years I have absorbed, lived and taught the doctrines and spirituality of the Roman Catholic Church. My Church has directed me well to love what is right and just. Not only to stand up for the oppressed but to search my own soul lest it harbor prejudice or hatred toward anyone. Being true to one's conscience is an essential teaching of the Catholic faith.
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And so I must speak now as my conscience dictates. Having studied this question of same-gender marriage from every angle available to me, and having associated with broad range of members of the gay community, I conclude that same-gender couples have a right to petition the state to have their marriages lawfully recognized and protected. And the state, considering the right of all its citizens to live free from bullying, discrimination, physical and psychological violence, which is so carelessly heaped upon gay and lesbian persons, would do well to support same-gender marriage.
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To want to be married is not a frivolous request. If anyone wanted to live a dissolute and totally selfish life they would not want to tie themselves down with a marriage certificate! Marriage is a bond that is made public, it brings with it responsibilities and entails sacrifices.
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The truth is there are homosexual couples, living right now, in long-term relationships, and a significant number are raising children. But because their bond has never been considered "normal," they have not been afforded the dignity and respect their lives deserve by church or state. The state now has the opportunity to make a level playing field for all it's citizens. Churches have their own laws directing whom they will allow to be married, and their freedom to do so is protected in law.

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Is there any other group of human beings that has struggled so hard, so long to live within the law? Human beings that want to live as a family unit, within their extended families? Not, undeservedly, outlawed by state and church?
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Do not assume that all Catholics are against gay marriage. The number of Catholics within the church that offer education and understanding for gays and lesbians is significant. They, too, hold marriage in high esteem, but they want it to be available to their gay and lesbian children also.
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Erma M. Durkin, Glen Arm

Richmond Times-Dispatch Profiles LGBT activist Guy Kinman

Richmond, Virginia is not the most progressive of cities when it comes to LGBT rights and equality (although it now has a LGBT tourism page on its convention and visitors center web page unlike even more backwards Hampton Roads). Nor is the Richmond Times-Dispatch what one would exactly describe as a liberal news outlet. Actually, it often borders on the near reactionary. Hence my surprise to find a lengthy and positive piece in today's publication on Guy Kinman, now 93, a long time activist in the Richmond LGBT community. Like me, Kinman came out later in life - actually a decade later than I did - and had been married. As he describes it, he tried to live up to other people's expectations. Something that I suspect so many of us in the LGBT community have done for varying periods of time until we finally face the fact that it's not working and that we are lying to ourselves and those we love. Here are some profile highlights:
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More than a quarter-century later, Guy M. Kinman Jr. looks back on what he calls "the greatest moment in my life" and remains amazed that he was a part of it.
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It was December 1985, and Kinman, the new president of the Richmond-Virginia Gay Alliance, led a campaign in which billboards were placed across Richmond with gently provocative messages such as: Someone You Know Is Gay … Maybe Someone You Love. For Richmond at the time, it bordered on extraordinary.
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The billboards marked a remarkable personal awakening for Kinman after a lifetime of gradual self-discovery, largely spent trying to fulfill other people's expectations. The former Presbyterian minster and Air Force chaplain, who had been married for 10 years before divorcing, didn't come to terms with the fact he was gay until his 50s.
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In his 60s, he stepped forward in a very public way to spearhead the billboard campaign, bringing an innate confidence and hard-earned fearlessness, along with a can't-we-all-just-get-along nature to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement.
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"Guy is the institutional memory for the Richmond LGBT community," said Jay Squires, president of the Gay Community Center of Richmond. "I don't have any hesitation at all to call Guy one of the most committed activists that I know. He's really a deep thinker about our issues."
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An introspective sort, Kinman has thought a lot about the billboard project and his life in recent months, since the Virginia Historical Society and the Gay Community Center of Richmond created the Guy Kinman Research Award to promote historical scholarship on LGBT issues.
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[D]uring the Korean War he was accepted into the Air Force as a chaplain. He enjoyed the work better than preaching and earned commendations, but he still didn't feel at home with his job or himself. Near the end of his six years as a chaplain, he realized he was "not the authentic person that God had intended me to be."

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He left the ministry, took a sales job and moved to Richmond. He fell in love and in 1962 married a Richmond woman and became a stepfather to her three children. He remained married for a decade, but like the ministry, it was never a comfortable fit. The word "gay" never came up during the marriage, Kinman said, but he said it was clear he didn't belong in that sort of relationship.
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"It was best for both of us," he said. "I walked out with a great sense of freedom. Not freedom that she had been a burden, because she was a wonderful woman, but having to be a heterosexual man had been impossible."
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He was in a unique position compared with younger members of the LGBT community. He had no parents to disown him, and because he was retired, he didn't have to worry about an employer finding out. He didn't care if people knew he was gay. In fact, he was glad to tell them. He didn't mind going on television or presenting himself at newspaper editors' offices. He was happy to have his name associated with the project, even fielding the calls that came in on the phone number printed on the billboards.
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Something he's thought a lot about is the advancement of the LGBT movement in the past 25 years — the greater standing of gays and lesbians legally and in society in general, chief among them. He's thrilled and gratified at the recent repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that barred openly gay individuals from serving. He's also glad to be around to witness it.
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It's sad that so many - especially Christianists - are so afraid of living an authentic life as the person God made them to be. Instead, they hide behind religion as an excuse for self-hatred and the hatred on others. Kudos to Kinman for having the guts to be who he is. From my own experience, it is such a liberating feeling and hopefully sets an example for others.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Ireland's Dáil Now Has Two Openly Gay Members

In yet another sign that Irish society is advancing and modernizing rapidly - and leaving the bigotry and reactionary influence of the Roman Catholic Church further and further behind -Ireland's parliament, the Dáil, now has two openly gay members. This is something that would have been unthinkable not so very long ago - in fact, being gay was not decriminalized until 1993. I congratulate these political pioneers, Dominic Hannigan (pictured above) and John Lyons for making history and hopefully opening minds as they perform their parliamentary duties. As Lyons notes, he wants to be viewed based on his abilities and the power of his ideas rather than being defined by who he loves. Here are highlights from the Irish Times:
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“The last thing in the world that I want is to be stereotyped as a gay TD,” says Lyons, who stood in Dublin North West. “I hope people see me as a competent young person, with new ideas, who is energetic and capable. But the fact that homosexuality was still against the law in the early 1990s says a lot about things back then, and how Ireland has changed.
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The 33-year-old says he has received many congratulatory texts and e-mails “of encouragement and positivity” since being elected, specifically referring to the fact that he was open about his sexuality. “It’s great it can be said in public. The feedback I’ve been getting since being elected says it all.”
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Could he imagine an openly gay candidate canvassing at his door in Ballymun when he was a teenager? “No, I couldn’t. So it’s great that it can be said in public now. Growing up, I didn’t have a role model of someone who was gay and also in the public eye. But I hope the fact myself and Dominic have been elected will show people that you are more than your sexuality. We’re in the public eye in a positive way.”
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DOMINIC HANNIGAN , who also won a Dáil seat for the first time in this election, represents Meath East. A civil engineer by training, he first became involved in politics in 2004 when he was elected a councillor; in 2007 he was made a senator.
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“The fact I was gay would have been known for many years in my circle,” he says. “Then in 2005, when I stood in the Meath byelection, I decided that I’d be upfront about it. It was a worry that people might say I had something to hide if I didn’t, and use it against me.”
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Like Lyons, Hannigan says he could not imagine an openly gay candidate canvassing in his area when he was a teenager. “Some people have said to me that they admire my honesty. The biggest surprise is how understanding people have been.” When he was a teenager he had no gay role model who held the kind of position he now has, he says. “Maybe me being open about it will help other young gay people to know they can also succeed.”

No One Cared He Was Gay Except The Pentagon - A Soldier's Memoriam

In light of the bullshit taking place at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command near Charleston, South Carolina, a post done by my friend Lyndon Evans - one of the first LGBT bloggers I got to know when I started this blog nearly four years ago - is all the more poignant. It honors a gay soldier killed in Afghanistan. It also shows the toxic evil of allowing personal religious based bigotry to hold sway in the U. S. military such as is apparently the case of Capt. Thomas W. Bailey pictured in my prior post. Lyndon's post (which has been cross posted by Pam Spaulding as well) looks at the sacrifice made by Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt age 31 (pictured at right). Here is Lyndon's post from Focus on the Rainbow in its entirety (the bold faced emphasis is mine):
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There were days I hated being a reporter or news/sportscaster as that was when I had to report on tragedy or death. All these many years later I have come full circle because today I hate my vocation as a journalist blogger.
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I could have ignored this story, wrote something more palatable to ones senses or not posted at all today. But that would have been the easy way and going against the mission of this blog to focus on one person, issue or event in the Rainbow a day at a time.
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Back then I would report such stories often with a damp eye. Today will be no different as I write this except you won’t hear my voice crack as I once spoke into a microphone.
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It was a week ago today in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan that Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt age 31 was killed during an attack on his unit by insurgents with an IED. Wilfahrt was from Rosemount, Minnesota and this past Friday Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton ordered that yesterday all flags be lowered to half-staff to honor the state’s fallen son. A celebration of Cpl. Wilfahrt’s life was celebrated Friday at the Ft. Snelling Officers’ Club. He was a proud member of the 3rd platoon 552nd MP Battalion U.S. Army serving on patrol at the time of his death. But there is more to this story.
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Up until the time some two years ago when Wilfahrt decided to enlist he was an out and proud gay man. But with finding himself in the quandary of wanting to serve his Country and the policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, he decided for the sake of pursuing his wish to join the Army he would go back into the closet so he could protect the Constitution and all of us the American citizens. That is quite an irony. Protect the Constitution and a Nation which at best holds him as second class person and a military ready to kick him out.
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In a radio inteview the other day his mother Lori Wilfahrt spoke to reporter Cathy Wurzer of Minnesota Public Radio (you can hear the interview and read it here) and when Wurzer asked her if she was concerned about her son being gay and in the military she replied, It did a lot. I think it concerned him as well. He spent a lot of time thinking about it and he came to terms with it. He knew he would have to go back in the closet, that he would have to keep that to himself. And he did, for at least part of his stay in the Army. But when I talked to him (or when he wrote maybe) when he was in Afghanistan, he said nobody cares. He said, ‘Everybody knows, nobody cares.’ He said, ‘Even the really conservative, religious types, they didn’t care either.’

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Nobody cared that Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt was gay. Not the enemy, not his fellow soliders, only the Pentagon. Rest In Peace Corporal.
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It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. – General George S. Patton.
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More Bullshit Against Suspected Gays by the U. S. Navy

With all the problems facing the nation and the U.S. military, one would think that commanding officers would have better things to do than fabricate offenses in order to harass those that might be suspected of being gay. But not so at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, near Charleston, South Carolina. There what sounds like a purely innocent event has been used as a tool to force a young sailor out of the Navy. It has all the earmarks of the type of deceit and games used against two of my clients a few years back who were anonymously accused of being gay (they had the last laugh since they now work as civilian contractors making many times what they were paid in the Navy). I would venture that if anyone needs to be forced from the Navy it's the jackass officer, Capt. Thomas W. Bailey (pictured at left), that has pushed this matter to create an issue where there was none. It's the homophobes and Christianists who subvert the U.S. Constitution to their personal religious based bigotry, not the gays, who need to be discharged. Here are highlights on this batshitery from the Washington Post:
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To hear Navy Petty Officer Stephen C. Jones tell it, what happened in his bedroom one night last month was purely innocuous: Another male sailor came by to watch "The Vampire Diaries," and they both dozed off in the same bed. "That is the honest, entire story," Jones said.
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Navy officials, however, have a different view of his bedroom behavior at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, near Charleston, S.C. Even though there is no evidence the 21-year-old sailor took part in any hanky-panky or that his friend was not permitted to visit, Jones has been charged with dereliction of duty. The Navy is seeking to discharge him, a move that he is contesting.
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"The subterfuge is, they believe this kid is a homosexual, but they have no proof of it," said Gary Myers, Jones's civilian attorney. "So what they've done here is to trump this thing up as a crime. This is not a crime."
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Some gay rights advocates have questioned whether commanders opposed to the new law [DADT repeal] might try to subvert it by pressing other disciplinary charges against people they suspect of being gay.
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"It's been the case for years that commanders had at their disposal the means to chapter someone out of the military for something other than homosexual conduct," said Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United
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The investigative summary and charging documents do not specify how Jones's actions constituted unprofessional conduct. Jones said his friend often stopped by his room to watch videos, and he noted that visiting hours lasted until 2 a.m. that Saturday night. He and his attorney said they have repeatedly asked the Navy for clarification.
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Dougan, the Navy spokesman, acknowledged that no regulation specifically prohibits sailors from falling asleep in the same bed. He said rules do require them to "behave professionally in the barracks" and that Capt. Thomas W. Bailey, the commanding officer, concluded that Jones and McGee had not done so,. "The determination was that two sailors sharing the same rack was unprofessional."
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McGee was also charged in the case. Unlike Jones, he agreed to accept disciplinary proceedings that resulted in docked pay but allowed him to stay in the Navy. Neither man was officially charged with being gay. But Jones said McGee told him that Bailey "asked him if being a homosexual was going to be an issue" if he stayed in the Navy.

Sunday Male Beauty

Protection of Abusive Priests Continues in Philadelphia

Speaking of protectiong child rapist priests, the proverbial shit continues to hit the fan - and rightfully so - in Philadelphia where dozens of priests involved in sexual abuse continue to be in ministry in unsuspecting parishes. The Philadelphia Inquirer has an editorial and the New York Times has more on the outrageous (and morally bankrupt) behavior of the Catholic Church leadership in that city. Of course, the problem is anything but unique to Philadelphia and seems the norm as opposed to the exception to the rule when the Catholic Church hierarchy is involved. Meanwhile, a Catholic college has fired a gay priest who has no history of sexual misconduct. Talk about ass backwards priorities. Yet again I find myself asking how can any moral person can continue to be a practicing Catholic when it is so obvious that the institutional Church is rotten to the core including at the heart of the Vatican? First these highlights from the Times story:
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Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had provided safe haven to as many as 37 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry.
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The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes — “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it — has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.
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The situation in Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton.
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The church has not explained directly why these priests, most of whom were not publicly identified, are still active, though it is under intense pressure to do so. Cardinal Justin Rigali initially said there were no active priests with substantiated allegations against them, but six days later, he placed three of the priests, whose activities had been described in detail by the grand jury, on administrative leave.
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“The thing that is significant about Philadelphia is the assumption that the authorities had made changes and the system had been fixed,” said Terence McKiernan, the president of BishopAccountability.org, which archives documents from the abuse scandal in dioceses across the country. “But the headline is that in Philadelphia, the system is still broke.”
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[A]t least a few people who have said, ‘I’m not going to be giving to the church’ ” and that some were not fulfilling their pledges to give to the church’s capital campaign.
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As I have stated many times before, only massive losses of Church members - and more importantly, massive drops in donations are the only things that will force the Church to change. Any claims of contrition are clearly disingenuous bullshit aimed at calming the sheeple in the pews. Here are highlights of what the Inquirer had to say on the scandal:
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If officials of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia want to prove they really meant their apology published last week over the clergy sexual-abuse scandal, they should get behind a two-part legislative effort in Harrisburg to speed justice for victims of priests or any other predators.
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The raw details of the felony charges against two priests, one defrocked priest, and a parochial-school teacher included the raping and sodomizing of two altar boys. Meanwhile, the top official overseeing parish priests was charged with child endangerment for his role in assigning priests.
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Yet, incredibly, there was no sign this week that the archdiocese or its lobbying arm - the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference - plans to do the right thing and support the legislative reform effort, which should cover all wrongdoers and not just priests.
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Two Democratic state lawmakers from the city, Reps. Michael P. McGeehan and Louise Williams Bishop, introduced bills that would redress past wrongs, as well as better assure that no future victim of sexual abuse would be denied a day in court.
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Once opposed to the civil-suit window, McGeehan's conversion came due to the appalling revelations about the accused clergy and the grand jury finding that the archdiocese had kept as many as 37 clergymen in parishes despite abuse accusations. "We are sorry," the official church apology read. But, as scripture says: Know them by their works.
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Will the Church do the right thing and support the legislation? Of course not. Here in Virginia the Church rabidly opposed legislation that fortunately passed and extended the statute of limitations to 20 years.

Will "MERS" Create Another Blow to Residential Real Estate?

As homeowners, realtors and others continue to struggle with the the consequences of the residential real estate market meltdown (my firm's real estate related revenues are down over $100,000 and many realtors are facing bankruptcy) another possible issue of earth quake like proportions lurks over the horizon which could deal another huge blow to the industry and the economy. What is it? It's called MERS, which stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, and typifies the chaos in the mortgage industry where far too much documentation is missing and the actual owners of loans - i.e., those with the real legal right to foreclose on defaulted loans - may be unascertainable. It's a mess and is particularly ominous for those trying to effect loan restructures since servicers of loans are not the real noteholders who are the only ones who can agree to loan modifications. The result is that struggling homeowners cannot get answers or approval of restructures and find themselves with two options: bankruptcy and/or foreclosure - even though many of the foreclosures may in fact be invalid. Here are highlights from a New York Times article that looks at the looming debacle:
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[T]he MERS Corporation, claims to hold title to roughly half of all the home mortgages in the nation — an astonishing 60 million loans. Never heard of MERS? That’s fine with the mortgage banking industry—as MERS is starting to overheat and sputter. If its many detractors are correct, this private corporation, with a full-time staff of fewer than 50 employees, could turn out to be a very public problem for the mortgage industry.
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Judges, lawmakers, lawyers and housing experts are raising piercing questions about MERS, which stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, whose private mortgage registry has all but replaced the nation’s public land ownership records. Most questions boil down to this:
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How can MERS claim title to those mortgages, and foreclose on homeowners, when it has not invested a dollar in a single loan? And, more fundamentally: Given the evidence that many banks have cut corners and made colossal foreclosure mistakes, does anyone know who owns what or owes what to whom anymore?
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[T]he legal challenges to MERS, its practices and its records are mounting. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled last year that MERS could no longer file foreclosure proceedings there, because it does not actually make or service any loans. Last month in Utah, a local judge made the no-less-striking decision to let a homeowner rip up his mortgage and walk away debt-free. MERS had claimed ownership of the mortgage, but the judge did not recognize its legal standing.
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“The state court is attracted like a moth to the flame to the legal owner, and that isn’t MERS,” says Walter T. Keane, the Salt Lake City lawyer who represented the homeowner in that case.
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And, on Long Island, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled in February that MERS could no longer act as an “agent” for the owners of mortgage notes. He acknowledged that his decision could erode the foundation of the mortgage business.
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[B]y the 1990s, the centuries-old system of land records was showing its age. Many county clerk’s offices looked like something out of Dickens, with mortgage papers stacked high. Some clerks had fallen two years behind in recording mortgages. For a mortgage banking industry in a hurry, this represented money lost. Most banks no longer hold onto mortgages until loans are paid off. Instead, they sell the loans to Wall Street, which bundles them into investments through a process known as securitization.
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MERS’s legal troubles, however, aren’t going away. In August, the Ohio secretary of state referred to federal prosecutors in Cleveland accusations that notaries deputized by MERS were signing hundreds of documents without any personal knowledge of them. The attorney general of Massachusetts is examining a complaint by a county registrar that MERS owes the state tens of millions of dollars in unpaid fees.
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Federal bankruptcy courts and state courts have found that MERS and its member banks often confused and misrepresented who owned mortgage notes. In thousands of cases, they apparently lost or mistakenly destroyed loan documents. The problems, at MERS and elsewhere, became so severe last fall that many banks temporarily suspended foreclosures.
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Alan M. White, a law professor at the Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana, last year matched MERS’s ownership records against those in the public domain. The results were not encouraging. “Fewer than 30 percent of the mortgages had an accurate record in MERS,” Mr. White says. “I kind of assumed that MERS at least kept an accurate list of current ownership. They don’t. MERS is going to make solving the foreclosure problem vastly more expensive.”
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MERS is a legal fiction. If MERS owned nothing, how could it bounce mortgages around for more than a decade? And how could it file millions of foreclosure motions?
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The situation is a disaster. We are routinely asked to provide copies of documents from closings that occurred 4 0r 5 years ago - I suspect because entire loan files have been lost. In Virginia and many other states, to foreclose, one technically needs to be the holder of the ORIGINAL signed note - a standard that cannot be met when the loan file no longer exists or has been irretrievably lost.

Are Republicans Playing the Christianists on DOMA Defense?

In today's GOP giving political fellatio to the Christian Right is de riguer since the religious Kool-Aid drinking crowd makes up such a large portion of the GOP base. But, in announcing his plan to defend DOMA, it seems that John Boehner may be trying to have things both ways: take steps to keep the Kool-Aid drinkers quiet, while perhaps not putting a full blown effort into the effort since in truth, outside the Christo-fascist set, same sex marriage is not a high priority item. The New York Time's review of the Boehner/GOP defense plan seems to be a watered down approach to avoid the possibility that the issue be shown to be more smoke than fire except among professional Christians, self-enriching whores like Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown, and child rapist protecting members of the Catholic Church hierarchy. As noted in previous posts, defending DOMA in court is a far different matter than shouting out sound bites to untethered from reality political audiences. Should the GOP move forward in defending DOMA in court, I hope they find out that they have merely set themselves up for ridicule and defeat. Here are some story highlights:
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House Republicans quietly moved Friday to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriages, saying they would step in to argue for the measure’s constitutionality after the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending it.
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Republican leaders had the option of inserting themselves in the case by introducing a resolution on the House floor and allowing members to speak out on the issue. Instead they released a statement of their intent on a Friday afternoon when the House was out of session.
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By choosing that route, Republican leaders illuminated a central problem they face in the 112th Congress: how to reflect the priorities of traditional social conservatives when much of the party’s energy is focused on the federal budget and the national debt, the animating passions of the freshman class of lawmakers.
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Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana set off a debate within the party last month when he warned fellow Republicans not to get bogged down in the cultural wars of yore and to “agree to get along for a little while” on social issues.
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Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio took to the political tightrope with an arabesque on Friday, when he announced in a news release that he would convene the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, made up of the three top Republicans and two most senior Democrats in the House, “for the purpose of initiating action by the House to defend this law of the United States.”
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The advisory group can now decide to ask courts to appoint it as a party in cases involving the marriage act or it can simply file a brief or make an argument as an interested observer.
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Support for action by the House to defend the marriage statute came from some conservative groups and lawmakers. But many freshmen in the Republican caucus were silent on the matter.
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Mr. Boehner said. “The constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts, not by the president unilaterally, and this action by the House will ensure the matter is addressed in a manner consistent with our Constitution.”

The move drew rebukes from gay rights groups and some Democrats. “I think it’s sad that the speaker of the House wants to spend taxpayer funds to discriminate against people,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the lead sponsor of a bill to repeal the marriage act. “It is his right to do this. But it is totally wrong.”