partner benefits

The mayor of El Paso, Texas and two city councilmembers are facing recall elections after their support of domestic partner benefits for city employees raised the ire of Religious Right activists. One of the proponents of the recall, Rev. Michael Rodriguez, was reassigned out of the El Paso Roman Catholic diocese after paying for advertisements saying that the choice for Catholic voters in the election was “clear” and they must support the recall.

In an interview last week with Michael J. Matt of The Remnant, Rodriguez said, “Every single Catholic has a moral obligation before God Himself to oppose any government attempt to legalize homosexual unions” and “oppose this homosexual agenda.” Rodriguez told the newspaper that “even a pagan, bereft of the light of faith, can arrive at the conclusion that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil.”

MJM: Up until last year, I believe, things were pretty quiet in your priestly life. What happened to change all that?

FR: The local, and even national, "controversy" that has engulfed me is due to the fact that I have been vocal in promoting what the Roman Catholic Church teaches in regard to the whole issue of homosexuality. It's a disgrace, but the City Council of El Paso has been adamant in trying to legitimize same-sex unions. This goes completely contrary to Catholic Church teaching. I've made it clear to the Catholics of El Paso (and beyond) that every single Catholic has a moral obligation before God Himself to oppose any government attempt to legalize homosexual unions. A Catholic who fails to oppose this homosexual agenda, is committing a grave sin by omission. Furthermore, if a Catholic doesn't assent to the infallible moral teaching of the Church that homosexual acts are mortally sinful, then such a Catholic is placing himself / herself outside of communion with the Church. These are the Catholics who are actually excommunicating themselves, not the Society of St. Pius X!

MJM: I can understand why the civil authorities and media might find this “controversial”; but why would your ecclesial superiors find it so?

FR: The dismal response of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities to the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church in regard to homosexuality demonstrates how extreme the current crisis of faith actually is. It really can't get much worse. There's hardly any faith left to lose! Even a pagan, bereft of the light of faith, can arrive at the conclusion that homosexual acts are intrinsically evil. Reason, natural law, and consideration of the male and female anatomy more than suffice to confirm this moral truth.

Liberty University Law School Dean and Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver joined David Barton and Rick Green on WallBuilders Live to denounce Obama and the Justice Department for failing to win cases on Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA), which a federal judge in Boston ruled unconstitutional in July. Staver believes that Obama’s record of supporting gay rights undermined government action to effectively defend DOMA, and Staver went on to attack Obama for extending a number of health benefits to same-sex partners of eligible federal employees. According to Staver, Obama’s support for such benefits displays his “radical, liberal policies” that he believes voters overwhelmingly oppose and rejected in the midterm election:

He’s writing these executive orders as though that is able to change law, it’s not able to change law. What Obama’s trying to do is use a sleight of hand, an under the table kind of approach, to in fact change the law through these executive orders. He’s acting as though the law’s on his side, that it would include benefits for homosexuality and transsexuals and others. So he is forcing that through the system even though the laws are to the contrary. This is exactly what ultimately resulted in this tidal wave against him on Tuesday during the midterm elections, his radicalism and his forced agenda on the American people despite the fact that the people of America reject those radical, liberal policies.

However, Staver would have difficulties reconciling his argument with polling: a September poll conducted by the Associated Press shows that 58% of Americans agree that “couples of the same sex [should] be entitled to the same government benefits as married couples of the opposite sex,” and 52% even support federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Staver may be using Barton’s tremendously flawed reading on how opposition to same-sex marriage impacted the midterm election, while in reality “only 1%” of voters said “same-sex marriage was the single most important issue.”

Barton’s co-host Rick Green goes on to laud Staver for his role in training Religious Right activists at the Law School of Liberty University, which was founded by the late Jerry Falwell, to use the “right Biblical worldview” to shape government, politics, and the courts:

What they’re doing in terms of raising up this next generation. Not only the lawyers graduating from Liberty Law School but think of how many more people with the right Biblical worldview coming through a school like that will want to go be the bureaucrats, and we always think of that word as a negative word but the Justice Department and all these places and all these folks that work there in the past mostly did not have that Biblical worldview because we discouraged young people from going into those arenas. But because of what Mat’s doing and other schools out there doing that kind of thing I think we’re gonna have a lot more people coming into government for good reasons.

Perhaps Green wants more appointees like Monica Goodling, the graduate of Rev. Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, who drew attention for her Religious Right activism in the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. Goodling was implicated in the Bush White House’s drive to politicize the Justice Department and replace US Attorneys with partisan appointees. The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General “concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct, when she considered political or ideological affiliations in hiring decisions for candidates for career positions within the Department.” For example, Goodling fired a US Attorney as a result of rumors that she was a lesbian and denied a promotion to a prosecutor because his wife was a Democratic activist. While Goodling was not a graduate of Liberty, Regent University has the same goals of training young right wing activists for government roles to advance the Religious Right’s agenda.

• As promised, Alan Keyes has gone ahead and gotten himself arrested at Notre Dame.
• Politico has more on the on-going dispute between the Religious Right and the National Council for a New America.
• Focus on the Family is asking its activists to contact Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and ask him to veto SB 88, which grants domestic-partner benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees.
• National Religious Broadcasters has joined the right-wing campaign against hate crimes legislation - and considering that Craig Parshall, husband of the ultra-right-wing Janet Parshall, is senior vice president and general counsel for the NRB, it doesn't come as much of a surprise.
• Finally, Pat Robertson informs a viewer that she must break up with her atheist boyfriend and that they can't get married "because he is going to be serving the Devil."

To say that the American Family Association has had something of a tense relationship with retail giant Wal-Mart would be an understatement.  In the past, the AFA has targeted the chain for everything from using the phrase “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” to sponsoring Diversity Week at Boise State University.  

Last year, when Wal-Mart partnered with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the AFA went ballistic and vowed that “1,000,000 families … will not shop at Wal-Mart or Sam's Club on the Friday or Saturday following Thanksgiving” because of Wal-Mart’s apparent role in furthering the homosexual agenda:   

A quick search for books sold by Wal-Mart found the following related to the promotion of homosexual marriage:

    * What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage

    * Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gay, Good for Straights, and Good for America

    * Legalizing Gay Marriage

    * Why You Should Give a -amn about Gay Marriage

    * Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage

    * Gay Marriage and Democracy: Equality for All

    * Defending Same-Sex Marriage

    * Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry

    * Gay Marriage, Real Life: Ten Stories of Love and Family

A quick search of Wal-Mart's website turned up the following number of items for sale:

Gay - 1148

Lesbian - 468

Transgender - 40

Bisexual - 38

Gay Marriage – 26

The AFA eventually backed off its boycott threat once Wal-Mart pledged that it would “not make corporate contributions to support or oppose highly controversial issues unless they directly relate to our ability to serve our customers."

That seemed to placate the AFA, and now that the Human Rights Campaign is urging people not to shop at Wal-Mart because of the store’s refusal to offer domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees, AFA has come rushing to Wal-Mart’s defense:

Homosexuals have challenged traditional marriage supporters to do battle. We will now see if traditional marriage supporters accept the challenge.

Make every effort to shop at Wal-Mart this Christmas season. The gays want Wal-Mart sales to go down so they can claim victory.

Forward this to your friends and family and urge them to buy at Wal-Mart. Announce this in your Sunday School class, at church, etc. Ask your pastor to announce in church newsletters and bulletins that the homosexuals are challenging those who support traditional marriage. Tell them about the homosexual's efforts to force Wal-Mart to offer "marriage" benefits and Target's support for "marriage" benefits.

The only thing consistent about the AFA’s shift from boycott to “buycott” seems to be their militant opposition to equality for gays and lesbians.  

After last year’s mid-term elections dimmed its hopes that a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage would pass the Congress, the D.C.-based Alliance for Marriage announced it was decamping for the field, to drum up anti-gay “caucuses” in the states. On the road to its “50-state strategy,” AFM crowed that a “Marriage Protection Caucus (TM)” was established in each of South Carolina, Maryland, and New Mexico, and its map claims several more, but it’s less clear how many actual legislators signed up in these states.

When AFM announced its “two-year plan” back in November, it also announced that it would be “deploying a diverse group of spokespersons,” claiming that its coalition was “unique and unprecedented in the degree to which it cuts across racial, cultural and religious boundary lines.” Now, AFM has begun to “deploy” Latinos, launching a California Latino Steering Committee to Protect Marriage.

AFM may have an uphill struggle recruit Latino support for an anti-gay amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A 2004 Field poll found that 57 percent of Hispanic voters in California opposed such an amendment. A 2006 poll by the Center for American Values in Public Life showed that Hispanics in the U.S. favor granting committed gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples in areas of hospital visitation, health insurance, and pensions by a two-to-one margin – a higher margin of support than non-Hispanics. In addition, a majority of Hispanics favor recognizing same-sex couples in either marriage or civil unions.

Other right-wing groups attacked AFM for supposedly being soft on civil unions and “counterfeit marriage,” but AFM is apparently focusing its efforts in California on a bill that would expand the rights of domestic partnerships – an act that would “erase the legal road map for marriage and the family from state law,” according to a member of AFM’s Latino committee. Nevertheless, the group’s ultimate goal remains to amend the U.S. Constitution. Speaking of efforts in some other states to erode domestic partner benefits, AFM President Matt Daniels said, "When the dust settles, we'll have a national standard for marriage. What is going on in the states is a dress rehearsal.”