Posted on 06/28/2011 4:51:20 AM PDT by NYer
For all of the political drama in New York these past weeks, Friday night’s historic vote in favor of ay marriage by the NYS Senate was actually rather anti-climactic. It was a fight over political and philosophical nomenclature, not over new realities. As the losing side licks its wounds, we should realize that we didn’t lose as much as we think we did last night. We’ve been losing it for decades.
What we call the lived reality that is marriage is important. The name indicates the reality. Nomen est omen, as it is said in latin. “The name is the sign.” What really happened here in New York last night was a recognition that for thirty years we have given the lived reality of marriage to gays and lesbians, by systematically giving them all of the goods and privileges reserved to married people.
There was little, if any, protest as sodomy laws were struck down, when gay/lesbian adoptions were legalized, when partners were entitled to shared employment benefits hitherto reserved for spouses, etc. Society used to reserve these goods for those men and women willing to make a lifetime commitment to one another. What were once rights became entitlements in a nation increasingly debilitated by narcissism and a faux egalitarianism.
We have allowed what was once a brush fire to build to a forest fire that is now raging across the American landscape. Fueling that fire has been the same surrender of marital goods and privileges to cohabiting heterosexuals as well. Add to that no-fault divorce and the all-out war on the greatest of all the goods of marriage:
The abortion of over 53 million babies, because people have been enjoying the sex, but were not prepared mentally, emotionally, or economically to embrace the obvious outcome. Children are the greatest of all the blessings of marriage, yet have been treated as mere accessories by people aping marriage.
This isn’t the fault of gays and lesbians so much as it is our fault for allowing it to happen. Consider the following.
Kansas is poised to become the first state in the nation that is abortion-free. They are down to their last one or two clinics. Juxtapose that with New York, the abortion capital of the nation.
In New York City, 41% of all pregnancies end in abortion (60% among African-Americans).
In New York City, we just passed a law (Bill 371) that targets crisis pregnancy centers, with NARAL NY’s stated goal of shutting them down.
In New York State from 2000-2010, we aborted three times as many babies as the state grew by, losing two seats in Congress as a result of the demographic decline.
New York State pays for over 45,000 abortions per year through Medicaid.
The Catholic Church has been largely missing in action since the death of Cardinal O’Connor. In the fight over Bill 371, there was one priest who showed to give testimony to the New York City Council, Father Peter Pilsner. No religious brothers or sisters. At a rally in Harlem over the bill, there were a few priests who turned out, and that was it. There was no mention of the bill by any bishops in Brooklyn, New York, or Rockville Centre, in the five months of fighting, until a joint statement by Bishop DiMarzio of Brooklyn, and Archbishop Dolan the night before the City Council vote.
To their credit, those missing in action over Bill 371 turned out to fight the gay marriage proposal. However, it was to little, too late. Catholic clergy have been loathe to engage these issues from the pulpit. “Too political,” is the mantra. It wasn’t too political for the Holy Spirit and His partner, Blessed John Paul II, who gave us all the tools we need to reclaim an authentic Christian civilization. Yet, I have never heard a priest discuss any of JP II’s teaching in any substantive manner from the pulpit, or in any adult education program. The disconnect has been breathtaking.
So, while Friday night’s vote was nothing new in the Rotten Apple, it does portend very bad things to come for the Church. As elsewhere, we will be targets of discrimination suits and run out of the adoption business if we refuse to place children with gay and lesbian couples. We will eventually be accused of bigotry for failing to do gay/lesbian weddings, and our clergy will lose their civil faculties to witness at weddings on behalf of the state. This will force Catholics into requiring two wedding ceremonies: one church, one civil.
If our clergy thought that fighting these forces was “too political,” in the past, the fight will now become one that is existential in the future. Our clergy now face a line drawn in the sand. Retreat from that line, and see the church continue to be coopted, as a majority of New York Catholics favors gay rights, or cross that line and fight for all we are worth.
We haven’t fought for all we are worth, because we have lost sight of our worth. Perhaps if there is a silver lining at all in Friday nights events, it’s that we have now opened the door to that discussion within the Church. It will be interesting to see how many bishops and their priests are willing to pursue that discussion.
Ping!
What did they do in Gomorrah?
I knew it was lost back in 1979 when I was sitting in a dreary dressing room, surrounded by gay actors while waiting to go on stage, and they were plotting to destroy the life and career of Anita Bryant.
I agree! I grew up in NYS but that was a different era and a different state. Ironically the married parents here are immigrants from Korea, China, India, etc
The same thing they did in Sodom.
New York was a sh!t-hole of decadance for years before this silly "gay marriage" bill was passed last week.
“We” lost the battle when heterosexuals systematically separated sex from marriage and child-bearing from sex. Homosexuals, even in New York, aren’t numerous enough to pass laws if the majority takes a stand against them. The system was reworked over the last 50 years to facilitate heterosexual fornication, abortion, cohabitation, and divorce. Homosexuals are (tacky pun intended) riding the caboose of a long train.
Forget the gay agenda/homosexual BS.
That’s NOT the point, here.
The POINT is, that about two thirds of the voting population DID NOT WANT this legislation—so it passes anyway.
Can anything be more demoralizing for the voters?
What the hell is the POINT of voting for or against ANYTHING when this is the result?
Even prior to the gradual acceptance of homosexuality was the failure to live out their own committment to marriage on the part of the regular couples: acceptance of secular government schools, no-fault divorce and contraception, and then abortion.
I don't know, either. Rome didn't. No former Communist country has, yet. If there's a way to prevent a developed society from committing suicide, I've missed in my reading.
And you're right, Church leaders really seem not to get it. Some put a great deal of effort into opposing abortion, and that's good, but abortion, like homosexual "marriage," is a trailing-edge symptom of a systemic denial of the objective reality of human sexuality.
And behind that is a rejection of God, Who created us so that our sexual relationship generally makes offspring, in the absence of deliberate intervention ... when He could have fixed it so we'd have physical enjoyment without consequences, drat Him!
A good start would be to stop using the vocabulary the scum chose and impose on everyone else. Of course you lose the debate when at the outset you accept the carefully chosen words your opponent has dreamed up to hide the real meaning and real impact of the issue to be debated.
There is no "LGBTIPEEDUPEED commumitty". There is an evil mob made up of queers, perverts, and assorted other sick people who need to be either treated and cured or kept away from decent people upon whom they prey. That view may or may not be realistic, but it's the view we have to take to recover the ground we've lost. Half the reason we lost so much ground is because people argued endlessly over what compromises to make rather than joining the fight to hold the line now and compromise after our victory when it was clear who would be making the rules.
JMHO
Regards
Many are conditioned to think that marriage comes from the state, and that marriage is just another contract that can be broken and resumed as long as the state gives its OK. So they accept whatever impossibility the state decides is marriage, instead of relying in their faith to decide who is and who isn’t married.
“We will eventually be accused of bigotry for failing to do gay/lesbian weddings, and our clergy will lose their civil faculties to witness at weddings on behalf of the state.”
To the statists and homosexualists this will mean that no marriages can take place, because to them the state is all that matters.
Freegards
Actually the problems began with heterosexuals, when we began to allow easy divorce. With the new single parent households, that opened the doors to those adults engaging in non-committed sexual relationships, and their children learning from them. Those children then went on to not even bother marrying before engaging in their own non-committed sexual relationships, encouraged by mass media and popular culture. As that went along, the homosexual movement was beginning its own rise, and began to demand acceptance and equality for their own relationships, committed or no. Since companies had begun to offer benefits to non-married heterosexual couples, they couldn't deny those same benefits to homosexual couples, and the spiral downward continued.
So we really have no one to blame but our heterosexual selves for letting it get to this point. And the Catholic Bishops, not wanting to be considered prudes or anti-woman, dropped the ball on their instruction to the laity, at the same time they were neglecting the instructions on celibacy of their seminarians.
We lost the New York gay ‘marriage’ battle decades ago >>
he’s right, every incremental step the politicians make, is a step towards their goal..We do the same on our side with pro-life...
Not only that, but they passed it against their rules. They have a loophole of voting on emergency legislation in less than 72 hours. They passed this law using that loophole.
If you haven’t heard, Home Depot is pushing the gay agenda BIG TIME! AFA has been boycotting them, and so am I!
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