Can Anyone Really Pretend to Be Gay?

Timothy Kurek, A Straight Religious Guy from Tennessee Acts Gay for a Year

Why would anyone want to invite discrimination? Timothy Kurek went undercover to experience what life is like for a LGB person. Prompted by a lesbian acquaintenance who was  rejected from her family four years ago, Kurek explained that he initially wanted to convert her.. His first reaction to her was to tell her to repent.

What He Did For a Year

To wrestle his ambivalence about homosexuality, he decided to come out in a big way. He got a job in a gay cafe, hung out in a gay bar, and joined a gay softball league. He was out to everybody: friends, and family. Most of his friends dumped him as a result, and his mother did not take the news well.  Said Kurek in http://Timothy Kurek, Straight Christian Man, ‘Comes Out” And Pretends To Be Gay For a Year, Huffpost Gay Voices, 10/13/12, “ I snooped in my mother’s journal one day after I had come out and she’d written, “I rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than have a gay son.” But he says she eventually came to terms with his “sexuality” and went from being a very conservative Christian to being an ally to the gay community.”

The Cross in The Closet, Memoir of Kurek’s Experimental Year

Kurek’s Epiphany was that his experience was only temporary, and he could return to his straight life not fraught with discrimination. “What I went through is NOTHING compared to the experience of the average gay and lesbian. They were never able to say ‘only 12 or eight or six more months of this before I get to be me again. So what I consider to be the most eye-opening facet of my year was really only a glimpse of how bad the closet really is.”

Is the Book  “a botched social experiment that operates on myths about gay identity…”

Although LGBT homeless youth centers will receive proceeds from the book, there are some critics who find Kurek’s year self-serving and illusory, at best. One critic in http://Timothy Kurek and the Problem of the “Straight Savior’: Thoughts on an Unredeeming Social Experiment, HUFFPOST GAY VOICES, 10/25/12, faults Kurek with “social espionage under a “gay disguise means that he operated with the privilege of sexual and religious identifications often implicated in committing injustices against LGBT people.”

The same critic believes that Kurek’s false undercover was not a firsthand account of being gay.  Kurek did not grow up internalizing anti-gay theology and wishing he were straight. He could take off the gay label whenever he wanted. As this story was written by a straight man who became an ally in the end, will the book be perceived as distorting the gay experience?

Reminders of Other Experiments

While reading of Kurek’s social experiment, I’m reminded of the former President of Haverford College (a small Quaker college outside of Philadelphia) Jack Coleman.  In the 1970’s, he would take “blue collar sabbaticals” from the college: he worked as a “ditch digger in Atlanta, a garbage collector in Washington, a dishwasher in Boston, and a homeless man on the streets of New York for a week and a half during a frigid winter. Then he wrote about his experiences and returned to his lofty position at Haverford College.

Was this a trivial societal game?  Presumptuous on his part?  Or did it make him more flexible and generous in the end to the undereducated?

Is it Possible to Walk Around in Someone Else’s Skin?

In To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the lawyer Atticus Finch tells her daughter “Scout” about why he took the controversial case to defend a Negro. His modus operandi:  “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it…”

Is this possible? Can a white person really know what it’s like for a black person or a straight person for a gay? Post your comment, please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beloved Sunnyside Gay Activist Dies

Community Leader in Queens Killed

Lou Rispoli, a Sunnyside, Queens resident for more than 30 years, was brutally attacked with a blunt object on October 20th and died yesterday. Rispoli was assaulted by two men outside a large apartment complex at 41-00 43rd Avenue. It was not unusual for Rispoli, an insomniac, to be out walking at midnight. and sometimes later.

According to a published account by New York’s Gay City News, Rispoli was hit with so much force that neighbors who heard the assault but did not see it, thought he had been shot.  Once he fell to the ground, a car with the two men disappeared.  He was not robbed. A suspected hate crime, his death is being treated as a homicide, and NYPD investigators are offering a $22,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction. Anyone with information about the attack should call the NYPD Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS,

“A Pillar of the Gay Community”

Rispoli, a Concert Manager of the Greenwich House Music School in Greenwich Village, has long been active in the GLBT community. Before there was God’s Love We Deliver, which delivers nutritionally-tailored meals to HIV/AIDS patients, Rispoli was cooking meals and delivering them to AIDS-afflicted people in the neighborhood in the 1980’s.  In the 1970’s, he was involved with the Gay Academic Union, a group of LGBT academics who aimed making the academia more cognizant of the LGBT community.  For many years, he was secretary to the legendary gay American composer and critic Virgil Thomson awarded the Pulitizer Prize for  Music. Rispoli worked on gay Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer’s campaign in 2009. Van Bremer represents Rispoli’s  26th district.

When same-sex marriage was legalized in New York in 2011, Rispoli married his partner of 31 years. They raised two daughters together.

Loss

During the course of our lives, we experience loss.  It is part of life to lose things we love.  While loss can be difficult to cope with, there are lessons learned in each instance.  The lesson may not be apparent immediately.  After time passes, we see how an instance of loss helped us deal with not only the situation that initially caused us pain but with subsequent ones.  Loss helps us grow and become stronger people.

Loss is dealt with in different ways.  There are those that bury the pain deep inside of them and don’t deal with the issue, causing additional mental stress down the road when loss occurs once again, thus compounding the agony.  A potential exists to shut people out who try to help.  Self-isolation can occur premised on false assumptions of why the loss occurred.

Conversely, there are those who embrace the lesson to be learned; albeit painful, they come to an understanding that loss is a part of life.  They move on and continue to progress toward achieving their missions in life.

There are times when loss can be good.  There is a tendency to fabricate an external existence in order to hide a secret buried deep within, as is the case when one is a closeted queer individual.

In my case, the facade hiding my secret was built around the projection of me as a good little conservative.  I espoused views that were the direct opposite of what I really thought.  I entrenched this false sense of whom I was, creating confusion and anger within myself, because I knew what I was saying and how I was acting was not what I was or believed deep inside.

I made myself believe in things that I really did not believe until reality and myth became so intertwined that I couldn’t tell  the difference between the two anymore.  I hated myself for doing this.

Luckily, my evolution brought me to the conclusion that I could no longer live my life that was hidden behind a wall of false reality.  After a great deal of internal struggle, I cast off the vile, fabricated thing I called a life.   The moment I lost my false identity that was inextricably intertwined within me was a good thing.

Decide to lose that which does not represent who you really are.  Cast it off and bury it forever!

GLBT Population Undersurveyed

Social Stigma Prevents Truth

The largest single Gallup study on record of the distribution of the U.S. LGBT population reports that only 3.4% identify as LGBT.

This study tracked over 120,000 telephone interviewees between June 1 and September 30, 2012.  Participants were asked “Do you, personally identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?”

How Could The Numbers Have Gone Down?

The reliable figures from the Centers for Disease Control put 1 in 10 as homosexual . If this is the case, how could the statistics have dropped?

Problem With Surveys

In the LGBTQ Nation’s article, “Gallup study reports that only 3.4% of Americans identify as LGBT,” 10/18/12, flaws are mentioned in this survey:

  • The estimate reflects those adult Americans who publicly identify themselves as part of the LGBT community when asked in a survey context.
  • Those “in the closet” were not recorded.
  • Social stigma prevents LGBT population from answering truthfully.

Other Miscalculations Noted in http://Why the Gallup Poll is Farcical and More Than 3.4 Percent of Americans Are LGBT/HUFFPOST GAY VOICES, 10/19/2012:

  • Survey methodology was awkward: Interviewees were asked if they were gay and how much money they made.
  • Reported that LGBT people have lower education and income than straight counterparts. These findings differ from previous market research.
  • Categories too confining for some who don’t identify as LGBT, yet are not straight.
  • Underrepresented figures further marginalize and make petty the efforts of GLBT people to fit into mainstream society.

Health Care Also Affected By Being In The Closet

Shame has also kept LGBT persons from divulging their sexual orientation, resulting in inferior health care. In http://A Call to Action to Bring LGBT Health Disparities out of the Closet/HUFFPOST HEALTH NEWS/10/15/2012, health disparities in the LGBT population are pointed out.

Too many LGBT patients are uncomfortable discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with their health-care providers for fear of judgment or discrimination.  Many of the doctors themselves are not trained to have these discussions with their GLBT patients.  Because of the reticence, LGBT patients do not have necessary prevention screenings or seek care until their illness or disease has advanced. So, the LGBT community suffers in a number of health indicators, including cancer, heart disease and depression.

BABY STEPS ARE BEING TAKEN

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a landmark report in March 2011 entitled “The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding.” As a result, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, (HHS) announced a key advancement – a timeline for implementing an IOM recommendation to integrate questions about sexual orientation and gender identity into HHS population health surveys.

The University of California Health System is planning on recording the sexual orientation and gender identity of its patients through their primary-care providers and transferring the information in the patients’ electronic health records.  Through a significant survey, UC Davis Health System found that the majority of LGBT individuals prefer sexual orientation and gender identity to be included in their medical records.

Equal Rights for LGBT Individuals

In order for LTBT individuals to have equal access to health care, legislative rights, they need to come out of the closet and be counted.  Fear of discrimination is keeping the LGBT community from gaining more ground, receiving benefits they deserve.  By being a minority whose numbers are dwindling ,while actually increasing, according to surveys, they will suffer.

 

 

BrokeStraightBoys goes to Hollywood

A popular heterosexual model from the gay erotic site BrokeStraightBoys.com will be featured in a multiple-episode story arc on Logo’s and OUTtv’s new series “DTLA”. This represents one of the first times that an amateur porn actor will be featured in a dramatic series.

From the executive producer of the “The L Word”, “DTLA” depicts the relationships and sex lives of eight friends with varied ethnic, cultural, and sexual orientations that work and live in the vibrant community of Downtown Los Angeles. The series stars Darryl Stephens (“Noah’s Arc”) and a cavalcade of notable supporting cast including Golden Globe winning, and Academy Award nominated Melanie Griffith, Sandra Bernhard and Leslie Jordan. “DTLA” is created, directed and executive produced by Larry Kennar (“The L Word,” 50 First Dates, Barbershop), Darryl Stephens, Michael Andres Palmieri, Mark Erickson, and Helene Shaw.

“This is a great example of how mainstream television and the world of adult entertainment can come together to produce spectacular results,” said “DTLA” Producer and BrokeStraightBoys.com creator Mark Erickson. My team has a great deal of experience with branding. As a media company, you have to create a unique brand for all your products and teaming up with DTLA was a natural fit for our brand.”

Mark Erickson has extensive experience working in filmed entertainment. His company BluMedia, a production company specializing in adult entertainment, is responsible for many of the web’s most popular erotic sites including BrokeStraightBoys.com, JustUsBoys.com, CollegeDudes.com, and JustUsBoysMagazine.com.

Erickson has long been exploring ways to take his roster of erotic brands mainstream, but it was only until recently that he found the right fit with “DTLA”.

“I first wanted to explore venturing into mainstream television after a model forgot to remove a temporary BrokeStraightBoys.com tattoo after an event. His girlfriend saw it later and he had to make up a story about how he got it. I thought to myself, now this would make great television. “

As part of a broader campaign, the collaboration also includes a new series of Broke Straight Boys commercials to air throughout the season starring many of the sites most popular models.

“We’re focused on expanding the footprint of products that BluMedia offers its customers along with breaking down many of the stigmas and stereotypes associated with adult entertainment”, said Erickson. “We wanted something BIG to open up our amazing brands to the rest of the world and now we’re in the process of now developing our own television show.”

Be on the lookout for more news and announcements regarding both shows in the near future.

First Openly Gay Episcopal Bishop Announces Retirement

Bishop V. Gene Robinson Is Renown National Figure

In 2009, Bishop Robinson of Concord, New Hampshire gave the invocation for the opening event of  President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Also that year, Robinson ranked #7 on Out Magazine’s Third Annual Power 50 List of  “Most Influential Gay Men and Women in U.S.A.”  For his particularly active work in civil rights for the GLBT population, he has received awards from GLAAD, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Lambda Legal, Equality Forum, and the Human Rights Campaign.

In The Thick of Controversy Though

Bishop Robinson was elected the 9th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese in 2003 and entered office in March 2004, but not without controversy. When Robinson was elected bishop, it was not at all certain that the Episcopal Church would consent to his election.

Divorced in 2008 from Isabella “Boo” McDaniel, with whom he has two children, an openly gay bishop, with a male partner, Mark Andrews, whom he later wed in a civil union ceremony, was not appealing to many oldline Episcopalians.

The Episcopal Schism

After his election was ratified 62 to 45, dissatisfied Episcopalians aligned themselves with bishops outside the Episcopal Church in the United States, “The Anglican Realignment.”  The divide was between theological liberals and conservatives in not only the Episcopal Church but its parent body, “The Angelican Communion,” churches affiliated with the Church of England in more than 160 countries.

Due to the controversy surrounding his consecration, Bishop Robinson was not invited to the  2008 Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. However, only one New Hampshire congregation departed under his watch. The church in New Hampshire suffered less fallout during his tenure than the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion. According to http://advocate.com/”Gene Robinson Isn’t Retiring Quietly”/10/22/2012, the breakaway congregations claim about 100,000 members and the Episcopal Church retains two million.”

Strides in the Episcopal Church

Despite death threats, harassment, and sharp criticism, Robinson felt it has all been worth it. His church has made great strides on LGBT issues since he was elected Bishop. In 2010, the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool, was consecrated the second gay bishop in Los Angeles as a result of a 2009 moratorium being lifted on further appointments of openly gay bishops. In 2012, the Episcopal Church authorized a provisional liturgy for the blessing of same-sex relationships and authorized its use for the blessing of marriages in those states where it is legal. The Lutheran and Presbyterian Churches have followed suit and are ordaining openly gay, partnered clergy.

Retirement Plans

Although the requirement age for Episcopal bishops is 72, and Bishop Robinson is only 65, his formal retirement is in 2013. His successor is A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop in Concord, New Hampshire.

Robinson will be working part-time in Washington, D.C. as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. This is the “think tank” founded by John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff. Here, he will be writing and speaking, platforms that he is accustomed to, on a variety of issues.

A feature-length documentary “Love Free or Die” about his ministry was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  It has already had 300 screenings around the U.S. but can be seen on PBS on October 29. It will have a DVD release too.

He has a new book out, “God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage,” a case for gay marriage which blends personal experience with theological argument. It is published by Knopf, is 196 pages, and costs $24.00.

No doubt Gene Robinson’s new career will pick up where his ecclesiastical one left off: focusing on the progress that still needs to be made for the civil rights of all GLBT citizens.

 

 

 

Romney Will Let Gays and Lesbians Die Alone

A history of dying alone

Gay people had long faced a cruel and inhumane limitation on their rights imposed across the United States by certain states and hospitals when they were denied the ability to visit their partners in hospitals.  Many gay men and women died alone as their loving partners waited outside the hospital doors due to stringent rules prohibiting non-family members from having hospital visitation rights.

Lisa Pond was with her three children playing basketball on the first day of a 2007 cruise vacation when she collapsed from an aneurysm. The 39 year old mother was rushed by ambulance to a Florida medical center where she fought for her life all alone. Her partner of 18 years was not allowed to see Lisa.  She and their children were never given the chance to say goodbye as her please to be at her partner’s deathbed were not granted because the couple from Lacey, Washington were lesbians.

This is just one story of countless documented cases where members of the gay community were treated without even a shred of common decency or humanity.

Help finally arrives

Thankfully, help finally came two years ago when President Obama mandated that all hospitals grant same-sex couples all the same rights as married heterosexual couples including visitation rights. Hospitals partaking in Medicare and Medicaid, under the new regulations,  must allow all patients to decide visitation rights, as well as who to entrust with making medical decisions on their behalf, regardless of sexual or gender identity.  According to the White House blog, “This policy impacts millions of LGBT Americans and their families. The President saw an injustice and felt very strongly about correcting this.” White House deputy director of public engagement Brian Bond wrote.

A human rights issue or an election issue?

In most of the civilized world, this would be considered a human rights issue, but this week it is simply an election issue –“Red Meat” for the base if you will.  Following the last Presidential Debate, Bay Buchannan, in the spinroom, told buzzfeed, “Governor Romney supports a federal marriage amendment to the Constitution that defines marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. Governor Romney also believes, consistent with the 10th Amendment, that it should be left to states to decide whether to grant same-sex couples certain benefits, such as hospital visitation rights.”

Mitt Romney’s website proudly states:

Like any family, the Romneys have faced hardship: Ann was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, and more recently fought a battle with breast cancer. She credits her husband’s unwavering care and devotion to her for helping her through these ordeals.

So, while Mitt and Ann have a complete understanding of how important it is to be with your partner when facing a health crisis, he has promised to allow states to prohibit same-sex couples from having the same hospital visitation rights that he and Ann share. When it comes to exercising “unwavering care and devotion” it seems that is something only straight couples are capable of doing.

This is just one stark example of the 22 rights that gay and lesbian couples have now granted under the years with Obama in the White House that are almost guaranteed to disappear if Romney wins the presidency.

When it comes to common decency and being a good steward of humanity, Mitt Romney just isn’t looking out for the millions of gay and lesbians across this country who may face the very will prospect of starting to die alone once more.

DOMA Struck Down by Federal Appeals Court

Ruling Today is GREAT Victory for Gay-Rights Advocates

The Court Case – Windsor v. United States

Eighty-three Edith “Edie” Windsor, of New York City, brought the case to court. Windsor’s wife Thea Speyes, whom she had been with for over forty-four years, died in 2009. Thea left all of her property to her spouse, but because the state-recognized legal marriage wasn’t recognized by DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act), Windsor was asked to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes. Had she been married to a man, she would have been entitled to a marital deduction.

In her lawsuit, Windsor argued that DOMA violates the equal protection guarantee of the U.S. Constitution because it requires the government to treat same-sex couples who are legally married as strangers. The American Civil Liberties Union and NewYork Civil Liberties Union helped to represent her along with Robbie Kaplan, a well-known gay-rights legal advocate, of the firm Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP.

Windsor’s rationale was that “this law violated the fundamental American principle of fairness that we all cherish. I know Thea would have been so proud to see how far we have come in our fight to be treated with dignity.”

What The Court Ruled

By striking down DOMA, the Second Circuit court held that government discrimination against same-sex married couples is now assumed to be unconstitutional. Defending DOMA lawyers were not able to provide constitutional grounds for treating married same-sex couples differently than heterosexual married couples.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the part of the law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage in states where they are legal, such as New York. The decision was 2-1, with a conservative George Bush-appointed Judge Dennis Jacobs writing for the majority. Because the Justice Department had asked the Supreme Court for expedited consideration of this case, it was pending before the appeals court and the Supreme Court simultaneously.  It is expected that the Supreme Court will probably rule on that petition in late November or early December.

“Heightened Security” for First Time in Federal Appeals Court

This is the first federal appeals court decision to decide that government discrimination against gay people gets a more exacting level of judicial review called “heightened security.” Jacobs’s opinion concludes that any law which discriminates against gay men and lesbians should be treated very skeptically under our Constitution.

Section 3 of DOMA requires “heightened security” because all four of the following factors justify it: a) homosexuals as a group have historically endured persecution and discrimination; b) homosexuality has no relation to aptitude or ability to contribute to society; c) homosexuals are a discernibly group with non-obvious distinguishing characteristics, especially in the subset of those who enter same-sex marriages; and d) the class remains a politically weakened minority.

Not The First Case

Last May, the First Circuit of Appeals struck down DOMA in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, a case out of Massachusetts, but it did not rule that sexual-orientation classifications were entitled to heightened constitutional scrutiny.

What Does the Future Hold for Gay Marriage?

This year will decide Proposition 8 in California. That case asked the Court to hold that there is a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. This is more progressive because once a state decides to allow same-sex marriage, the federal government must recognize it too.

In November, Maine, Maryland and Washington State will vote whether to allow same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage has become legal in six states, but through court decision and legislative action.  In Minnesota, voters will decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.

There’s much at stake this November, but if the Supreme Court agrees with Jacobs who is saying that any attempt by government to discriminate against gay people must have an “exceedingly persuasive” justification, state discrimination based on sexual orientation could be eliminated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not too late to be Purple today!

Don’t forget today is Spirit Day!

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is sponsoring Spirit Day today, October 19th.  Hopefully, millions of Americans will wear purple to speak out against bullying and to show support for GLBT youth.

Why Purple?  It represents spirit on the rainbow flag.  Participants will either wear purple on Spirit Day or change their social media profile pictures to purple using GLAAD’s Spirit Day apps available at http://glaad.org/spiritday. “By going purple for Spirit Day, millions of Americans are helping to send a clear message that no one should be bullied simply because of who they are,” states GLAAD President Herndon Graddick.

Has your day already started and you forgot to wear purple?

You can still go purple in support of GLBT youth with this simple way from Twibbon to turn your facebook and twitter profile photos purple.  It couldn’t be easier!

http://twibbon.com/support/spiritday

Two Religious Zealots Condemn Homosexuality and Gay Marriage

Two States Considering Gay Marriage Won’t Get Archbishops’ Votes

If St. Paul’s Archbishop John Clay Nienstedt, appointed by Pope Benedict XVI, has his wish, Minnesota will not have gay marriage after November 2012 or ever! The Most Reverend Nienstedt has repeatedly asked parishioners to vote and pray against marriage equality.

The Bible Tells Him (and others) So…

Archbishop Nienstedt defends his position by quoting paragraphs 2357, 2358, and 2359 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, rooted in Scripture and based on the Natural Moral Law. He goes a step further and says that Catholics are bound in conscience to believe this teaching and if they don’t, then they “ought not to participate in the sacramental life of the Church.”

Letter to Mother in 2010 SAYS IT ALL

Nienstedt’s views are not new. In 2010, he wrote to a mother who pleaded for acceptance for her gay child, in which he tells the woman she must reject her son according to Catholic teachings, or she might go to Hell as well. “I urge you to reconsider the position that you expressed in your letter. Your eternal salvation may well depend upon a conversation of heart on this topic.”

Catholic Teachings Vs. Mother’s Love of Gay Son

Minnesota Viking and GLBT ally Chris Kluwe wrote an open letter to the Archbishop and Pope Benedict XVI, a rebuttal to Nienstedt’s gay marriage views that appeared in the Star Tribune. Here’s an excerpt from Kluwe’s letter:

“ …It fills me with great sadness and regret that a steward of the Catholic Church on this Earth feels the need to take a stance of oppression, intolerance, and fear.Nowhere does Jesus preach hate or intolerance or loathing.”

“Millions of children grow up raised in the Catholic faith. Some of these children will be gay, through no choice of their own, but because of how God created them. What will these children think as they are belittled and tormented due to teachings you espouse?

“ What purpose does the Church serve attempting to influence the affairs of a secular state? The federal benefits under law currently denied gay couples certainly fall under the realm of Caesar, don’t they? No one is forcing the Catholic Church to marry gay couples if that is not the Church’s wish.”

“All I ask from you, Archbishop Nienstedt, and from you, Pope Benedict XVI, is to practice the most basic teaching found in the Bible – empathy. “ To read the entire letter from Kluwe, see

“Chris Kluwe Tackles Archbishop Who Told Woman to Reject Gay Son or Burn,” Queerty, 10/10/12.

Catholic Church Soldiers On Against Marriage Equality

Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Catholic Diocese of Yakima, Washington, has been urging his parishioners to vote against  the ballot measure Referendum 74 for marriage equality.  Why? Tyson espouses the following:

  • R 74’s concept of marriage is wrong: any two consenting adults desire.
  • It’s offensive to Basic Human Rights and Equality.
  • It redefines marriage and ignores the significance of the human body as well as sexual difference and complementarity, understood in spiritual, biological, psychological, and emotional fullness.
  • As a law, it conditions our society to forget or ignore basic human rights and equality and leaves children the most vulnerable.

Gay Marriage will Endanger Religious Liberty

In his pastoral letter dated October 6, 2012, Bishop Tyson says that gay marriage endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience. Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract, it will become, according to him, legally discriminatory for public and private institutions such as schools to promote the unique meaning of marriage…

“The acceptance of R-74 means that so-called same-sex “marriage” will replace real marriage – the union of a man and a woman – as the legal frame of reference for all public discourse.”

From The Pulpit to You: Preserve Marriage

Experts, political analysts all agree that marriage equality has sharply divided the state’s Catholicism. Catholics for Marriage Equality have delivered rebuttals by issuing letters and videos opposing marriage equality to Tyson and his fellow bishops in Seattle’s Archdiocese of Seattle and Spokane.

The Right Reverend Tyson has asked worshippers in his 41 parishes to donate money to defeat Referendum 74. Washington, has received, to date, nearly $6 million for its Washington United for Marriage whereas Preserve Marriage Washington has received less than $500,000 in donations.