Cardinal: Catholic schools welcome kids of gays – but priest made OK call

(Boston) Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Wednesday defended a priest who denied admission to a parish school to a gay couple’s child, calling it a pastoral decision and saying the priest had his “full confidence and support.”

O’Malley’s comments on his blog were his first public remarks about the decision earlier this month by St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham to rescind the boy’s acceptance because his parents are lesbians.

A parent of the boy said the Rev. James Rafferty, the parish priest at St. Paul’s, said her relationship was “in discord” with church teachings, which sees marriage as only between a man and a woman. She said the principal told her teachers wouldn’t be prepared to handle the boy’s questions when he realized the church’s view of family conflicted with what he saw at home. The parent spoke to The Associated Press but asked not to be named to protect the welfare of the child.

The decision prompted calls for O’Malley to intervene. The Catholic Schools Foundation, which O’Malley chairs, said the decision was at odds with Gospel teaching, and it wouldn’t fund schools that made similar decisions.

The archdiocese’s head of education later called the parent, apologized and offered to help the 8-year-old enroll in another Catholic school.

O’Malley said Rafferty had come under “undue criticism” for the decision.

“He made a decision about the admission of the child to St. Paul School based on his pastoral concern for the child,” O’Malley wrote. “I can attest personally that Father Rafferty would never exclude a child to sanction the child’s parents.”

The archdiocese said it is creating a policy to clarify its schools don’t bar children with same-sex parents.

“It is true that we welcome people from all walks of life,” O’Malley wrote. “But we recognize that, regardless of the circumstances involved, we maintain our responsibility to teach the truths of our faith, including those concerning sexual morality and marriage.”

O’Malley began his post with a recollection about meeting the young daughter of a murdered woman who had run a brothel while he was bishop in the West Indies. He said the woman’s daughter had left public school because she was being badly taunted, and he immediately directed that the girl be admitted to the local Catholic school.

“Catholic schools exist for the good of the children and our admission standards must reflect that,” he wrote. “We have never had categories of people who were excluded.”

The Hingham case was similar to a situation in Boulder, Colo., in which a Catholic school said two children of lesbian parents could not re-enroll because of their parents’ sexual orientation, and the Denver Archdiocese backed the decision.

“It is clear that all of their school policies (in Denver) are intended to foster the welfare of the children and fidelity to the mission of the Church,” O’Malley wrote. “Their positions and rationale must be seriously considered.”

GLAAD pushes for ABC to rethink ending soap opera’s gay storyline

The ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” is eliminating its gay storyline. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation announced Friday it is pushing for the network to review the decision.

“Last summer, ‘One Life to Live’ brought a groundbreaking relationship into the homes of millions with Kyle and Fish’s …

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A Madison Presbyterian church ordained an openly gay man in a relationship counter to church policy.

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Actress Meredith Baxter reveals she is a lesbian

(New York) Meredith Baxter, the actress who played Elyse Keaton on the ’80s TV series “Family Ties,” has revealed that she is a lesbian.

The 62-year-old actress says that she had a “later-in-life recognition” and has been in a relationship with her girlfriend, a general contractor, for four years.

Baxter has been …

‘Two-Track’ Church Suggested by Archbishop of Canterbury

PARIS — The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said profound differences among the world’s 77 million Anglicans over gay clergy and same-sex unions could divide their church into a “two-track model” yielding “two styles of being Anglican.”

The formula could avert a formal breach between liberals and conservatives but bring new strains in the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and American Episcopalians who resolved this month to open the door to ordaining openly gay bishops and to start the process of developing rites for same-sex marriages.

Archbishop Williams insisted that the issue should not be debated “in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican.”

In a lengthy message published Monday on his Web site, the archbishop offered a detailed and nuanced response to events at the Episcopal convention in Anaheim, Calif., this month when gay-rights advocates in the United States chalked up major victories over conservatives on sexual issues. The Episcopal Church is the official branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States.

The developments were seen by liberals and conservatives as likely turning points in the history of the divided Episcopal Church, reflecting the profound rifts over sexual issues within Anglicanism — the world’s third largest network of Christian churches after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The differences have crystallized around the Episcopal Church’s consent in 2003 to the consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The Episcopalians had agreed to a moratorium on the election of gay bishops, but it was lifted at the convention in Anaheim.

The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, which is composed of 38 provinces worldwide. The Episcopal Church claims about 2.3 million members.

In his message, Archbishop Williams repeated his view that “a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority” of the full Anglican Communion, any more than a blessing for a heterosexual couple living outside marriage would have.

That, in turn, means that as long as the broader church “as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”

The issues have confronted the archbishop with deep divisions not simply between liberals and conservatives in the United States but also across the broader church with its many followers in Africa, Britain and elsewhere. Four conservative dioceses in the United States and many individual Episcopal churches have broken away from the national denomination to forge alliances with conservative Anglican groups such as the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

Archbishop Williams said: “There is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.”

The archbishop has promoted the idea of covenant — described by some analysts as a kind of good-behavior guide for churches — to overcome the rift.

“This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure,” the archbishop’s message said. “But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure.”

The message continued: “It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude cooperation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion.”

See Anglican Sees ‘Two-Track’ Church @ New York Times

Archbishop warns ordination of gay clergy could lead to two-tier … guardian.co.uk
Anglican Head Warns Of Two-Tier Church After Gay Vote On Top Magazine Archbishop of Canterbury responds to General Convention actions on … Austin American-Statesman

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Higher level of abuse among same-sex couples than straight ones, Hong Kong study

In harm’s way: Higher level of abuse among same-sex couples than straight ones, Hong Kong study

Four times as many individuals in a same-sex relationship than in a straight one have reportedly been victimised by physical assault, according to a landmark study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the Women Coalition of HKSAR.

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After the break-up, what about the lake house?

IT was a perfect party — vodka lemonade on a dock overlooking a lake, dozens of close friends, a cool misty night in the country a couple of hours north of New York.

Inside, the house spoke of a passionate interest in style, and of a committed relationship. Silhouettes of the couple who owned the house hung on a wall in the master bedroom; the couple’s nickname — Benford — was spelled out in large letters leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

But the couple, Benjamin Dixon, 31, and Bradford Shellhammer, 33, who had planned the evening as a commitment ceremony, had broken up three months earlier. Still, with airplane tickets purchased by some of the guests, a catering deposit paid and a house they haven’t been able to sell, they figured it made sense to go ahead and have a party anyway.

Their tale of lost love has a familiar arc — love sparks, then blooms; lives intertwine; moments are lost and misunderstandings creep in; eventually the two begin to live as strangers — and an epilogue that has become increasingly familiar as well, as unwanted houses become prisons rather than cocoons.

Rather than being a glossy testament to their taste and their partnership, their house in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, is now a dead weight that entangles them and makes it impossible to move on. Having bought it and an apartment in Manhattan at the height of the real estate boom (and having made an agreement with a third partner in their lake house property not to sell it until December 2009), they are left with joint custody of two large mortgages. They are also left with two carefully decorated homes filled with one-of-a-kind accessories found on eBay and quirky furnishings by high-end designers like the Dutch collective Droog that are reminders of what came before and, Mr. Dixon said, “big reminders of what was supposed to be.”

See After the break-up, what about the lake house?
New York Times

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Gay marriage and the date debate

Nearly nine months after California voters banned same-sex marriage in the state, gay marriage supporters are ready to ask them to overturn Proposition 8. They’re just not sure when to ask: In November 2010 or November 2012.

Choosing a date involves more than sifting through the polling, community meetings and consultants’ reports that have filled the time since last fall’s election with soul-searching and finger-pointing among supporters, culminating in a meeting of the movement’s leaders Saturday in San Bernardino.

Generating enthusiasm for a grassroots campaign will also be a heart-based decision, one that has split same-sex couples even in Kern County, where 75 percent of voters backed Prop. 8.

Bakersfield resident Jade Haley wants an initiative in 2010. Her partner Alee Gamino thinks that’s too soon. Gamino’s Catholic mother still refers to Haley as “she” and has no contact with them as a couple, who are raising Gamino’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship.

Churches’ influence

On Sundays, Gamino, 34, goes to church twice. She attends a Catholic service solo with her mom in the morning and goes to a Metropolitan Community Church with her partner in the evening. “The churches have thousands and thousands of people ready to go against us,” said Gamino. She looked at 70 people who came to a Unitarian Universalist Church on Thursday to talk about the movement’s next step. “All we have is what’s in this room.”

Still, Gamino was among only a dozen people at the Bakersfield meeting called by Marriage Equality USA who supported waiting until 2012. The sentiment for a vote next year echoed one at a similar gathering in San Francisco, while gatherings in liberal bastions such as Oakland and Berkeley leaned toward 2012.

“The reaction was really mixed,” said Pam Brown, Marriage Equality USA’s political director, who compiled information from the organization’s “Get Engaged” tour of 40 California cities over the past several weeks. “A lot of people who wanted to wait until 2012 wanted to see what the plan was first before they committed.”

A nonbinding straw poll of leaders gathered Saturday in San Bernardino to plan the movement’s next step found that 93 people voted to go in 2010, 49 in 2012 and 20 were undecided. Organizers expect to officially decide when to return to the ballot in a couple of weeks. If they decide on November 2010, the deadline to have ballot language submitted to the attorney general is Sept. 25.

Faults not addressed

This month, several groups of same-sex marriage supporters said not enough has been done to address the faults of last year’s campaign in time to mount a winning drive next year.

See Gay marriage and the date debate

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Lawsuit Challenges Wis. Domestic Partnership Law

Social conservatives asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday to strike down the state’s new domestic partnership law, saying it violates a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

The lawsuit, filed by three members of Wisconsin Family Action, acknowledges the court will not have time to act before the law goes into effect next month but says justices should halt registrations as soon as possible.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle signed the law in the state budget last month. Starting Aug. 3, same-sex couples can register with counties to receive dozens of the same legal protections as married couples, including the right to inherit assets, make hospital visits and take medical leave to care for an ill partner.

Wisconsin became the first Midwestern state to enact legal protections for same-sex couples through the Legislature. It also became the first nationwide to allow domestic partnerships despite having a ban on gay marriage and any “substantially similar” relationships. See Lawsuit Challenges Wis. Domestic Partnership Law WCCO

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