The California Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

I may or may not have additional comments on this. There really seems to be no good reason to say anything until the decision has wended its inevitable way on appeal up to the Supreme Court and been decided there on the basis of which other justice Anthony Kennedy talks to last before casting his vote.

But I do find one component of Judge Walker's findings extraordinary. No...make that outrageous. No...make that intellectually and morally shameful.

Judge Walker's decision hinges on 80 "findings of fact" -- facts that range from the peremptory and pedestrian -- "Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California" -- through the argumentative and questionable -- "Eliminating gender and race restrictions on marriage [notice the rhetorical trick?] has not deprived the institution of marriage of its vitality" -- to this remarkable assertion (Fact #77):

Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

What is one to make of that statement as a philosophical assertion, or even as a simple declarative sentence? I suppose there are contexts in which the statement, understood conditionally rather than categorically, could in theory be true -- although the choice of interpreting it conditionally rather than categorically would be a demonstration of charity towards Judge Walker's command of the English language that I'm not sure he or it deserves. To demonstrate the point, let's take this analogical statement:

The belief that the Boston Red Sox are a superior baseball team harms New York Yankees fans.


If, after a Red Sox-Yankees game, a couple of fans were to get into a physical disagreement over the respective merits of their teams (something that I believe does in fact happen from time to time), and if the Red Sox fan were to succeed in his efforts to break the Yankees fan's nose, one could legitimately say that the Red Sox fan's "beliefs" about his team's superiority had in fact harmed a Yankees fan.


Is something along those lines what Judge Walker is talking about when he makes his "finding of fact"? Perhaps, but I doubt it. There admittedly are people who believe, on the authority of their religion, that homosexual relationships are sinful and who, compelled by that belief, beat up homosexuals. Such actions would be directly analogous to my baseball hypothetical. Those same actions would also be antithetical to the moral convictions of the vast majority of people who believe that homosexual relationships are sinful. 


Are deplorable incidents of that kind the way in which Judge Walker is asserting that religious beliefs about the sinfulness of homosexual relationships "harm gays and lesbians"? Not on your life.  Judge Walker believes -- rules, actually -- that a mere religious conviction about the sinfulness of "gay and lesbian relationships" -- apart from any overt action taken in response to that conviction -- harms homosexuals. The grounds for Judge Walker's private opinion on this point can be seen in the citations he makes to the transcript of oral argument in the case itself. He quotes testimony from several witnesses as to various Christian bodies' teachings on the immorality of homosexual activity. (He's fashionably "inclusive" in his scorn for Christian doctrine, Protestant and Catholic, on the point.)  But he singles out the teachings of the Catholic Church as one example of religious beliefs that, in and of themselves, "harm gays and lesbians." One of the supporting footnotes to "Fact" #77 is this:



PX2545 (Young Nov 13, 2009 Dep Tr 55:15-55:20, 56:21-57:7: There is a religious component to the bigotry and prejudice against gay and lesbian individuals); see also id at 61:18-22, 62:13-17 (Catholic Church views homosexuality as “sinful.”)


There you have it. It is a finding of "fact" by a Federal district court judge that my religion is a "component" of the prejudice that is practiced against gay and lesbian individuals. My belief as a Catholic that homosexual acts are sinful constitutes an example of the bigotry that has deprived homosexuals who want to marry each other of their constitutional rights. One hears a lot of loose talk these days about a culture war. But can you blame Catholics for listening sympathetically to such talk when their government officially declares that the Catholic Church teaches "bigotry and prejudice"?

Double Lives

The Catholic Church apparently sees itself in the midst of a public relations crisis. From Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech, to the flood of priestly sex abuse scandals, to the release of new canonical norms pertaining to those scandals, to the news this week that some number of Catholic priests in Rome are leading double lives as active homosexuals, the Church seems intent on disproving that old saw about there being no such thing as bad publicity.

Since "public relations" is more or less the art of lying about oneself to large numbers of people, I've never been much troubled by assertions that the Church is not very good at it. An organization whose mission statement includes the certitude that "men will revile [it] and persecute [it] and utter all kinds of evil against [it]" should not waste too much time with media consultants cultivating a glossy corporate image. The real problem, I think, would be if the Church started trying to get really good at PR -- imitating celebrities and politicians and oil companies in a concerted effort to "spin" whatever bad news comes their way.

I fear something like that may be going on in Italy right now. The reaction of the Diocese of Rome to reports of "gay priests' wild nights" has been to issue a statement calling on any such priests to come forward publicly and renounce their priesthood. To those who long to see the Church adopt a get-tough policy (verbally, at least) against miscreant priests, the Rome Vicariate's statement probably looks like a welcome step in the right direction -- a strategic response, PR-wise.

I find it a little disturbing.

The pastoral care of sinners, and the discernment of what is and is not a genuine priestly vocation, are matters to be handled in chanceries and rectories and confessionals -- not in the headlines of Italian newspapers. Some of the priests involved in this story probably should never have entered the priesthood, and should leave it under the guidance of competent spiritual direction. But there may be others with real vocations who have gotten themselves caught up in a destructive, habitual, and seemingly hopeless pattern of sin. Does the Church have no pastoral obligation to priests in both of those categories? And is a face-saving blanket pronouncement that calls on all the priests involved to come out of the closet and get out of the priesthood an honorable way of meeting that pastoral obligation?

The message of Jesus Christ has always been:

"Hey, sinners! Stop it! I'll help you."

The Diocese of Rome has decided instead to shout:

"Hey, sinners! Go away and quit embarrassing us!"