Bishop Richard Malone (Another View, “Bishop: Catholic Church still opposes same-sex marriage law,” Sept. 25) continues the disin- genuousness of his marriage pastoral.

Marriage needs no defense from same-sex marriages — the only way to afford societal respect and equality. No couple in Massachusetts or New Hampshire has refused marriage because same-sex couples marry there, nor has any marriage been threatened or sundered.

This ugly denial of the human dignity of millions of our fellow human beings is about Benedict XVI’s and his spear-carrying bishops’ homophobia. Gays and lesbians are insultingly defined as “objectively disordered” — God junk — and denied recognition of the love their natures discover.

In opposing both marriage and civil unions, the pope expects bishops to enlist the state to impose his view on everyone, denying same-sex couples the legal recognition, rights and protection it does to divorcing couples. Why is Rome exercised about the state’s role in one instance but silent in the other? Homophobia.

Malone’s “constant teaching … for millenniums” ignores Old Testament polygamy and much else. For convenience, he ignores Rome’s late recognition of mutual love and sanctification as an equal purpose of marriage.

Condescendingly, Malone dismisses those who see Rome as did the late great Cardinal Carlos Martini, as 200 years behind. They are not “understanding or accepting the faith,” i.e., what the celibate homophobic patriarchy says it is, when the faithful are, like Jesus, embracing all humankind as meriting respect and charity. Malone does not speak for the church, the people of God, any more than U.S. bishops do on contraception, a teaching rejected by the sense of the faithful, when the state judges insurance coverage as serving the common good.

Malone’s championing of the right of children to a father and mother continues his slur on same-sex parents, which he has voiced in the presence of their children; no evidence finds their children less well nurtured.

 


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