Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, a mega-church that allows LGBT people to attend services but not become members, has just moved to a new downtown location in the “gayborhood.” According to a press release obtained by KOMO news, lead pastor Tim Gaydos believes the move will help the Church better reach those “infected with AIDS”:

GAYDOS: This is an incredible opportunity to be a ministry hub for downtown Seattle as it will allow us to better serve the business men and women in our city, as well as the homeless and marginalized, as we’re closer to one of our ministry partner, Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Also, being closer to Capitol Hill is a blessing as we are serving and ministering to those who are infected with AIDS on the hill.

Apparently, the church believes that “people who are gay” is synonymous with “people with HIV.” Church leaders have admitted they believe homosexuality is a sin, but claim they can “save sinners” with Jesus’s love. Despite these claims, it turns out Mars Hill hasn’t taken any steps to affiliate with Lifelong AIDS Alliance, the Seattle-based advocacy group serving individuals with HIV/AIDS. This raises the question of whether the group has any real intentions to provide support to people who are HIV-positive or if it just intends to evangelize against the gay community it now calls its neighbors.

Jennifer Roback Morse of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute testified against marriage equality Tuesday night before the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee and delivered a doomsday list of outlandish consequences to the bill’s passages. The Ruth Institute has dubbed her testimony the “New Gettysburg Address of the Marriage Movement,” which she described as her “duty to God.” Looking much farther down the imaginary slippery slope, Morse envisioned a world without sex differences in which equality opponents like her represent a ragtag group of “refugees”:

I predict that none of it will make you happy.  Not redefining marriage. Not the attempts to smother sex differences and biological connections. Not the further suppression of churches, religious organizations, and faith-filled private citizens. If normalizing homosexual activity were going to make you happy, it would have done so long ago.  You would not be so desperate today for affirmation from strangers.

And if any of you come to realize that the Sexual Revolution has been one empty promise after another, we will embrace you.  We will welcome you to our ragtag  ranks of refugees, defectors and displaced persons from the great social civil war of our time.

Perhaps I will be mistaken, and you will never have a moment’s doubt for the rest of your lives.  In that case, we must continue to oppose you, to try to contain the damage we believe you are doing.

Morse’s rhetoric has achieved a new level of extreme. It’s telling that her testimony does not once mention the existence of gays and lesbians or their families, but instead reduces those relationships to “homosexual activity.” Her arguments are now so far detached from reality that they do not warrant a research-based debunk. Instead, simply exposing her brash paranoid ego is enough to defame one of the  largest anti-equality organizations in the country.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki

The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is advancing almost-daily attacks on marriage equality, particularly in states like Illinois and Rhode Island where legislation is imminent. On Monday, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Springfield, Illinois diocese demonstrated just how uncompromising the Church’s position is. In an interview on Catholic radio captured by Jeremy Hooper, Paprocki explained that it doesn’t matter how many religious exemptions are built into a same-sex marriage bill — the Church will still oppose it:

PAPROCKI: I don’t want to give the impression that if we get enough exemptions into the law or enough protections into the law that would protect religious freedom that we would be okay with same-sex marriage. That’s not what we’re saying here. What I’m saying is, I don’t believe that there is any provision that they could make that is going to allow for same-sex marriage to become the law without having some implication or some adverse fallout.

So just to be clear about that, we’re not saying, “well, give us enough protection here for our religious liberties and we’ll be okay with same-sex marriage”—we’re not saying that at all. The whole idea is really fundamentally flawed and is just unacceptable.

Listen to it:

Paprocki is sending a clear message to lawmakers not to bother carving out extra protections for people of faith, because it won’t change how they feel about supporting the bill anyway. The Catholic Church, in particular, has made it clear it will discriminate against same-sex couples at all costs, even if means abandoning charity work like adoption services entirely.

The LGBT movement appreciates the difference between civil and religious marriage and has no expectations that the law dictate what can or cannot take place within any house of worship. Still, the unabashed goal of the movement is to achieve equal treatment and respect in society. Creating room for people of faith to legally discriminate falls far short of that goal; it would create a special privilege for some religious groups to exist above the law instead of ensuring religious freedom and equality for all.

The Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing yesterday about the proposed bill to legalize same-sex marriage, with hundreds of supporters and opponents assembled to deliver speeches.

Outside the hearing, anti-gay opponents drowned out the testimonies. The scene included chanting and praying, as well as protester signs claiming that same-sex marriage threatened the so-called “natural order.” But plenty of supporters of marriage equality were on-hand to testify as well. Sixth grader Matthew Lannon, a supporter of the bill, made an appeal to lawmakers:

LANNON: Let me tell you about my parents. I have two moms and two dads, and an older sister. If you came to our house, you would feel the love that we all have for one another. We laugh a lot, we talk about our feelings, we argue, we are real. [...] Having gay marriage won’t change our family, it will change the way that the state, and other people see our family; as normal just like everyone else.

Watch a video that includes scenes of the protesters as well as excerpts of Lannon’s testimony:

Clergy opposing the bill have framed their attacks on marriage equality as an issue of “religious liberty,” but discrimination is not a question of religious freedom. “I come from the religious position where I believe that same sex marriage is in fact, part of God’s plan,” same-sex marriage supporter Rev. Gene Dyszlewski said at the hearing. Over 100 religious leaders from 13 denominations have come together to support equality in Rhode Island.

The House committee may vote on the bill as early as next week, and from there it would move onto the the House floor. This time around, it will be brought to the Senate floor, two years after the Senate President did not allow the legislation to come to a vote.

Steve Chalke, a prominent Baptist minister in the United Kingdom and an “icon among Evangelicals,” has published an essay supporting monogamous relationships for same-sex couples. Though he stops just short of calling for same-sex marriage, Chalke decries the Church’s history of demonizing gay people, calling it “a matter of integrity” to support those who form loving couples and family units:

One tragic outworking of the Church’s historical rejection of faithful gay relationships is our failure to provide homosexual people with any model of how to cope with their sexuality, except for those who have the gift of, or capacity for, celibacy. In this way we have left people vulnerable and isolated. When we refuse to make room for gay people to live in loving, stable relationships, we consign them to lives of loneliness, secrecy, fear and even of deceit. It’s one thing to be critical of a promiscuous lifestyle – but shouldn’t the Church consider nurturing positive models for permanent and monogamous homosexual relationships? [...]

Too often, those who seek to enter an exclusive, same-sex relationship have found themselves stigmatised and excluded by the Church. I have come to believe this is an injustice and out of step with God’s character as seen through Christ. I leave it to others to debate whether a Civil Partnership plus a dedication and blessing should equal a marriage or not. But I do believe that the Church has a God given responsibility to include those who have for so long found themselves excluded.

After pointing out that the Bible verses used to condemn homosexuality in no way represent modern-day gay and lesbian Christians, Chalke implores the faith community to consider the consequences of continuing to stigmatize the LGBT community:

I believe that when we treat homosexual people as pariahs and push them outside our communities and churches; when we blame them for who they are; when we deny them our blessing on their commitment to lifelong, faithful relationships, we make them doubt whether they are children of God, made in his image.

The pastoral situation, however, is still more pressing than this. The issue of any church’s attitudes to homosexuality has huge impact, not only on those individuals who are lesbian or gay, but also on their parents, siblings, wider families, friends, colleagues and neighbours. Tragically, I know well a family torn apart (in an all too typical scenario) because the Christian parents of a daughter entering a Civil Partnership – as a result of the teaching they had received – refused to attend the ceremony. Their daughter – also a committed Christian – who had taken years to find the courage to be honest with them about her sexuality (for fear of their response) felt betrayed. Brothers and sister took different sides. Neighbours, work colleagues, church members and friends all joined in. Thus a rift was created which has left in its wake much sadness and pain, a catalogue of broken or strained relationships and some very deep regrets.

Read more

The Pentagon announce Tuesday that it will allow military spouses clubs to continue functioning on bases even if they discriminate against same-sex spouses, according to BuzzFeed. The club at Fort Bragg arbitrarily changed its rules last month to prevent a same-sex spouse, Ashley Broadway, from joining, even though nothing in the club’s policies should have excluded her. Spouses clubs operate as private organizations, and thus are not bound to the Defense of Marriage Act, but Army officials have obfuscated responsibility for allowing the groups to discriminate by pointing out that the military’s nondiscrimination policy does not protect sexual orientation.

As BuzzFeed points out, the applicable instruction that dictates nondiscrimination expectations for private organizations has not been revised since 2008, years before the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Rather than hide behind this technicality, the Marines took the bold step last week of requiring spouses clubs on their bases not to discriminate against same-sex spouses, pointing out that it constitutes discrimination based on sex. Unfortunately, this does not help Broadway, because the Army refuses to offer the same protections.

OutServe-SLDN’s Allyson Robinson holds Lt. Gen. Dabiel B Allyn, Commanding General of Fort Bragg, responsible for allowing the discrimination:

ROBINSON: This response sounds like a very defensive final answer on the matter from General Allyn and from his command. As a private organization, the Association of Bragg Officers’ Spouses is free to discriminate, but what Gen. Allyn, I think, would like for us to forget is that he doesn’t have to provide support or dedicate resources to an organization that blatantly discriminates against certain families in his command. The responsibility here is still his.

He is doubling down on anti-gay discrimination in his community on the very day that the likely next secretary of defense has pledged himself, historically, to using all of his authority to give out as equitable a situation for gay and lesbian military families as he possibly can under law. I think that what we’re seeing at Fort Bragg highlights the need for leadership from the Pentagon to bring some consistency across the U.S. Armed Forces.

An easy solution to this issue would be for the spouses clubs to just not discriminate. Instead, they have effectively demonstrated the ongoing mistreatment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual servicemembers in the wake of DADT — not just by discriminating themselves, but by encouraging military leadership to condone that discrimination.

CNN is reporting that the Presidential Inauguration Committee has invited Rev. Luis León to offer the Inaugural Benediction in place of Pastor Louie Giglio, who withdrew from the ceremony last week after ThinkProgress reported on his anti-gay positions. León is an Episcopal priest who ministers at St. John’s Church, the “Church of the Presidents” just across the park from the White House. This parish is known to welcome gay members in addition to the other inclusive positions of the Episcopal Church, including blessing same-sex unions and ordaining non-celibate LGBT priests.

León previously delivered the invocation for President George W. Bush’s second inauguration. He told CNN that he’s honored to have another invitation:

LEÓN: You don’t get used to this. I’m just as nervous now as I was the first time. From the moment someone asks you to do that, your wheels are spinning with what to say. So my wheels were spinning now. [...]

I don’t mind being in the bullpen; relievers are very important. I was delighted to be asked and honored to be asked.

A naturalized citizen, León immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1961 at age 11 as one of the “Peter Pan children.”