Human dignity apparently takes a back seat to opposing marriage equality.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the bishops’ anti-poverty arm, has threatened all the groups that they must leave the Coalition or lose their future funding. Among those that could be impacted are Catholic Charities, Latino Union, Resurrection Project, United African Organization, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Albany Park Neighborhood Council, ARISE Chicago, Chicago Workers Collaborative, Interfaith Leadership Project, and Most Blessed Trinity. A meeting later this week will determine if some minds can be changed or if a compromise can be found.

This is hardly the first time the Catholic Church has punished its own beneficiaries over the issue of marriage equality. In 2012, it cut funding for a homeless agency in Sacramento because the agency’s director supported same-sex marriage. Catholic Charities of Colorado threatened to shut down if the state passed civil unions last year, even though that version of the bill included an exception to allow the adoption agency to continue discriminating against same-sex couples. After Washington, DC legalized marriage equality in 2010, Catholic Charities stopped offering partner benefits to all employees to avoid having to provide benefits to gay employees. That same year, the diocese of Portland, Maine abandoned funding for a homeless shelter that also came out for marriage equality.

If the Catholic Church follows through on this ultimatum with these Illinois groups, it would prove that it places a higher priority on opposing marriage equality than supporting poor people or immigrants.

Columbus Bishop Frederick Campbell (Credit: AP)

Franklin County Commissioner John O’Grady is a dedicated alumnus of Bishop Ready, and Principal Celene Seamen apparently invited him to give the graduation speech about two months ago. At the ceremony, his name was still on the program, but students were told he could not speak because “something had come up,” and Seamen gave the speech herself. It turns out that “something” was an intervention from Bishop Frederick Campbell, who objected to O’Grady’s support for advancing marriage equality in Ohio. Campbell was the very same bishop who defended Hale’s firing for being in a “quasi-spousal relationship.”

This only came to light because someone who attended the commencement told The Columbus Dispatch that O’Grady didn’t show. The Dispatch reached out to him and he confirmed what had happened. If he hadn’t, the school would have left the crowd believing O’Grady had blown off the speech instead of taking responsibility for disinviting him. If the diocese feels it needs to hide the fact that it refuses to associate with people just because the support marriage equality, it reveals an understanding that such choices are wrong.

It’s crunch time this week for the Illinois House of Representatives to pass marriage equality, and the Catholic Conference of Illinois is trying to mislead potential supporters. Criticizing a Chicago Tribune editorial endorsing the legislation, Executive Director Robert Gilligan offers some confusing suggestions for how same-sex couples in civil unions can get federal benefits:

Lawmakers two years ago approved civil unions, granting participants the same legal benefits given to married couples in the state. The editorial states civil union partners are missing out on federal benefits, legal protections and tax advantages because they aren’t married. These benefits are covered by federal law – not state law. The proper venue to get these benefits is not through an Illinois marriage license, but through legislation in the U.S. Congress.

While it’s true that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is the current obstacle for same-sex married couples to access federal benefits, many are optimistic the Supreme Court will overturn that law at the end of June, which means it likely wouldn’t have a chance to apply to Illinois’s law before it takes effect. Gilligan is clearly trying to convince lawmakers that they don’t have to act to protect same-sex couples by misstating how those families can actually access their benefits. Contrary to his claims, the federal government defers to states to define marriage and issue licenses — DOMA is an exceptional law in how it limits which of those marriages the federal government can recognize.

Regardless of DOMA, the federal government does not recognize civil unions for the hundreds of benefits it offers to married couples. The only way for Illinois couples to ever receive them is if they have access to marriage under state law.

Given Gilligan’s opposition to the law, it’s unlikely he has any legitimate interest in ensuring the same legal and economic security for same-sex families as other families enjoy. Instead, this feigned concern is clearly a ruse to sway lawmakers into not supporting access to those very protections.

Conservatives have been reticent to condemn the spate of anti-gay violence rocking New York City, and for Catholic Church Cardinal Timothy Dolan, it took ten days after the murder of Mark Carson to address the situation. For 19 seconds on a Catholic radio show Tuesday, Dolan acknowledged “some homosexuals who have recently been beaten and killed, adding, “that flies in the face of divine justice.” This happenstance response came just weeks after Dolan threatened to arrest some LGBT parishioners and allies for trespassing in St. Patrick’s Cathedral with “dirty hands.”

What’s jarring about Dolan’s comment is what the Vatican released the same day: a statement that does not address violence against gay people, but which addresses concerns that Christians are not being permitted to discriminate against gay people in Europe:

There are many areas where intolerance against Christians can clearly be seen, but two stand out as being particularly relevant at present.

The first is intolerance against Christian speech. In recent years there has been a significant increase in incidents involving Christians who have been arrested and even prosecuted, for speaking on Christian issues. Religious leaders are threatened with police action after preaching about sinful behaviour and some are even sentenced to prison for preaching on the biblical teaching against sexual immorality. Even private conversations between citizens, including expression of opinions on social network, can become the grounds of a criminal complaint, or at least intolerance, in many European countries.

The second area where intolerance against Christians can clearly be seen is in regard to Christian conscience, particularly in the workplace. Throughout Europe there have been numerous instances of Christians being removed from the workplace simply for seeking to act according to their conscience. Some of them are well known since they have come even before the European Court of Human Rights.

Incidentally, the statement was released just before the aforementioned European Court of Human Rights ruled against two British Christians who sued because they lost their jobs for discriminating against same-sex couples. This was their final appeal after losing in court in January.

Contrary to the Vatican’s statement, “religious freedom” does not include denying others their full participation in society. If the Catholic Church is particularly concerned with human rights, perhaps it should do more to prevent the violence that its anti-gay condemnations foment instead of doubling down on discrimination.

In a decision that risks his career with the Roman Catholic Church, Rev. Gary Meier announced he is gay and the author of a previously anonymous book, “Hidden Voices: Reflections of a Gay, Catholic Priest.”

For 15 years Meier tried operating in a church that condemns being gay as “intrinsically disordered,” until he took a leave of absence last June.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Meier has only watched the Church’s anti-gay stance harden over time.

“I have tried over the years to reconcile my silence as a gay priest with that of the Church’s increasingly anti-gay stance. I have been unsuccessful,” Meier wrote in his book. “I was hopeful that I could find a way to have integrity while remaining part of a hierarchy that is anti-gay — I was unsuccessful.”

The Church has taken considerable measures to discriminate against LGBT people, including a threat to fire gay teachers, dropping the Boy Scouts for lifting its gay ban, and directing Church members to campaign against marriage equality.

Pope Francis has only affirmed the Catholic Church’s anti-gay stance by condemning same-sex marriage as “a scheme to destroy God’s plan” and “a real and dire anthropological throwback.” So far, St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson said that Meier has “opportunity to be an example and mentor to Catholics in the archdiocese who struggle with the same feelings.”

Perhaps as few as two or three priests are publicly gay in the U.S., according to Rev. James Martin, editor-at-large at America magazine. Meier said he would like to continue as a priest, though he acknowledges it is unlikely.

This week, the Boy Scouts of America National Council will finally vote on whether to amend its policy to allow gay Scouts, though it would still prohibit gay Scout leaders. Conservatives continue to eagerly argue that maintaining the complete ban on homosexuality is important for “protecting” Scouts as well as the religious faith of the many churches that sponsor troops, though many people of faith support equality in Scouting too. But last week, the Family Research Council’s Cathy Ruse presented this interesting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” interpretation of the ban:

Finally, an important distinction has been lost in the current debate. The Boy Scouts’ long-standing policy does not, by its terms or in practice, exclude people who experience same-sex attraction. Rather, the prohibition is on “open and avowed” homosexuality, and it is that prohibition which will be lifted if the resolution passes.

In other words, it’s apparently okay to be a gay Scout — it’s just not okay to acknowledge it. The problem isn’t whether there’s someone gay in a troop, but whether people in the troop actually learn anything about the existence of gay people. In contrast, multiple studies have shown that coming out is actually good for individuals’ health. Honesty to one’s self, friends, family, and community also embodies the Scout virtue of being trustworthy.

This argument actually compromises conservatives’ many claims about gay men being sex-obsessed pedophiles. Instead, it reflects an assumption that sexual identity should be denied or repressed, framed by Ruse’s plea to Catholic church sponsors to oppose the change. It’s basically an admission that opposition to lifting the ban has little to do with “protecting” anybody and more to do with maintaining religion-fueled animus against people who are gay, lesbian, and bisexual. Indeed, this approach jibes with how the Catholic Church tries to simply deny the existence of gay people.

By trying to posit both arguments simultaneously, the Family Research Council and other conservative groups demonstrate that they have no legitimate reasons for discriminating against gay Scouts. They support discrimination simply because they support anti-gay stigma.

In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.

IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. As a telling example, NOM posted pictures from an IFI rally last week, but didn’t mention the organization by name nor link to its own post about the rally. Otherwise, NOM’s rhetoric has mostly been limited to threats of retribution against Republicans who might support marriage equality. The Illinois Catholic Conference has issued its own materials opposing marriage equality, and Springfield Bishop Thomas John Paprocki has made his share of negative comments, but there seems to be no coordination with IFI.

Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:

• Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
• Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
• In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
• In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
• IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”
• IFI recommends language that demonizes the gay community, encouraging opponents of equality to frame their resistance as compassion.

This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart. It remains unclear how many votes short the Illinois House is from passage or what is motivating those opponents, but with IFI’s strong presence in the fight, opponents’ will struggle to deliver a cohesive or approachable argument as the vote approaches.