I have always been a Catholic. So far that has been 49 years. Unfortunately the Church has become an institution not of love, but of hate, and now I have to leave it.
The Catholic faith had always abhorred discrimination. My children have been raised in the Catholic faith. I go to Mass every Sunday. As I write this, it is Sunday and I should be at Mass right now. I'm not. I'm writing this instead, because the Catholic Church no longer preaches God's word; it preaches hate disguised as God's word.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Catholic rite, the homily is that portion of the Mass after the Gospel reading, when the priest explains to his assembled flock how to apply the word of God to daily life. Last Sunday during the homily, breaking with all tradition, our priest told me how to vote. I mean, they always tell you in general terms how to vote, for example the Church has said to vote "pro-life". There has always been room for interpretation before. Does "pro-life" mean blindly vote for whoever wants to overturn Roe v. Wade? It might, but it could also mean vote for whoever will take care of those who are unfortunate, addicted, or dispossessed. It could mean vote for whoever opposes the death penalty, or for whoever will back strong laws punishing those who commit crimes. So in terms of "pro-life", always in the past my Church has allowed us to interpret for ourselves what candidate best reflects that value.
Last Sunday when our priest told us how to vote, it was different. He told us in no uncertain terms that by order of the Bishop we were to vote "yes" on Proposition 8. By "order"! Of the bishop!! We were to vote to ban same-sex marriage in my state in order to protect the sanctity of marriage. I was shocked. Not only that, we were told to pick up a yard sign on the way out, to display on our lawns. The yard signs proclaim not the sacred Gospel, but that we should vote "yes" on Prop 8.
How do we as Catholics reconcile our hatred of bigotry and discrimination with the Church's proclaimed stand on this insertion into the California Constitution a clause that reaches out to our worst impulses? How do we justify sitting in a pew proclaiming that "we believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" when that Church professes a political belief that is anathema to our basic values? I am sitting out Mass right now. I don't know if I can ever go back. My Church is in California, but just as every other Catholic in the world, I go to mass to remove the stain of sin. How can I sit in a house of worship when the stain of bigotry pervades it?
For a brief shining moment California's constitution recognized an indisputable truth: there are gay people who love each other in this state, and they are free to enshrine their love with the sanctity of marriage. Stunningly, the voters of California took away these rights, in what can only be called a spate of mean-spirited hatred.
My prediction is that the passage of Proposition 8 is the beginning, not the end, of the battle for this basic human right for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. By placing in our constitution the discriminatory language banning same-sex marriage, the clarion call has been sounded for a new generation of civil rights activists. Those who truly care about freedom cannot sit still and watch the pervasive evil of discrimination, hatred, and bigotry take root.
In past generations we saw the police in Birmingham turn fire hoses on civil rights marchers because of the skin color of those who dared to march. We heard Martin Luther King, Jr. pray in fervent hope that future generations would be judged based on the content of their character. How ironic then, that on the very day we elected the first African-American as President of the United States, our most populous state enshrined in its Constitution the bigotry and hatred we thought were of bygone days.
The time has come to rise up against this tide of evil. If your church tells you to vote for hatred and discrimination, in the name of God find another Church. Find a Church that believes what it preaches, that the best of the commandments is that you shall love your neighbor. And that includes loving him if he is gay.