Nearly 1,000 attend Charlotte Catholic meeting on nun’s speech

By Tim Funk

(Chartlotte Observer) Nearly 1,000 parents gathered at Charlotte Catholic High School on Wednesday night to air complaints about a recent speech to students by a nun who made what many considered inflammatory comments about gays and lesbians, divorce and single parenthood.

So many parents lined up to speak that the meeting with high school officials, the school’s chaplain and the Diocese of Charlotte’s vicar of education lasted more than an hour longer than scheduled.
Though the gathering was closed to the media, texts and tweets from parents inside the school gym cast the meeting as often heated, with emotions running high on both sides.

Diocese spokesman David Hains acknowledged after the meeting that the Rev. Matthew Kauth, the school’s chaplain, apologized to the parents for a March 21 speech by Sister Jane Dominic Laurel that was not the one he expected her to give.

Hains also said the high school committed to developing new policies that would better scrutinize visiting speakers in the future. He said the school also wants to do a better job of communicating with parents ahead of time when such speeches will deal with sensitive subjects such as sexuality.
“Parents should have been better informed,” Hains said.

During her speech, Laurel quoted studies that said gays and lesbians are not born with same-sex attractions, and that children in single-parent homes have a greater chance of becoming homosexual, Hains and others said.

Susan Traynor of Matthews, whose son is a sophomore, said he is usually pretty quiet when she picks him up from Charlotte Catholic High.

But on the day Laurel spoke to the assembly, she said, he spoke right up when he got in the car.
“He said, ‘We had the worst assembly today,’ ” Traynor recalled. “He said he tried to leave with some others, but they were made to sit down. There are students in this school who are openly gay and some who are not out yet. Obviously, they felt bullied.”

Parents who spoke Wednesday night got up to three minutes at the microphone. The meeting started at 7 p.m. and ended just after 9:30.

Some defended Laurel, saying she was presenting traditional Catholic teachings. But Hains and others said the majority of parents who spoke did not agree with the nun or many of her comments.

And some expressed anger at the school for inviting her, for not stopping her when she veered off script, and for not telling parents ahead of time what she would talk about.

“You asked us to trust you. You betrayed our trust,” one parent told the gathering, according to a text to the Observer.

Though the Observer and local TV stations were told to leave the campus during the meeting, a reporter from the Catholic News Herald, the diocese’s newspaper, was allowed in the meeting to cover it.

Before being ordered off the high school property, some Charlotte Catholic High School alumni and parents of former students passed out wristbands critical of the nun’s remarks on gays and lesbians. The wristbands read “We are all God’s children.”

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• Anger at Charlotte Catholic school after speaker criticizes homosexuality

Gay Mob Protests Wedding Vow Renewal at Chicago Cathedral

By James Tillman

Last Valentine's day, Feb 14, Chicago's Holy Name Cathedral offered married couples a chance to celebrate their spousal fidelity by renewing their vows to each other during Mass. Yet in order to do so, couples had to pass through an angry crowd of "gay rights" protestors who marched by the steps of the cathedral, accusing Church hierarchy of hatred toward gays and telling parishioners to "stop funding the bigots!"

Police refused to interrupt the demonstration, despite laws that prohibit protesting near places of worship while services are ongoing.

Chicago lawyer Nora Doherty, who was present during the demonstration, recounted via Renew America's Matt Abbot how "one of the particularly angry protesters yelled at my three-year-old daughter, 'Little girl, I hope you grow up to be gay so that your mother will disown you and you can know how I feel!’”

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Wealthy homosexual activist advises ‘active measures’ against religious opponents

Los Angeles, Calif., Oct 16, 2009 / 03:55 am (CNA).- Delivering an acceptance speech for a GLSEN award, a wealthy homosexual activist has attacked Catholic leaders, saying they are among his movement’s “greatest adversaries.” He called on his allies to combat “head-on” religious organizations opposed to homosexual causes and to take “active measures” against them. At its Oct. 9 Respect Awards event in Los Angeles, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) honored David Bohnett, the cable network HBO and screenwriter Shonda Rhimes with its Lifetime Achievement Award. They were awarded for what GLSEN called “their commitment to all America's students, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Bohnett was the founder of the 1990s internet venture Geocities, which was purchased by Yahoo in 1999 near the peak of the technology stock bubble. He now heads the David Bohnett Foundation, an organization which says it is “committed to improving society through social activism.”

The foundation reports that it has given out more than $34 million in grants, with $10.8 million going to non-profits that “benefit gays and lesbians.”

According to a copy of Bohnett’s acceptance speech on the foundation website, the honoree thanked Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa for his introduction and praised a recent New York Times Magazine article about young people “coming out” as homosexuals in middle school.

“This is the welcome, unstoppable, and inevitable result of the positive shift in generational attitudes toward being lesbian or gay, supported by the work that’s been done over the last several decades by GLSEN, GLAAD, and countless other groups and activists,” he said.

Bohnett then used his acceptance speech to attack religious groups opposed to homosexual political concerns.

“We must treat the causes of intolerance and bullying as well as the symptoms of them,” he remarked. “And as we see most often, it is the evangelical and fundamentalist groups that teach homosexuality is a sin, who stand in the way of fairness and equality.

“It’s time to combat head-on the religious organizations that are funding the opposition to marriage equality and safe school legislation.”

The GLSEN honoree said he favored “the pursuit of spirituality” and “the wisdom and comfort and experience that can be gained through the study and belief in a higher power.”

He also said it was important to support religious leaders and institutions that embrace “full equality” for homosexuals and their families.

“Let us make it known, however, that we will challenge those religious leaders and institutions that shamefully and cowardly use the imprimatur of their church and the name of god [sic] and Jesus to promote hatred and bigotry toward lesbians and gay men,” Bohnett declared. “Among our greatest adversaries who actively work against us are the leaders of the Catholic, Mormon, and evangelical churches who seek to deny equal protection for us and for our children.”

“The bible [sic] is all too often used as a weapon against us, quoted and mis-quoted by those who seek to deny us freedom and equality,” he continued, arguing that children taught that the Bible condemns homosexuality may become “school bullies” and later become the adults who vote “to deny marriage equality.”

“It’s time we raise our children to be independent thinkers and deeply suspicious of bible beating organized religion. We’d be much better off if parents were honest with their children about the hypocrisy of some churches with regard to homosexuality.”

Bohnett then outlined tactics to counter “faith based discrimination,” saying it is an obligation to take “active measures” to create a world “free of bigotry and intolerance.” He advised an “aggressive response” to critics that “confronts lies with facts” and also a “pre-emptive campaign” that anticipates the arguments of homosexual activists’ opponents and undermines their credibility.

He said activists should speak with friends, family and co-workers about “religious intolerance as one of the main impediments to progress in the march toward full equality for lesbians and gay men and their families.”

He added that children should also be taught to “respect differences in sexual orientation.”

Bohnett declared that “many groups and individuals” are supportive of GLSEN’s “quest for safe schools and full civil equality.”

“On the other hand, there are other groups and individuals who actively work against our efforts, and that our work in education and outreach further emboldens their hatred and zeal to deny us our equal rights. Let us say to these folks; ‘we condemn their intolerance’ and we will expose their hypocrisy, choke off their financial support, and shine the bright light of shame and humiliation on their cowardly prejudices.”

Bohnett’s speech is evidence of a growing trend in which churches and religious groups are targets of vocal criticism.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, were singled out for criticism for their support of California’s Proposition 8, which restored the definition of marriage in California.

Harry Knox, a leader with the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign and an appointee to President Barack Obama’s advisory council on faith-based partnerships, has called Pope Benedict XVI and Catholic bishops “discredited leaders” and has attacked the Knights of Columbus as an “army of oppression” for their work to preserve the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

According to the GLSEN website, the group claims a national network of 10,000 “students and allies working to create safer schools.” It reports that more than 3,000 student clubs commonly known as “gay-straight alliances” have registered with the organization.

President Barack Obama appointed GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings as director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, the “Safe School Czar.”

Jennings, a former teacher, has come under fire for not referring to the police a male student who came to him for advice after being involved in a sexual incident with a man he met in a bathroom. Critics also question his qualifications for the office because of his past drug use and his praise for Harry Hay, a homosexual activist connected with the pedophile group NAMBLA.

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Boycotters protest McDonald’s support for ‘homosexual agenda’

Washington DC, Jul 19, 2008 / 12:18 am (CNA).- Some supporters of traditional marriage are protesting the fast food corporate giant McDonald’s over its decision to join the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) and its spokesman’s remarks suggesting those who disapprove of homosexual acts are driven by hatred.

The American Family Association had organized a boycott of McDonald’s for joining the NGLCC, Cybercast News Service reports. The boycott coalition also objects to the corporation’s donation of $20,000 to the chamber and the chamber membership of Richard Ellis, McDonald’s vice president of communications.

The announcement of the boycott prompted McDonald’s spokesman Bill Whitman to say in response “Hatred has no place in our culture. That includes McDonald's, and we stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment.”

The comment was an “insult” according to Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at the Liberty Counsel, which supports the boycott.
“He insulted tens of millions of Americans who believe that the historical definition of marriage between one man and woman is important and crucial to society. He said that we’re haters and we’re motivated by hate. That, on its face, is a bold-face lie,” he told Cybercast News Service...

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Major U.S. city officially condemns Catholic Church

From WDTPRS:

"Another step toward the persecution.

My emphases and comments.

FAITH UNDER FIRE
Major U.S. city officially condemns Catholic Church
Instructs members to defy ‘Holy Office of Inquisition’

Posted: July 15, 2008

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge

A San Francisco city and county board resolution that officially labeled the Catholic church’s moral teachings on homosexuality as "insulting to all San Franciscans," "hateful," "defamatory," "insensitive" and "ignorant" will be challenged tomorrow in court for violating the Constitution’s prohibition of government hostility toward religion.

Resolution 168-08, passed unanimously by the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors two years ago, also accused the Vatican of being a "foreign country" meddling with and attempting to "negatively influence (San Francisco’s) existing and established customs."

It said of the church’s teaching on homosexuality, "Such hateful and discriminatory rhetoric is both insulting and callous, and shows a level of insensitivity and ignorance which has seldom been encountered by this Board of Supervisors."

As WND reported, Resolution 168-08 was an official response to the Catholic Church’s ban on adoption placements into homosexual couple households, issued by Cardinal William Levada of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican.

The board’s resolution urged the city’s local archbishop and the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to defy the Vatican’s instructions, concluding with a spiteful reminder that the church authority that issued the ban was known 100 years ago as "The Holy Office of the Inquisition."

The resolution also took a shot at Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco, saying, "Cardinal Levada is a decidedly unqualified representative of his former home city, and of the people of San Francisco and the values they hold dear."

The anti-Catholic diatribe had been challenged in U.S. District Court on similar grounds, but District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of the city, saying, in essence, the church started it.

She wrote in her decision, "The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith provoked this debate, indeed may have invited entanglement" for instructing Catholic politicians on how to vote. This court does not find that our case law requires political bodies to remain silent in the face of provocation."

She ruled that the city’s proclamation was not entangling the government in church affairs, since the resolution was a non-binding, non-regulatory announcement.

Since no law was enacted, she ruled, city officials – even in their official capacity as representatives of the government – can say what they want.

"It is merely the exercise of free speech rights by duly elected office holders," she wrote. [Ohhhh… I think it’s a little more than that now.]

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which is appealing the District Court decision on behalf of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and two Catholic residents of San Francisco, disagrees with Patel’s decision.

"Sadly, the ruling itself clearly exhibited hostility toward the Catholic Church," he said in a statement. "The judge in her written decision held that the Church ‘provoked the debate’ by publicly expressing its moral teaching, and that by passing the resolution the City responded ‘responsibly’ to all of the ‘terrible’ things the Church was saying." [You wouldn’t want the Church to have free speech.]

Thomas More attorney Robert Muise will present oral arguments in the case tomorrow morning in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. [Imagine. The 9th Circuit. What a joke.]

"Our Constitution plainly forbids hostility toward any religion, including the Catholic faith," he said.

"In total disregard for the Constitution, homosexual activists in positions of authority in San Francisco have abused their authority as government officials and misused the instruments of the government to attack the Catholic Church. Their egregious abuse of power has now the backing of a lower federal court. … Unfortunately, all too often we see a double standard being applied in Establishment Clause cases," Muise said.

Thomas More attorneys argued in the District Court case that the "anti-Catholic resolution sends a clear message" that Catholics are "outsiders, not full members of the political community." [That’s it.]

The cultural, and now political, straight-arm to adherents of the Christian faith in San Francisco has been increasingly public in the last two years. Just one week after the anti-Catholic resolution was passed, the San Francisco Board issued a similar resolution against a mostly evangelical group.

Following a gathering of 25,000 teens at San Francisco’s AT&T Park as part of Ron Luce’s Teen Mania "Battle Cry for a Generation" rally against the sexualization of America’s youth culture by advertisers and media, the board spoke out formally again.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution condemning the "act of provocation" by what it termed an "anti-gay," "anti-choice" organization that aimed to "negatively influence the politics of America’s most tolerant and progressive city."

Openly homosexual California Assemblyman Mark Leno told protesters of the teen rally that though such religious people may be few, "they’re loud, they’re obnoxious, they’re disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." [Nice! They should also rename the city, to get rid of the last taint of Christianity. Then we can put up a wall.]

The Chronicle also reported a San Francisco protester against the evangelical youth rally carried a sign that may sum up the sentiment: "I moved here to get away from people like you."

The Thomas More Law Center hopes the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will decide in the case of Resolution 1680-08 that even if a large portion of the community is at odds with a religion’s views on homosexuality, the government cannot be used as a weapon to condemn religious faith. [Just watch.]

Currently, as WND has reported, Colorado and Michigan are tackling the question of whether the Bible itself can be vilified as "hate speech" for it’s condemnation of homosexuality, and Canada has developed human rights commissions, which have decided people cannot express opposition to homosexuality without fear of government reprisal.

Another step toward what we know must eventually come."

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Priest Investigated for Quoting Bible

Targeted under human rights law where no defendant ever cleared
Posted: June 05, 2008
12:00 am Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A priest is being investigated as a potential criminal under a federal "hate crimes" law for quoting from the Bible, and he's being targeted using a Canadian provision under which no defendant ever has been acquitted, according to a new report.

Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and Catholic journalist, has reported on the prosecution of Father Alphonse de Valk, a pro-life activist known across Canada, by the Canadian Human Rights Commission – "a quasi-judicial investigative body with the power of the Canadian government behind it" – at CatholicExchange.com.

"What was Father de Valk's alleged 'hate act'?" Vere wrote.

"Father defended the [Catholic] Church's teaching on marriage during Canada's same-sex 'marriage' debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II's encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages – many of whom are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman," he wrote.

The new case comes just as columnist and author Mark Steyn, and Maclean's magazine which published an excerpt from his "America Alone" book, are on trial before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for similar "offenses."

"We know under the Supreme Court of Canada [and] under tribunals of this country that there are reasonable limits [to freedom of expression,]" Faisal Joseph, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Steyn dispute, said in a LifeSiteNew.com report.

That case revolves around Joseph's claims the defendants depicted Muslims as "a violent people" with a religion that is "violent."

In the new case, Vere raised the question that Canada now considers morality a "hate crime."

"If one, because of one's sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered 'hate'?" he asked.

Vere wrote that the response he got from Mark van Dusen, a spokesman for the federal human rights prosecution office, shocked him.

"We investigate complaints," Vere reported van Dusen told him. "We don't set public policy or moral standards. We investigate complaints based on the circumstances and the details outlined in the complaint. And … if … upon investigation, deem that there is sufficient evidence, then we may forward the complaint to the tribunal, but the hate is defined in the Human Rights Act under section 13-1.

"Our job is to look at it, compare it to the act, to accumulate case law, tribunal and court decisions that have reflected on hate and decide whether to advance the complaint, dismiss it or whether there is room for a settlement between parties," van Dusen told Vere.

What is shocking about that, Vere wrote, is the admission that unjustified complaints can be dismissed, yet the case against de Valk has continued now for more than six months.

An extended audio recording between Vere and van Dusen is posted on YouTube:

A second part of the interview also is posted.

"In other words, individual Jews, Muslims, Catholics and other Christians who, for reasons of conscience, hold to their faith's traditional teaching concerning marriage, could very well be guilty of promoting hate in Canada. The same is true of any faith community in Canada that does not embrace this modern redefinition of one of the world's oldest institutions – a redefinition that even the highly secularist France rejects," Vere wrote.

De Valk, who publishes the "Catholic Insight" magazine that "bases itself on the Church's teaching and applies it to various circumstances in our time," is accused by a homosexual of promoting "extreme hatred and contempt" against homosexuals.

Vere said, however, the priest is simply following the teachings of the Bible and the examples of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XV by stating that Christians must love homosexuals and treat them with dignity due humans.

Besides the complaints against the priest and Steyn, other cases already have substantiated the Canadian precedent that Christian beliefs can be evidence for convictions.

In 2005, a Knights of Columbus council was fined more than $1,000 for refusing to allow its facility to be used for a lesbian "wedding," and before that printer Scott Brockie was fined $5,000 for declining to print homosexual-themed stationery. Also, in Saskatechewan, Hugh Owens was fined thousands of dollars for quoting Bible verses in a newspaper and London, Ontario, mayor Diane Haskett was fined $10,000 for refusing to proclaim a homosexual pride day, Vere enumerated.

Bishop Fred Henry has described the situation as "a new form of censorhip and thought control." Those are the same words leading Christians in the United States have used to describe the most recent "hate crimes" plan before the U.S. Congress, which specifically targeted for elimination criticism of alternative sexual lifestyles.

Vere also warned that in the Steyn case, the bottom line is that a Canadian human rights tribunal now is "attempting to prosecute a case against an American resident, based upon what an American citizen allegedly posted to a mainstream American Catholic website. What passes for mainstream Catholic discussion in America is now the basis for a hate complaint in Canada."

But the United States is not immune to such work, either, he noted, citing the New Mexico photographer fined $6,600 for refusing to meet the demands of a lesbian to take pictures at a "wedding."

Also, California has set in state law a ban on introducing anything but "positive" information about alternative sexual lifestyles, including homosexuality, in its public school.

And WND reported just days earlier when a verbal spat between two men on a street in Champaign, Ill., left the self-proclaimed homosexual facing no charges, and the other, an 18-year-old Christian student, facing felony "hate crimes" counts.

Vere's warnings were followed by one from Grace Harman, who noted on the website's forum: "It would appear that Canadian law is discriminating against people on the basis of their religious faith, or perhaps discriminating against God himself, who gave us the laws of nature and purpose of life."

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Vatican Says Prohibition Against Gays in Seminaries is Universal

Vatican City, May 19, 2008 / 09:21 am (CNA).- Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has sent a letter to the bishops of the world with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI reaffirming the norms established by the Congregation for Catholic Education in the 2005 document, “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders,” as universal and without exceptions.

In the brief “Rescriptum ex audientia” –a written response to various queries—Cardinal Bertone said the norms establishing the selection of candidates to the priesthood are valid “for all houses of formation for the priesthood, including those under the Dicasteries for Eastern Churches, for the Evangelization of Peoples, and for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.”

The letter, which Cardinal Bertone said was issued in response “to numerous requests for clarification,” implies that the prohibition against accepting homosexual candidates in seminaries applies not only to diocesan seminaries but also to those of religious orders and congregations, as well as to those that are located in mission territories.

The 2005 Instruction indicated the Congregation for Catholic Education, “in accord with the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, believes it necessary to state clearly that the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture'."

"Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies," the 2005 document also said.

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