Moral Theologian Blasts Bishops over Gay “Marriage”
blog.cardinalnewmansociety.org/2012/06/27/moral-theologian-blasts-bishops-over-gay-marriage/
Lisa Fullam, an associate professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley at Santa Clara University, has written a number of pieces at Commonweal making the case for the acceptance of gay “marriage” and blasting the bishops and the Magisterium for not agreeing.
Most recently, Fullam wrote a piece arguing that gay marriage should be a cause for conservatives, as it would strengthen marriage. Then she adds this:
The Magisterium, among whom homosexuals far outnumber the proportion of gay men in society generally, (unless leaders skew far more straight than priests generally, which seems unlikely,) still refers to same-sex love as “intrinsically evil,” and to same-sex attraction as “objectively disordered.”
But times are changing. In the end, it will be love, and the dignity of every person’s striving to love as well as we can, that wins the day.
Happy Pride, everybody.
And, as if that weren’t enough, last month in a blog post, Fullam compared Bob Jones University’s old ban on interracial dating to the bishops’ defending traditional marriage.
Gee, let’s see: when the bishops’ “religious liberty” initiative was seen for what it was–an attack on contraception that appeared to lots of folks to be an attack on women, the GOP got suddenly quiet. We’ll see how many high-ranking Republicans stand next to bishops in their “Fortnight of Freedom.” And the public credibility of the USCCB takes another blow.
Just for kicks, I explored a case that’s not exactly parallel, but not far off. Bob Jones University ended its ban on interracial dating in 2000, after a political hubbub when then-Pres. Bush visited the school and was roundly attacked by other Republicans, notably John McCain. Here’s what Bob Jones III said at the time: “We’re being defined as a racist school. Thats all the media is talking about,” he said….”We realize that an interracial marriage is not going to bring in the world of antichrist by any means.”
The USCCB would do well to be careful to think of how its crusade against same-sex marriage is making the Church look to outsiders, and, sadly for many of us, to insiders.
Fullam, in a piece that also appeared in Commonweal in May, went so far as to suggest that Catholic teaching demands that Catholics recognize same-sex “marriage.”
Can we call it “marriage” for straights and “unions” for same-sex couples in the civil realm and not fall afoul of the Caetchism’s insistence that unjust discrimination against LGBT people is wrong?
Sadly, according to the university’s website, Fullam taught a “Sexual Ethics” class to students last year. According to its syllabus, its objective was preparing students to be “able to present Roman Catholic magisterial teaching on sexual ethics, and to engage other ethical viewpoints.”