Barney Frank’s same-sex ‘wedding’ attended by Catholic Congressmen
Ben Johnson
www.lifesitenews.com/news/barney-franks-same-sex-wedding-attended-by-catholic-congressmen
BOSTON, July 10, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Barney Frank, the first open homosexual to serve in Congress, got “married” to his boyfriend this weekend in a five-minute service that counted among its attendees many putatively Catholic members of Congress.
Over the weekend Frank attended a ceremony with James Ready, a carpenter and welder from Ogunquit, Maine, who is 30 years his junior. Current Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick presided over the quickie procedure at a Marriott hotel in the Boston suburb of Newton.
The event – which was closed to the media – attracted many of Frank’s colleagues from politics, several of them Catholic, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John Kerry, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Other attendees included Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, Texas Democratic Congressman Al Green, and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, whose daughter recently came out of the closet.
Catholic bishops have urged the faithful to keep away from such unions, which mock the sacrament of marriage.
Pelosi said it was fitting Frank’s ceremony fell near Independence Day, because such unions are “about expanding freedom.”
“I do think some people in Massachusetts and San Francisco think that’s what America is about,” Brian Camenker of MassResistance told LifeSiteNews.com. “For the rest of America, I think [the essence of] America is a little different.”
Camenker said the national media were falling “on top of each other to portray this as normal. This is more of the pushing the agenda on television.”
Some of the congressman’s other liaisons have been less celebrated. In 1989, Frank admitted to paying then-boyfriend Stephen Gobie, a homosexual prostitute, for sex. Gobie soon moved his business into Frank’s apartment, running a brothel that the congressman claimed not to notice. Congress ultimately reprimanded Frank for “fixing” 33 tickets for Gobie and seeking to ease the terms of Gobie’s probation.
The congressman met Ready at a 2005 fundraiser as Ready’s then-boyfriend was succumbing to a lingering illness. After the man’s death in January 2007 at the age of 73, Ready connected with Frank. The New York Times reported, “Weekends in Maine turned into Washington sleepovers.”
Ready told the media the psychological impact a homosexual “married’ Congressman would have on schoolchildren helped convince him to go through with the ceremony.
“The kids that are going to see us, and feel strong enough to be able to come out and be who they are,” he said. “That gives me more encouragement that I’m doing the right thing.”
Frank, who was elected in 1980 and became the first openly homosexual congressman in 1987, is retiring at the end of this term.
“We’re just so happy that he’s leaving,” Camenker said.
Father Bernard Lynch, Gay Catholic Priest, Reveals He’s Married To A Man, Non-Celibate
07/10/2012
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/father-bernard-lynch-gay-catholic-priest-talks_n_1661887.html
In a new book, Father Bernard Lynch, a gay Catholic priest who has incurred the wrath of the Vatican for his views supporting LGBT Catholics, not only says he is non-celibate; he reveals that he has been married to a man for the past 14 years, and has officiated over the weddings of many gay and lesbian Catholic couples. The Vatican, he says, is trying to “get rid” of him, while he has been operating a counseling program for closeted gay priests in London since 1992.
Lynch, who has been a Catholic priest for 40 years, left for London from New York in the early 90s, after he was completely cleared of charges related to child abuse allegations made by a man who recanted his story and whom court testimony showed to be a pathological liar. The scandal had Father Lynch at the center of a media firestorm. He believes to this day that right-wing Catholic groups and now-deceased Cardinal O’Connor of New York, angry at his advocacy on behalf of LGBT people and people with AIDS, were behind his trumped up indictment. He had previously gained awards for his AIDS advocacy from politicians and AIDS activists, while local church officials and the Vatican became concerned about his advocacy.
Lynch wrote a a book in 1993 about the trumped up charges and about his speaking out in support of LGBT Catholics, and discussed his own homosexuality. In the new book, “If It Wasn’t Love: Sex, Death and God,” Lynch says for the first time he has been married for 14 years to Billy Desmond, with whom he lives in London. They were married by an American monk, and Lynch himself has officiated at gay and lesbian weddings.
Lynch expects the church to crack down on him further.
“I was expeled from my order [Society of African Missions] just as recently as November of last year and I am under threat of suspension from the priesthood,” he said.
And yet, he vows to stay in the church as long as he can, and explained why he would stay in a church that promotes bigotry against his own kind.
“I believe in Christ. and I believe in the Gospel of justice,” he explained. “There is gross injustice in my church, therefore I feel a duty to stay within and say this is not the way I see it, as Christ would have it. I believe the Gospel is about human and civil rights, for all people.”
“Ready told the media the psychological impact a homosexual “married’ Congressman would have on schoolchildren helped convince him to go through with the ceremony.”
Yes, the psychological impact on schoolchildren. Wonderful. Perhaps critics should be forced to attend sensitivity training?
It was a same-sex wedding and the Catholics wished them well
You could see the old fairy did truly love his “madamoiselle”
And now the fat old queer and his punk have rung the chapel bell
“C’est la vie” say the Catholics we no longer believe in Hell.