Holy Mother******* Church

Anthony Sablan Apuron, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Agaña, Guam issued the following statement expressing the Church’s opposition to Bill 185. Bill 185 would legalize domestic partnerships for gay men and lesbians in the U.S. territory of Guam.

I beg of you to read the statement in its entirety. Perhaps even re-read it to ensure that none of its subtleties escape you.

"Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. Their culture is anything but one of self-absorption. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice. Terrorism as a way to oppose the degeneration of the culture is to be rejected completely since such violence is itself another form of degeneracy. One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalists charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A. in particular is the "Great Satan" is not without an element of truth. It makes no sense for the U.S. Government to send our boys to fight Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while at the same time it embraces the social policies embodied in Bill 185 (as President Obama has done). Such policies only furnish further arguments for the fundamentalists in their efforts to gain more recruits for the war against the ‘Great Satan.'"

The Vatican has yet to distance itself from this statement.

These are the same people who would deny Patrick Kennedy communion because he supports a woman’s right to choose. This is consistent with my perception that those who declare themselves in favor of the “right to life” only find life sacred from conception to birth. After that it’s “Katie bar the door.”

Having been raised Catholic, attended Catholic schools kindergarten through twelfth grade, and never sourly and smugly declared myself to be a “reformed” or
 “recovering” Catholic, it saddens me deeply to see the worst of my fears about the Church and the Church’s view of me confirmed.

The pederasts, it seems, are hardly the worst of the lot. For those cluck-clucking at my hyperbole, let me reiterate Archbishop Apuron’s greatest hit, while asking how you would respond if this was being said of you:

“Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death. …”

Taxing Our Way to Virtue

What do liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, and marijuana have in common?

Well, yes, they do each offer profound and unique satisfactions. Or so I’m told. Or read in a book.

What I was going for, however, is that their primary consumers are adults. The former two generate substantial amounts of tax revenue. The latter two would were it not for the successful efforts of priggish, overbearing guardians of public morality and welfare. If morality is defined exclusively by their private concepts of morality. And if welfare is understood as that which they dictate for your own good.

I was stirred to these musings by a television commercial that has been ubiquitous on my cable provider. At least during programs shown on CNN and HGTV. This commercial is sponsored by a group identified as Americans Against Food Taxes and features a tense young woman whining in adenoidal tones about the burden “a few cents” in tax on sugary soft drinks would place on her family and similar Caucasian families across our great land.

I am not sympathetic to her plight.

As I have argued previously, I believe in taxation. I believe taxes are on the whole a good thing. I believe that government at every level provides services that could not be rendered by any other entity. Road and highway construction (Those who whine about taxes can often be heard to advocate for private toll roads. Hello? These will take less money out of your pocket? And what commercial entity is going to build a toll road from your driveway to your church or to the mall?), public safety, national defense, education (even charter schools rely on tax dollars), Medicare, Social Security (How’s your private pension looking? Your 401K? Your investment portfolio?).

Take the socialist jackboot from the neck of private initiative and you get … 44 cent postage stamps and $25 luggage fees. Leave it to the socialists and you get electric power delivered to rural communities and voting rights.

But I digress.

I am not sympathetic to the arguments of Americans Against Food Taxes because they are against taxes.
If their argument was against using taxation as an instrument of social engineering, then I would be enthusiastically in their camp. Soft drinks aren’t really a food in any nutritional sense, but unlike the four pleasures cited above, their primary consumers are children and adolescents.

“Ah ha! Just so!” cry the social engineering crowd. And these sugary poisons contribute to the scourge of childhood and adult obesity and a wide range of resultant conditions. This is true. I am not suggesting that childhood obesity is not a serious problem. I am only objecting to the use of tax policy to effect behavior change.

Research also points quite strongly to lack of exercise as a significant determining factor in childhood and adult obesity. Is the answer to tax video games, romance novels, Fox Sports or sofa manufacturers?

Now, and here I may be accused of sophistry, I do not object to taxing liquor, cigarettes, prostitution, marijuana, soft drinks, ice cream, video games, romance novels, Fox Sports, sofas or any other discretionary consumable. So long as the tax is premised solely upon raising funds to support the functions of government.

Key word for me: discretionary. If it is something that one chooses to purchase rather than needs to purchase it should be fair game for taxation. I would argue that food, clothing and utilities should be exempt from taxation, but that’s a battle I’m willing to lose to allow most goods and services to be taxed.

A commercial which airs as frequently as the grocery shopping mamma features a smarmy attorney in a Stetson looming Godzilla-like before a photo of Bank of America Plaza offering his firm’s services in pursuing Social Security Disability claims.

I will address the scourge of mercenary aged cripples attempting to rip-off the struggling tax payer in a later entry.

Queers: Beware Your Friends

"I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."

That was the week that was. Also:

Virginia Democrats saw the worst campaign since Al Gore’s put out of its misery by a wide, wide … Oh baby could the campaign have really been that bad? Oh yes it was! … wide margin. On the upside, while he’s going to do incalculable harm, at least Bob McDonnell is not going to lie Virginia into a war.

New Jersey voters turned out their most embarrassing governor since Bill McGreevy. It was no mean feat to be both embarrassing and dull. At least McGreevy’s crash and burn had some tawdry juice.

Voters in New York’s 23rd Congressional District are still writhing on the ground, rending their garments and crying out to an implacable god, “Why us, Lord, why us?”

Gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who are starting to make up their minds are also troubling deaf heaven with their bootless cries. The good citizens of Maine passed Question 1, a referendum overturning their state’s law recognizing same-sex marriages. More than any election closer to geographic home, this result gave me a sense of my world and my options becoming a bit more constricted.

But was it a surprise? After prop 8 in California? After going down in flames in every state (31 in all) in which gay marriage has been put before the generous spirited electorate? This time it was going to be different? Because it was New England? Boy are we headed for more painful wake-up calls in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Let’s face it, beyond the thin gruel of domestic partnership (Can it be said enough? “Separate but Equal is inherently unequal.”), we can’t expect much from our fellow citizens. No more than African-Americans could. Or women. One shudders to consider the result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 being subject to a plebiscite. Every act of enfranchisement, of providing the rights incumbent upon simple humanity, never mind citizenship, since the founding of the republic has come from legislation or through the courts. The actions of a mob whether wielding ropes or tea bags or ballots are an ugly thing to behold.

Oh yeah, that Christian is Barack Obama.

Barack Obama who was the keynote speaker at this year’s annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, “America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.” Much to the shock, shock of all, Christian Obama’s remarks contained reassuring platitudes without a word about implementation.

Evidently the Human Rights Campaign was taking the same approach as the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee, recognizing promise without waiting for accomplishment. I assume that each holds the unspoken fear that promise is all they will ever see.