Thursday, July 29, 2010

Press ignores Pastors at National Organization for Marriage rally

With strong support from the pastoral community, including the St. Paul Archdiocese, the Church of God in Christ and Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis, the National Organization for Marriage held a rally for marriage at the St. Paul Capitol.

The pastors, virtually ignored by the press, included Pastor Bob Battle (left) of the Church of God in Christ, Father Michael Becker (bottom) of the St. Paul Arch Diocese, Pastor Sam
Crabtree (below) of Bethlehem Baptist in Minneapolis and Pastor Brad Brandon.

Pastor Bob Battle spoke to equality and civil rights saying, "Civil rights, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, are rooted in the natural law. People of every faith and every community can rally around the truth written on the human heart and visible to reason.

And the right of children to have both a mother and a father.


"Unions of husbands and wives are uniquely good and uniquely necessary to the common good. These are the unions that make new life and carry up into the future an embody the idea that children have the
right to the love of both a mother and a father.

The African American church is firm and steadfast on the biblical principle of one man, one woman marriage."

Now I know that some in the press were impressed by the strong support of the Catholic Church, yet for some reason, refused to report it along with the remarks of the other pastors that stood for marriage. Conversely, coverage of the counter rally included pictures and quotes from the clergy.

I believe this bias is do to the fact that it's hard to stereotype pastors, and their denominations as hateful, mean-spirited homophobes.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Anyone that discriminates is someone who discriminates. Pastor, or Janitor.

Unknown said...

Many couples will marry and not have children: gay and straight. Gay and lesbian couples are having children already without the benefit of marriage. So are single moms, teenagers and drug addicts. Preventing a loving same sex couple from making a legal commitment to each other can only hurt their children. It can send a message, like it did in the case of one Massachusetts couple, that mommy and mommy don’t really love each other, because if they did, they would get married. How do you explain the legal system to a five year old?

John Helmberger said...

Mom,
Even a five-year-old instinctively knows that kids need a mom and a dad and that something is wrong when either one is missing. They don't need to understand the legal system to know that. Why is it that single-parent families and same-sex parented families find it necessary to somehow make up for the missing parent? Why intentionally deprive kids of their mom or their dad?

Unknown said...

Why do you intentionally deprive different families, and their make ups the same rights legally as those as any other families.

You are the ones depriving the family.

same sex famlies are having kids.

single parents are having kids.

you are the moral police, and you are not the moral voice of everyone. Only of yourself.

but you intentionally deprive those families, hundreds of thousands of families the same rights as anyone else.

you are the one that are taking from the children.

You deciding to be the moral police is not going to change the fact that these famlies are real.

Unknown said...

The disgraceful attack on families, that have an aunt, or an uncle, a grandparent, single people that decide to keep their children, families that do not choose to have children if they marry, step families, and the many other wonderful differences of families that people have made the choice to make to bring up a child in, is insulted by your singular, discriminating view.

All studies show that children of gay families fair as well if not better because they were chosen to be in their families.

So your logic is debunked!

But of course you will say your choice is the only choice even though, The doctors, and medical board say otherwise.

Its time to keep your discrimination, away from good families and let them live.

You are hurting the children of hundreds of thousands of families with your views.

That is something God will know about at judgement day.

Unknown said...

Why intentionally deprive kids of equality.

Same sex couples, single parents, and differences of make ups of different families are here NOW, they have ALWAYS been here. They will ALWAYS BE HERE. No matter what your religion says or does not say about their current status, they are real.

I disagree with the fact that the people next door send their kids to private school. I disagree with the fact that kids up the block get to eat candy before bed.

So I think we should not allow those parents to parent!

The bigotry is so apparent.

and is a direct discrimination against a minority base of our society which should be protected by law.

I am tired of giving out my tax hard earned dollars to the churches, for they are the only behavior that is protected by law.

Unknown said...

Anti-gay marriage activists have argued vigorously that children need a mother and father. Now a new research study shows that kids do need two parents — but that gender doesn't matter.

The research, which also speaks to the issue of gay adoption, is summarized in the lead article of the new Journal of Marriage and Family. Scholars, at USC and New York University, looked at a range of existing studies, including research on gay and lesbian parents, finding that it's ideal if a child is raised by two parents who are "responsible, committed, stable," but that the gender doesn't cause radical differences.

Sociologist Timothy Biblarz of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences says in a release about the study: