Reddit decisively not gay
Not Archbishop Dolan's Finest Hour
X
It is not terribly surprising that male lover marriage advocates won a determinative legislative victory in New York state last week. After all, New York is one of the nation's most socially liberal states, and could be expected to be on the vanguard of the steadily rising trend toward legalizing same-sex marriage. What is startling, at least in theory, is that they triumphed without much of a brawl from the Roman Catholic Church.
The New York Times called the church's passivity "befuddling to gay-rights advocates." New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan didn't travel to the declare capitol to lobby against the bill, but rather made his strongest statement against it on a call-in radio program. In 2009, after assuming the office once held by the politically potent Cardinals Francis Spellman and John O'Connor, Dolan told reporters that he wouldn't "shy away" from the gay marriage battle. But in the finish, Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, did little more than run the flag of Catholic teaching up the familiar flagpole. His heart clearly wasn't in the fight.
The archbishop was undoubtedly c
Peers voted decisively to reject amendments to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill on 8 July 2013, the first day of inform stage in the Lords.
Conservative peer Lord Mackay of Clashfern's amendment would have recognised the "distinction" between marriages by referring in the bill to "marriage (same sex couples)" and "marriage (opposite sex couples)" - but it was defeated by 314 votes to 119.
Fellow Conservative Baroness Cumberlege then spoke to her amendment which would permit registrars to opt-out of conducting similar sex marriages, but this was also rejected by peers, by 278 votes to 103.
The bill proposes that couples who are the same sex can get married. Changes will not be forced on religious organisations who will have to "opt in" to holding ceremonies.
Tory Lord Mackay insisted his amendment was the very minimum necessary to recognise the "distinction that exists in fact between marriage for identical sex couples and marriage for reverse sex couples".
Fellow conservative peer Lord Cormack urged peers to "meet us half-way" in the amendment and listen to the "many people [who] are concerned about the