Catholic Church UK letter to Schools to Sign Anti Gay Marriage Petition

” The Catholic Church has as much right to influence change to secular law as I do to seducing  the Pope during Sunday Mass!”
By Melanie Nathan, April 26, 2012.

The Catholic Church in the UK, including Wales and Ireland, has apparently sent a letter out to high schools to demand that all students sign a petition against gay marriage declaring it as evil.

Secondary schools run by the Catholic Church are teaching children that “traditional marriage” is superior to “gay marriage”.

According to the Guardian, the Roman Catholic church has written to every state-funded Catholic secondary school in England and Wales  ( a source has informed us that letters have also gone out in Ireland) asking them to encourage pupils to sign a petition against gay marriage.

To add insult to injury, students at one south London school were shown a presentation on religious opposition to government plans to let gay couples marry in civil ceremonies.

Church leaders asserted their the belief that same-sex marriage would reduce the significance of marriage.

“The Catholic Education Service, which acts for Catholic bishops in England and Wales, contacted 385 secondary schools to highlight a letter read in parish churches last month, in which two archbishops told worshipers that Catholics have a “duty to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations”.”

In assemblies, the children have been told that marriage between a man and a woman is a “natural institution” which brings “huge value to society”.

The question is one of boundaries, while indoctrination as to religious values ought to be a freedom, contextualizing such as purely a religious consideration is an attack against the separation of Church and State,  and and a flagrant disregard for the de facto and true well being of community, where marriage affords all equality in rights and obligations, under the civil law.

It would seem that this conflict suggests to Catholic people the following:

1. If you are gay and want a relationship leave the Catholic Church you are not welcome; or

2. If you are gay and welcome then forget about having any civil laws to protect your relationships, we will save those for different gender relationships only; and

3. If you are NOT Catholic, in any event, we are going to exert our religious freedom to spit on your civil rights.

It is no different here in the USA where the Catholic Church and others have the audacity to pronounce upon my living circumstances. It makes me angry, it is shocking and it ought not be tolerated. The same applies anywhere in the world.

But unfortunately not only is it tolerated, one finds that the Church is actually given a voice in government when they are invited to testify before the US congress committees as they did back in 2010 in the USA,    in hearings on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, where they asserted  that gays (LGBT) people should not receive parity in immigration law when it comes to green cards for same-sex spouses.

In the UK The National Secular Society says Catholic schools are promoting a “purely sectarian viewpoint” and that its pupils are being “encouraged into bigotry”.

There is a simple solution. If the Catholic Church does not want to marry gay people – don’t marry them! Plain and simple! But stay out of the realm of civil law. That does not belong to ANY Church.

When it comes to me, the Jewish Lesbian across the way, I could not give a cluck about your views- people have a choice they can ditch the Church or embrace it that is fine!  However keep out of my legal rights, those that impact me and my family each and every day – the rights that speak to my marriage, my adoption, my divorce, my immigration, my taxes, my employment, my social security, my medical insurance …. yes MINE!

The Catholic Church has as much right to influence change to secular law as I do to seducing  the Pope during Sunday Mass!

Photograph by Kristina Lapinski, GAY U.S.A. the Movie©