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Phoenix Bishop Relies Upon Bible To Attack Prop 8 Ruling Forgetting About The First Amendment

08/11/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix would like to remind people that the Constitution is irrelevant and that theocracy is the only way to go. Well, actually, he wants to uphold “traditional marriage” and is upset with Judge Vaughn Walker for putting the Constitution ahead of the ballot box like a real judge would be. Instead, he wanted Judge Walker to be a Christian activist judge and impose the “will of the majority” on the rights of a minority. He, of course, cannot help but rely upon one and only one document for his assertions that marriage is based upon religious tradition and not the power of the state, and that is the Bible. He states “But if looked at logically, and especially if seen from the perspective of God’s plan for marriage revealed in the first chapters of the Bible (as well as from the perspective of natural law), it comes off as absurd and only nominally rational.” If that is the case, then marriage is unconstitutional and should be removed as a civil right.

He, of course, also goes on to talk about ‘cultural sanity and viability’ as if he were Pat Buchanan explaining how Rome, Weimar, NAZI Germany, and so many other oppressive regimes over the last two thousand years persecuted and executed lesbians and gays. Apparently, thousands of years of dead people cannot be wrong according to Bishop Olmsted. Of course, it should be noted that two thousand years of Popes were wrong in blaming the Jews for the execution of Christ, as were thousands of years of dead Catholics and Protestants.

Olmsted states “This plan is so deeply embedded in our human nature that every culture in history has recognized it and enshrined and protected it in law and custom. Marriage being exclusively between a man and a woman was not an idea created by these cultures but, rather, a truth received by them as something handed down from a higher authority.” Of course, the idea that races had to be kept separate and pure has its roots in Christianity, but let us not discuss that. Instead, let us discuss how this ethnocentrism just is not going to fly. Not all cultures, and not even all successful cultures, limit marriage to one man and one woman. Indeed, Islam allows for one man to have up to four wives, and several cultures in the past and present allow for same-sex unions.

“We need to again recall the key distinction, when considering homosexuality, between the homosexual inclination on the one hand and homosexual acts on the other. Whoever engages in homosexual acts commits serious sin, as both the Old Testament and New Testament teach (Cf. Genesis 19:1-29, Romans 1:18-32, I Timothy 1:10) and as Christian Tradition has consistently affirmed (Cf. Catechism, #2357). However, persons with homosexual inclinations but who do not engage in homosexual acts are not guilty of sin at all,” Olmsted asserts, but he does not seem to grasp that any lesbian or gay who has to hide from their sexuality and live in a marriage with someone of the opposite sex is committing a slew of other sins including one of the ten big ones- that of bearing false witness. He is asking lesbians and gays to lie, emotionally hurt others, disrespect their spouses, damage their children, damage their marital bonds, and probably a ton of others. In other words, Olmsted is saying to lesbians and gays that you have a choice- either be celibate, miserable, and self-destructive (which may also be a sin) or sin your heart out be lying and destroying the lives of one or more other people in order to avoid a singular sin of homosexuality.

“Love and truth go hand-in-hand. Everyone who experiences true love knows this — we want those we love to know the truth. As Catholics, we want to love people authentically and not in a mediocre way that would ignore dangers in a person’s life out of a shallow concern for political correctness. We need never worry that speaking the truth clearly and charitably is a violation of love,” he went on to say. Of course, what happens if someone has felt true love in the form of a person of the same sex? Apparently that is not true love to this man who has known no love other than to bow his knee to his God and to gain temporal power. Many of us know the truth, and know that there is no harm in homosexuality except from people like Bishop Olmsted who try to impose and destroy the identities and lives of lesbians and gays the world over because he believes that his religion is the only religion.

Bishop Olmsted can keep his prayers. I am not a Christian, and what he is doing is trying to impose his religious beliefs upon me and mine. He wants me to be miserable and lonely and die early because he cannot grasp that he hates others in the guise of “love”. In the end, men like Olmsted want to impose a theocratic belief system upon this nation and ignore that not all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Pagans believe like he does.

When Prop 8 supporters got up on the stand, the only thing that they had to support their ideology was their religion.  The courts do not rely upon religion to determine law, and that is why Prop 8 was overturned.

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