What do you do when your four-year old daughter tells you ‘If you loved each other, you’d be married’ – but when, as a lesbian couple, you cannot legally marry? What Julie and Hillary Goodridge did was to become lead plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit which achieved the right to marry for same-sex couples in Massachusetts. The world was watching as the Goodridges – with daughter Annie (now eight) as ringbearer and flower girl – were wed in Boston on 17 May 2004, along with scores of other lesbian and gay couples.
Massachusetts became the first American state to permit same sex-marriage, and the USA only the fourth country in the world to do so. That same day George W. Bush reiterated his vow to change the US constitution to prevent the ‘redefinition’ by the courts of the ‘sacred institution of marriage’. ‘This isn’t changing marriage,’ said Hillary Goodridge. ‘It’s just opening the door.’
Why would lesbians and gay men, or anyone else, want this particular door opened? And what is the role of psychology in these often emotionally charged ‘equal marriage’ debates?
Exclusion from marriage
Prior to their marriage, the Goodridges, like many same-sex couples, had the partial protections of mutual powers of attorney, trusts, wills and healthcare proxies – but none of these protections gave them a legal relationship. When Annie was born, by Caesarean section, they were not enough to get Hillary into the recovery room to see Julie, nor into neonatal intensive care to see her daughter. Such rights – along with a string of others, such as the right to adopt as a couple, to vote by proxy, automatically to receive a pension and other income related benefits, to register a spouse’s death, to be exempt from inheritance tax – are taken for granted by heterosexuals who have exercised their right to marry.
Previously, some of these rights could be assembled piecemeal (as the Goodridges attempted to do); increasingly some or all of them can be acquired (in some countries) with ‘civil partnerships’ or ‘civil unions’. With the advent of marriage for same-sex couples, they are acquired wholesale, and automatically, as part of the legal contract, just as they are by heterosexual couples. ‘It’s about fairness and justice,’ said Joseph A. Curtatone, Mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, welcoming same-sex couples arriving to get married in his town. His words were echoed around the world, with Massachusetts lauded as ‘The first American state that has removed the mindless discrimination against its citizens their basic sexual orientation’ (Tereza Nosalkova, in the Czech daily newspaper Lidove Noviny). However, just six months later, in the conservative backlash after the Presidential election, 11 US states reinforced such discrimination, voting to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between ‘one man and one woman’.
Read complete report:
Sexual orientation - Internalized Homophobia -
“Auschwitz – Benedict XVI - Christmas 2008 -A flashback far more severe than in Brokeback Mountain”
GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. Photo
Gay marriage -> Restoring "Hope of Love"
To Children In Early Childhood -> Marriage Equality
March 23, 2010 – by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Marriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the “hope of love” to children in early childhood – essential to their development and well-being for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.
Galileo
Biblical quotes used to Condemn Galileo
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New International Version)
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New International Version)
30 Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New American Standard Bible)
30 Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New International Version)
1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New American Standard Bible)
1 The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 96:10 (New International Version)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
Psalm 96:10 (New American Standard Bible)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity."
Psalm 104:5 (New International Version)
5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Psalm 104:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.
Read more:
“Someday,
maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of
all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”
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