A don't-miss article by Mary Hunt right now at Religion Dispatches, re: the response of various churches in Argentina to the new legislation there permitting same-sex marriage. Hunt taught in Argentina in the early 1980s at ISEDET, an ecumenical seminary. As she notes, in that period of dictatorship, two women drinking coffee in a cafe in Buenos Aires together could have been arrested merely for being together. Now they can marry. How much can change in a few decades.
Hunt notes that the waning influence of the Catholic church in this nation, demonstrated in its ineffectual opposition to the gay marriage legislation, began during the dictatorship, as the church kept its mouth shut during the Dirty War, and relinquished vocal support for human rights initiatives to secular groups. If I'm not mistaken, the period in which Hunt taught in Argentina coincided with John Paul II's visit to Argentina during the height of the Dirty War. Hopes were high that the pope would condemn the war and its disappearing of thousands of opponents of the Galtieri regime.
But John Paul remained silent. As his biographer Tad Szulc (Pope John Paul: The Biography [NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996]) notes, ". . . he had determined that it was neither the time nor place for it [i.e., speaking out]" (p. 416). This was, of course, the period in which John Paul II and his right-hand man Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, were ruthlessly suppressing the voices of theologians and bishops in Latin America associated with the liberation theology movement, which highlighted the obligation of Christian faith to speak out against human rights violations as the church seeks to move, along with the world, towards the reign of God.
The church's loss of moral force in places like Argentina now, in battles over same-sex marriage, is rooted in a longer history, during which its restorationist leaders, John Paul and Benedict, crushed the liberation theology movement and gave many Latin Americans the impression that it tacitly sided with right-wing dictatorships and not with the poor these regimes oppressed. In the current opposition to same-sex marriage, Hunt notes, it is Opus Dei bishops who are predictably making the most noise--bishops who were part and parcel of the turn to the right as liberation theology was attacked by the Vatican.
Hunt's article is moving, because of her own experience with Argentina. I highly recommend it.
Also of interest (and somewhat related to the preceding discussion) is Candace Chellew-Hodge's article at Religion Dispatches today, reporting on a new Public Religion Research Institute poll about proposition 8 in California. The poll finds a strong divergence between Latino Catholics and Latino Protestants in California, vis-a-vis same-sex marriage: whereas 57% of Latino Catholics support gay marriage, only 22% of Latino Protestants do so.
Hodge's conclusion? Like their white evangelical and African-American Protestant counterparts, Latino Protestants see same-sex marriage as a challenge to the authority of the bible, literally interpreted. And like these same groups, they are more likely than are their Catholic brothers and sisters to hear sermons directly targeting gay people and gay marriage.
On the other hand, the same poll shows that, among all social groups, movement towards acceptance of same-sex marriage is strongest right now in precisely these same groups: that is, the shift in attitudes in these groups is more dramatic than in other social groups. Hodge concludes that those who argue for a steady, irreversible demographic trend towards acceptance of same-sex marriage are probably right: the demographic shifts detected by this poll point in that direction.
The graphic shows John Paul II meeting Argentinian dictator Galtieri in Buenos Aires in 1982.
