More on NOM (and USCCB?) Plan to "Fan the Hostility" between Minority Groups: Walter Olson

At Independent Gay Forum, Walter Olson also zeroes in on the phrase used by the National Organization for Marriage in documents now open to public scrutiny due to litigation in Maine: NOM says it has deliberately strategized to fan the hostility between African Americans, Latinos, and gays.  As Olson notes, Rob Tisani has asked at Box Turtle Bulletin if the faith-based (and, to a great extent, Catholic) leaders of NOM have given thought to the effects of this ugly wedge strategy on black gay youth.

Olson also links to another statement of his own at National Review online which points out NOM's declared intent to sow discord and enmity "at the most intimate level imaginable.  Olson writes, 

To me the most striking detail was that NOM had budgeted $120,000 for a project to locate children of gay households willing to denounce their parents on camera. 

Whenever I hear NOM described as “pro-family” from now on, I will think of that fact.

Once again: as we think of the U.S. Catholic bishops preparing this Thursday evening to kneel and wash the feet of the faithful, then to kiss the cross the following day as they sing about Jesus's ultimate act of self-emptying and self-giving to bind up the wounds of suffering humanity, how do we put these liturgical proclamations and the story of Jesus together with the evidence these same NOM documents provide of the "close relationship" between the bishops and NOM?

What does fanning the flames of hostility between minority groups, tearing up gay families and assaulting the children of those families, and putting minority gay youth at further risk have to do with Jesus?  With the story of the crucifixion?  With the opening of God's arms in loving mercy to the entire world on the cross?  With God's act of ultimate humility and self-emptying on the cross?

This Holy Week, I can picture NOM and their bishop friends only as those placing the cross on Jesus's back to carry, and those nailing Jesus to the cross.  For the healing of the church and to assure that its message has any credibility at all in the culture at large, I want that "close relationship" of the U.S. Catholic bishops to the National Organization for Marriage to be exposed, dragged into the light of day, and examined carefully by American Catholics and the American public.

Because I'm tired of having to look at the faces of the bishops of my church when I hear the narratives about those taunting Jesus, spitting on him, lacerating and humiliating him, and then nailing him to the cross.

(And as a complement to Kittredge Cherry's series of meditations on the narrative of Jesus's passion, centered on the art work of Douglas Blanchard, about which I blogged earlier today, I want to remind readers of an equally valuable and very moving series of meditations Michael Bayly did on the same series of paintings in 2009.  The first of Michael's 2009 Holy Week meditations focusing on Blanchard's paintings is here; links at the end of each part of the series lead to the next part.)