Because I've been pushing against the homophobic silence of the American Catholic center--of its opinion-making mavens, in particular--about the implications of Judge Walker's recent prop 8 decision for gay persons struggling for human rights, it's incumbent on me to note one humane voice that did speak out amidst the din of deafening silence of centrist U.S. Catholic publications after Judge Walker issued his ruling.
I owe this citation to Mark Silk's posting at Spiritual Politics, to which the second link above points. As he notes, while several other significant American Catholic publications of the center remained silent about the prop 8 decision, Brian Cones at U.S. Catholic did address the prop 8 decision. U.S. Catholic is a fine publication that, through my own fault, I don't read nearly often enough. And so I'm grateful to Mark Silk for pointing his readers to this link.
I admire Cones' piece for a number of reasons. First, as I've done on this blog (feeling very much like a voice crying in the wilderness), he notes, and decries, the silence of the American Catholic center about the prop 8 decision. About the lives and humanity of the gay brothers and sisters of the gate-keepers of our centrist conversation re: who is or is not Catholic, and re: what makes or does not make bona fide Catholicism.
As Brian Cones notes, he has been writing about gay people and gay lives at his U.S. Catholic blog for some time--fine essays, in my view, which demonstrate that the family life to which LGBT persons aspire links to the "traditional" family life upheld by Catholic teaching as an ideal for those who marry. As Cones has persistently noted, there are strong points of intersection between the ideal of family to which same-sex couples and their families aim, and the ideal held up by the Catholic tradition for all believers.
And so Cones concludes--novel proposition!--that we might aim at "a little charity, creativity, and grace" in our Catholic conversation about family matters and same-sex marriage. But, of course, doing that will require that the centrist gatekeepers begin recognizing the presence of gay brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, in their midst.
And stop treating us as if we are not there and as if our voices and humanity do not count.
