Catholic News Service on Arkansas Same-Sex Marriages: "Several Marriage Licenses Were Issued"; and Pennsylvania Governor Refuses to Appeal Ruling

It's interesting, isn't it, to read Catholic News Service's Pravda-like distortions of the truth (via National Catholic Reporter!), as CNS does everything short of standing on its head to convey the U.S. bishops' party line on same-sex marriage: Same-sex marriage is a mistake! Travesty of justice!

Here's CNS's summary of what took place in Arkansas last week:

In Arkansas, the state Supreme Court May 16 stayed a May 9 state court judge's ruling that struck down a ban on same-sex marriage. Several marriage licenses were issued in the intervening days (emphasis added).

The Webster-Merriam dictionary on the meaning of the word "several": "more than two but not very many."

Here's the Washington Post on May 16:

Arkansas’s highest court halted the distribution of marriage licenses to same-sex couples Friday as it suspended a judge’s ruling that struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban.  . . . More than 450 same-sex couples have received Arkansas marriage licenses since Piazza’s ruling last week (emphasis added).

Any bona fide Catholic journal that carries articles like the CNS article cited above should be thoroughly ashamed of itself, it seems to me, for doing so. Several marriage licenses were issued in the intervening days, indeed. When a moral cause has to stand on lies to make its point, people will inevitably wonder — and rightly so — whether the cause propped up by lies is as moral as it purports to be.

Meanwhile, back in the reality-based world: as Greg Bullough has noted in a comment here a little while ago, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has announced that he will not appeal yesterday's ruling striking down the ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional in his state, though he maintains that his Catholic beliefs cause him to disapprove of same-sex marriage. (Note that in Illinois, Maryland, and Washington, Catholic governors who helped make marriage equality possible in their states have all stated that their Catholic values led them to support same-sex marriage.)

In announcing his decision, Corbett says he's obliged to respect the law, and that he has had to weigh the likelihood of a successful appeal against a judicial ruling that, as many commentators are noting, appears to be compelling in its argument that bans on civil marriage for same-sex couples unconstitutionally target a minority group. As a number of commentators have noted, Judge Jones's ruling in Pennsylvania yesterday unambiguously notes that marriage is a fundamental right of human beings.