Pope Francis To Allow Priests To Forgive Women Who Had Abortions

[hunter]

45. The Church has never stopped anyone in my family or among my friends from marrying.

They're just not married in the Catholic Church. (I am.)

Many years ago, before gay marriage was even a realistic political issue, one of my ex-girlfriends married a woman. Their marriage was not recognized by the secular state, but it was recognized by another church and my ex also had the money to hire fierce lawyers to defend their marriage, which was especially important once they had children. My ex's Orthodox mom eventually accepted the marriage and enjoyed a good relationship with her grandkids and their two moms. In my wife's family there is a similar relationship, with children, and amazingly enough they are raising their kids Catholic. (That wouldn't really be possible in some places. The Church is not monolithic. Liberal places get liberal priests, conservative places get conservative priests, and regressive places get regressive priests.)

So in these marriages the secular state really was more oppressive than the church.

I believe marriage is a human right. That's just one reason I fly my rainbow flag on DU.

My wife and I were very active fighting Proposition 8 here in California. Everyone in our parish knew it, which caused us some extreme friction with the more conservative Catholics in our family, but not so much in church itself. I did get an interesting reply to a letter of mine from the Bishop, but our family wasn't kicked out of the Church, as had once happened when I was a kid and the church we were attending responded to my mom's dissent by posting some big men at the door specifically to keep my mom out. (The story gets worse...)

All I got for my dissent was a polite letter.

I think I was much more effective as an activist within the Church than as an outsider. I've had less success as an entirely secular activist in various issues.