DADT, Gay Marriage: Who cares?

Last week wasn't very good as far as blog posts went. And I'm sorry for that. This week, I've got three posts already written.  This one is considered "timely," as my Examiner.com editors like to say.



A while ago, I wrote an article about gay marriage in New York.  It was entitled: Gay Marriage, so what?  I suspect you can guess what my general conclusions were.



I collect all sorts of weird articles, and magazines.  On the one hand, I could read Guns and Ammo, then the Spring catalog for a major publisher, then Time Magazine (until they went anti-Semite), the list goes on.



One such magazine is Salute, the magazine of the archdiocese for the military services, USA.



Yes, the military has their own archdiocese -- their Cardinal is the Cardinal of New York City.



In their Summer, 2011 issue, there was a statement from Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the Archbishop for USA military services. (An Archbishop is more hands on.)



His statement was two pages long, and here's an excerpt ...

"The church is unwavering in her commitment to the pastoral care of all persons in need, regardless of sexual inclination or anything else.  All people in need are served by Catholc Chaplains with zeal and passion for bringing the reality of the Risen Lord to all.  Whether Don't ask don't tell persists or not is immaterial to that bedrock principle.  The faithful .... must never forget that those with a homosexual inclination must be treated with the respect worthy of their human dignity."  [Typed by hand, any typos are mine]

In short: that's nice, we don't care if they're outed, it doesn't matter to us.



The message then cited Federal law (1 USC subection 7)... which I believe is commonly known as the defense of marriage act (DOMA).



So, "yes, you have DADT repealed. Who cares? We don't like it, but we're not going to marry gays, and you're not going to make us. We can continue, business as usual."  Everyone can move on.



Which is pretty much what I said the first time about gay marriage.



It's so nice when the Catholic Church listens to me.

[More below the break]



Then, on September 30th, the Pentagon issued an order allowing all military clergy to perform gay marriage ceremonies ....



The response of Broglio?  It's pretty much the same. Not to mention, there is still DOMA.  It's a federal law.  How can a federal agency allow the existence of something that, legally, does not exist at the federal level?



And, come April, 2012, what will happen when all of the gay married couples file joint income tax? The IRS cannot acknowledge them -- the IRS is a federal agency.  Accountant friends (and relative) are already saying that the IRS will not accept joint filings from any of the new marriages from New York (et al) between two men, or two women.



Not to mention .... the military has bases all over the 50 states. Gay marriage is only passed in about ... Five? (CA, VT, MA, NY, HI).  Isn't that a bit of a problem? And arguing that they are federal institutions is a problem, when you consider that, again, DOMA is federal law. State laws do not matter in this instance.



Is it just me, or did someone not think this through?



As I said the first time: I'll start to care about gay marriage when someone comes after religion in its name.



I don't care just yet. Initial reports of this story said that "military chaplains are being forced to marry homosexual couples."  I cared for about five minutes, then I looked for more footnotes.



However, now that I found that it "allowed" gay marriage, instead of "requiring" clergy to perform them, I'm back to not caring. Though the legal situation is going to be hilarious.

"Where do they get those wonderful toys?" The Weapons of A Pius Man, an Illustrated Guide

The Weapons of A Pius Man: An Illustrated Guide

Guest Blog: Murder in the Vatican Author Ann Margaret Lewis.

Welcome to the blog for my novel A Pius Man.



The Good News: No Snarky Theology this week.  After Communion, Lent, Sex, and Evolution, I'm taking a break.



The Even Better News: Today, we have a guest blog from Murder in the Vatican author Ann Margaret Lewis.



Since Murder in the Vatican deals with tales from the Sherlock Holmes canon that involve Holmes working with Leo XIII, I asked if she could blog about history in fiction, religious historical character in fiction, or "something like that".   As you can see, I was very helpful about picking out a topic for her.



The below was the result.



For the record, I have not doctored or altered her text in any way.  In fact, the only "edit" I made was that she insert some hyperlink footnotes to some of her statements.



And, here we go.

With Religious Characters, Honesty is the Best Policy

Ann Margaret Lewis

You can’t help but notice: people of religious faith make popular villains—especially with secular publishers and film studios. From The Three Musketeers and Hunchback of Notre Dame, to DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. From the Godfather series, to even Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. From Voltaire’s Tartuffe, to TV shows like Showtime’s Borgias and films, comic books and animated films like Happy Feet. The list goes on and on.



So it’s safe to say that making a villain a person of religious conviction isn’t an unusual convention. A great source of conflict and interest is a character who goes against their own supposed principles, or warps them to their own ends. And in any case, to many in the secular world, someone who believes something to the exclusion of all else, someone who isn’t a relativist, has to be close-minded bigot, right?



On the contrary, having principles and sticking by them does not always mean that. Real people are not so cut and dried. What one needs to be, when creating characters and even creating their villains, is honest. Otherwise, the whole convention just gets to be….well…cliché.



When I wrote Murder in the Vatican, I did my best to portray Pope Leo XIII in a way that was, I hope, honest. I would be just as honest in writing about a shameful pope like Alexander VI. But I wasn’t interested in a crummy pope. I’ll leave that for Showtime to cover (yawn). Our secular culture is so hungry to see religious figures as corrupt, they rewrite history to try to turn those who were fine people into villains—as is this case of the pope of this blog, Venerable Pius XII. And not just he, but Benedict XVI as well—if he isn’t a Nazi (here Benedict’s the story in his own words), then he’s a protector of paedophiles (never mind that he was one of the one’s trying to do right in that regard).



So it stands to reason that I decided to do something—well—different—to go against the grain. The religious folks in my book aren’t the villains. While, Pope Leo is a man of his time, he is also a man of the future in thought. He was a son of a noble family, quite different from his predecessor and successor (Pius IX and Piux X) both of whom came from humbler beginnings. Perhaps that is why Leo has not been put on the sainthood track, though his care for the poor and the working class was legendary. But I realized through simple research, all I had to do was write Leo as he was to the best of my ability to have an interesting character.



Sherlock Holmes himself says in the story “A Case of Identity”—“Life is infinitely stranger than the mind of man can invent.” I would suggest to the would-be storytellers of the world that before you go with the tired cliché of a corrupt religious character, try making them three dimensional, tell the truth about them. Give them a point of sympathy, for most humans have one. It is far more satisfying for your readers/viewers (not to mention less bigoted).

About the Author: Ann Margaret Lewis

Born and raised in Waterford, Michigan, Ann Margaret Lewis attended Michigan State University, where she received her Bachelor's degree in English Literature. She began her writing career writing tie-in children’s books and short stories for DC Comics. Before Murder in the Vatican: The Church Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, she published a second edition of her book, Star Wars: The New Essential Guide to Alien Species, for Random House.

Ann is a classically trained soprano, and has performed around the New York City area. She has many interests from music to art history, to theology and all forms of literature. She is the President of the Catholic Writers Guild, an international organization for Catholic Writers and the coordinator of the Catholic Writers Conference LIVE. After living in New York City for fifteen years, Ann moved to Indianapolis, Indiana with her husband Joseph Lewis and their son, Raymond. Together they enjoy their life in the heartland.