Yesterday the Maryland Senate held hearings on the Civil Marriage Protection Act (the same-sex marriage bill). First order of business! Because Lord knows the most important thing in a state-wide fiscal crisis is to destroy the one institution most likely to produce stable persons living above the poverty line. The people are starving? Declare that grass is the same as wheat! #ThereIFixedIt
The Governor and First Lady of Maryland: what a pair! Last week she declared opponents of same-sex marriage were cowards. Yesterday he testified in favor of same-sex marriage as follows:
"We all want the same thing for our children," O'Malley said. "It is not right and it is not just that the children of gay couples should have lesser protections than the children of other families in our state.""Our children?" Forty years of mandatory sex education and the Governor doesn't know where babies come from!
I'm a little disappointed in my side. The Maryland Catholic Conference is providing good materials, but the HHS Conscience Crusher mandate is sucking all the oxygen at the parish level. I brought my pastor inserts for the parish bulletin and he was delighted to collaborate and announce the rally and postcard campaign, but he didn't know a thing about it, and anecdotal evidence from friends all over Maryland suggests very few parishes are even aware this is going on. (Though some are. I ran in to Msgr. Filardi at the rally, and he'd brought a bus from Lourdes, and the local Nashville Dominicans were out in force.) No coverage in the Archdiocesan paper for Washington so far, though there are three stories on conscience protections. I gave an interview on local Catholic radio because the Maryland Catholic Conference couldn't provide anyone on short notice! (This is not because they're negligent, but because it was hearing day, and they're short-handed.) I was able to get the radio station to agree to do PSAs for the campaign, connecting them with Maryland Marriage Alliance and with Jennifer Roback Morse (wish she were testifying here as she did in Washington), who'll do an interview next week to educate folks on why this is important for everyone, not just a parochial Catholic issue. Most people I've talked to are willing to get involved, but have heard nothing.
The witness list at the hearings is largely black pastors. They're excellent, but like the Catholic Bishops fighting the Conscience Crusher, they tend to argue solely from the right to conscience, and I can't help but feel they're a bit impotent, because -- also like the Catholics Bishops fighting HHS-- they can get their people to protest this one measure, but their people will turn right around and vote the same people back in office. Unless there is a political cost to voting against marriage, marriage is weak.
