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WASHINGTON — An online petition asking the White House to designate the Catholic Church as a “hate group” for its views on marriage is drawing criticism for generating unjust animosity.
The petition reveals an “underlying agenda,” which is not simply to prevent violent crimes, but to “stigmatize any disapproval of homosexuality at all and essentially to silence us,” said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council in Washington.
He explained to Catholic News Agency on Jan. 3 that applying the “hate group” label to organizations that are morally opposed to redefining marriage is simply “name-calling designed to cut us out of the public debate.”
Initiated on Christmas Day, a petition on the White House website had collected 1,640 signatures by Jan. 3.
The petition — which is aiming for 25,000 signatures by Jan. 24 — argued that Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 Christmas address to the College of Cardinals “demeaned and belittled homosexual people around the world.”
“Using hateful language and discriminatory remarks, the Pope painted a portrait in which gay people are second-class global citizens,” it charged.
“Pope Benedict said that gay people starting families are threatening to society and that gay parents objectify and take away the dignity of children,” the petition said. “The Pope also implied that gay families are subhuman, as they are not dignified in the eyes of God.”
It called for the Obama administration to recognize the Catholic Church as a hate group, as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
However, Sprigg argued that the petition is “distorting” the Pope’s words, which do not actually include hateful or discriminatory language.
In his address to the cardinals, the Pope did not directly reference “gay marriage” or “homosexuality” at all. Rather, he defended the Church’s understanding of sexuality and “the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother and child.”
The Holy Father refuted the modern notion of sex as “a social role that we choose for ourselves,” rather than “a given element of nature” and “bodily identity that serves as a defining element of the human being.”
The complementarity of male and female is part of “the essence of the human creature” and is foundational to the nature of the human being and the family, the Pope explained.
Sprigg argued that the petition is misleading and “clearly has political purpose.”
“The federal government does not designate hate groups. It prosecutes hate crimes,” he observed, explaining that a clear distinction must be made between moral opposition to homosexual acts and violent crimes against homosexual individuals.
Such labeling can also be dangerous, Sprigg said. Ironically, the hate-group label can actually create hatred toward the group being designated, he explained.
He pointed to an incident last August in which a 28-year-old Virginia man entered the Family Research Council headquarters, made a comment about disliking the group’s politics and then opened fire, shooting a security guard before being disarmed.
The Family Research Council had previously been labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said at the time that such reckless labeling may have led the gunman to feel justified in carrying out the shooting.
Sprigg reiterated this idea, highlighting the importance of allowing people to express their differing views peacefully in a democracy.
Suggesting that organizations such as the Catholic Church and the Family Research Council are hateful simply because of their views on human sexuality promotes “a dangerous misconception,” he said.
Matthew Warner: Ask Fr. Barron: What gives you hope for future of the Church?
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The White House is also being petitioned for Texas to secede from the union. Any crackpot with access to a computer can get an on-line petition going. I can’t believe the Register thinks this story is newsworthy.
I’m not sure the Register wants to place Tony Perkins and the FRC on par wtih the Catholic Church. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center website, “we [SPLC] do not list the FRC as a hate group because of its opposition to gay marriage or because of its religious beliefs. Instead, we list the FRC because it engages in baseless, incendiary name-calling and spreads demonizing lies about the LGBT community. The FRC portrays gay people as sick, evil, perverted, incestuous and a danger to the nation. It insists that gay people are “fundamentally incapable” of providing good homes for children – a myth that has been rejected by all relevant scientific authorities. One of its key leaders has actually said that homosexual behavior should be criminalized. . . Linking the LGBT community to pedophilia is not an expression of a religious belief, as Perkins would have it. It’s simply a lie – and a particularly ugly one at that.”
I’m Catholic therefore I confess that O agree with and I wholeheartedly support all the teaching of the Catholic Church. Regardless what are the consequences. I prefer to stick to Jesus Christ rather than the government. With that, I ask God for all He has for me - the good and the bad. I want it all.
This is clearly getting out of hand. It’s time for more Catholics to start speaking out. There is no shame in being a Catholic, there is great shame in not speaking out against a petition that is driven purely by malice, contempt, hate and a much larger political agenda.
its coming people…the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION, is coming to the Roman Catholic Church. Before Obama leaves office the Church will be forced to marry these depraved Sodom and Gomorrah lovers or be closed down. Like the weakness of religious leaders when the feminists pushed birth control and abortion as a right, the depraved homosexuals are pushing for their rights, straight into the sanctuary of the Roman Catholic Church. But as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, so to in time God will chastise the entire world for this filth, being pushed as a right.
We can thank Catholic democrat voters for this situation. Their candidate in the recent presidential election calls marriage what God calls an abomination. He refused to thank God on Thanksgiving. He boasted to a Muslim audience that America is not a Christian nation. He is waging an immoral war against the Church under the guise of health care. He is threatening our Church institutions with closure because we dare to obey God and His laws as opposed to his immoral law. He voted for the legal killing of girls and boys outside of their mom’s womb even after they survive the attempt to kill them in the womb. When people can go to Mass on Sunday and vote for this hideous platform on Tuesday, it is no wonder that the same society could end up calling God’s church hateful.
Why no link to the petition? As a catholic I’m offended at the hatred spewed by my religious leaders. I’d like to sign the petition and see my church classified as a hate group. It would make justifying leaving you so much easier. Jesus would hate today’s Catholic church. Bunch of jerks.
Matt 5:11-13
[11] Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: [12] Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. [13]
Just to clarify who creates these petitions, it’s citizens who go to the White House’s gov website, click on the petition button and then click on the button to create a petition. If you see what some of the petitions are for, you’ll know so many of them will be ignored by the gov as senseless. What started out as a way, a means for people to tell gov what’s important to them has been hijacked by people, extremists, who have their own agenda. There’s too much hate and division happening within this country. And people’s wanting to start such a petition shows it. We could start our own petition to try to fight it, as if it’d do any good since there are too many haters, dividers out there now.
This is great news.
Nothing strengthens the Church like persecution.
It’s a ‘sheep and wolves’ sort of thing.
Bring it on!
Denise,
The best thing you could do is prayer for them.
I would like to ask this question about a word that keeps popping up in our vocabulary. it is the word HATE. Just what exactly does it really mean anymore? If a person expresses a viewpoint about something that some other people either don’t agree with, don’t like or disagree with they are somehow called “haters” is there really such a term or phrase at all? I don’t think so folks. It is to me just more of the politically correct garbage we have been hearing about the last couple of decades. Does anybody know that “political correctness” really is? It is also know by its more accurate label and term I heard several years ago. CULTURAL COMMUNISM. Yes you heard me right this is a Marxist Communist buzzword like “haters” and Hate Crime and Deniers so Register Readers be aware!
@ Mark - IN YOUR HEART YOU HAVE ALREADY LEFT THE CHURCH. SO GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE AND CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY IN A POSITIVE WAY.
There is no link to the actual petition. All we see here are the opinions of people from both sides of the issue. In any discussion, we should be able to see the original, or at least be able to find it. I looked and could only find comments about the alleged petition.
Andy,
The SLPC is no group I trust on anything .
1600 in more than a week, fortunately, is pretty pathetic. But it’s very clear to me now that I made the right decision in not jumping on the bandwagon to label WBC.
Andy, I imagine a lot of what they say is debatable. Just a hunch.
I have looked at the petition on “we the people” as you may know this site set up by the White House allows anyone to put up a petition. Only when the petition has 25,000 signatures is it “reviewed by the administration”. So after 2 weeks and much publicity this “Label Catholic Church as Hate group” petition has amassed the remarkable sum of only 2,002 signatures. Clearly, the petition does not have much support. Some of the comments here seem to be an over-reaction.
Your headline is misleading—it appeared to me that you were saying the White House “had petitioned” to label the Church a hate group, rather than the correct interpretation that the White Has “has been petitioned” to label the Church a hate group. Important distinction.
In the time since I have read of this story, I have yet to see one article on this subject—JUST ONE!!!—which actually shows the link to the petition itself. Mind you, the actual, literal, petition on whitehouse.gov, not just some guy talking about how awful it is. I’m beginning to think everybody is making this whole thing up. Come on, mainstream Catholic press, and ardent Catholic bloggers everywhere, I await being proven wrong! (So far, it’s been a long wait.)
A young man “marries” another man, puts his seed in him, to start a “family”, and they call this “equality”; Anyone who questions the behavior is either a hater or a bigot.. A new mother has her child killed and this is proclaimed as the greatest single thing a woman can “choose” to do; anyone who says otherwise is “warring” on women… The Church founded by Christ, on Peter and the Apostles and their Successors, having existed for 2000 years, and having given us the Bible… is being forced to pay for abortifacients for all women married and un-married…
Welcome to today’s Democratic Party. It’s not the party of your parents or grand parents. It’s the Party of Death.
Anon and Enness, The SPLC may make judgments you disagree with or are skeptical about, but consider three things: First, in my experience, the SPLC does solid research. They are seldom wrong about the facts they report, e.g., that Tony Perkins and the FRC have indeed said the things they’ve said about gays and lesbians. Second, you may disagree with SPLC’s judgment/opinion that Tony Perkins and the FRC is a “hate group”, but then you need to ask yourself why do you disagree? Which leads to my third point: Simply because a group calls itself pro-family, or simply because a person (or political party) declares itself pro-life, does not mean that it’s right about anything else. The Republican Party, for example, is correct in its platform about abortion, but from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching, it is wrong on just about everything else—the economy, social programs, military spending, foreign policy, global warming, unions, corporate corruption, etc. I challenge you to read JP2’s Centesimus Annus and B16’s Caritas in Veritate. (The Register sure isn’t going to talk about these encyclicals! They are much to liberal for the Register’s editorial policy!) After reading them, I guarantee you will see the Church’s pro-life teaching as a fundamentally different thing than that of groups like Tony Perkins. The Church gets its right and gets the whole thing right. Tony Perkins and the GOP are like broken clocks—they get one thing right, but most of the time they’re wrong.
It called for the Obama administration to recognize the Catholic Church as a hate group, as defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center
I guess it takes a hate group to know a hate group. I am actually surprised they only got 1640 signatures.
Who cares about the things the republican party is wrong about when you compare it against 55 million children killed in the womb. The US birth rate just fell below replacement levels because of ramapant artifical contraception and abortion. If you get these life issues wrong, it won’t matter how nice of a government healthcare system we have because there won’t be any people to use it. Stop confusing the lambs, Satan.
Anonymous: Instead of demonizing those who disagree with you (literally!), why don’t you read the two encyclicals I mentioned? If after reading them you still think JP2 and B16 are in league with the devil, then so be it. This idea that Democrats are responsible for all the abortions in the U.S. is inaccurate and fails to recognize that the GOP has much invested in keeping Roe the law of the land. Remember, pre-Roe, a third of the states had liberalized abortion laws on the books. Even if Roe had determined there was not a constitutional right to abortion, the liberalizing trend toward expanding abortion rights would have continued. This notion that all post-Roe abortions are the fault of Democrats is, therfore, delusional. Also, abortion rates go down under Democratic presidents b/c of Democratic economic and social policies. Republicans pride themselves on being anti-abortion, but fail to recognize that GOP economic policies drive abortion rates up. Both parties have blood on their hands; to fail to realize that fact just makes it harder to actually bring down the number of abortions in the U.S.
Except for the date, Orwell had it right.
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