Pope Francis has come out for homosexual civil unions. Of course he never mentioned lesbians or gay women. Pope Francis stated, "Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. You can't kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered." Let’s revisit the difference of the rights & protections between civil union & marriage. Civil unions provide about one third of the rights & protections of marriage. In America the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act denied gay & lesbian couples 1,138 federal rights of marriage including a hefty average of $5000 more in their annual federal taxes than heterosexual married couples paid. Patrick Hornbeck, Professor of Theology at Fordham University stated, "What the pope has done today in these comments is he's given a permission slip to Catholics & to Catholic leaders who want to take that extra step, who want to be pastoral, as he's been, in affirming LGBT people & their families & their loves & that's no small thing. We have to remember that there are places all around the world where to be gay is to be thrown out of your family, where it's to be beaten, where to be trans is to take your life in your hands & so the pope's statements, I think, will have an important effect & need to be celebrated that way." Just remember that there are still countless cases of Catholic schools firing teachers for being gay & Catholic adoption agencies fighting to exclude gay & lesbian parents as we covered yesterday that will go before the US Supreme Court November 4th in
Fulton v. Philadelphia.
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