What’s more powerful, Hollywood and Washington, D. C., or God?
If you don’t believe in God, that’s easy: Hollywood and D.C., because, duh, they are populated by actual people. But if you believe in God, surely you think He has more sway than the cities that brought us “Brokeback Mountain” and Barney Frank, right?
Maybe not, it turns out. At least when the issue at hand is marriage equality.
On Nov. 29, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, had a heart to heart with David Gregory. The topic turned to all those gays getting married, and Gregory wondered what Dolan thought about the rapid advances equality has made in recent months.
“I’d be a Pollyanna to say that there doesn’t seem to be kind of a stampede to [legalize same-sex marriage],” Dolan responded. “I regret that, I wish that were not the case.”
Nice use of the word “stampede,” by the way. It brings to mind an image of gay and lesbian couples mowing down everybody in between them and legal marriage. As if the fight for marriage equality is akin to Walmart on Black Friday, with folks stomping on each other’s heads to get a discount flat-screen.
David Gregory then asked, “But why do you think the Church is losing the argument on it, in effect?”
Note that Gregory did not ask Dolan if the Church is losing the argument. He flat-out said, “Dude, the Church is losing this shit. What gives?”
Dolan’s answer is quite revelatory.
“Well, I think maybe we’ve been out-marketed, sometimes,” he said. “I don’t know, when you have forces like Hollywood, when you have forces like politicians, when you have forces like some opinion-molders that are behind it, it’s a tough battle.”
First of all, out-marketed? This isn’t Coke v. Pepsi, pal.
Secondly, did he just say that the forces of “Hollywood” and “politicians” are beating out the force of the Catholic Church? That God’s condemnation of homosexuality is no match for a bunch of celebrities and senators? Why, yes. Yes he did.
And for what injustice are Hollywood and Washington, D.C., at fault? “We’ve been caricatured as being antigay,” Dolan said.
Oh, now that’s rich, especially coming from a man who personally lobbied against marriage equality in New York and who once included homosexuality in a list of “contemporary threats to marriage,” including “polygamy, adultery [and] forced marriages.” As if there’s some giant conspiracy to make the Catholic Church seem like it doesn’t like gays. Because they sure don’t make any secret about their antigay lifestyle.
Dolan likened the fight against marriage equality to the fight against abortion.
“Back in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, everybody said this is a forgone conclusion, in a couple of years this issue is going to go away,” he said. “To this day, it remains probably the most divisive issue in American politics.”
Gregory asked, “So you don’t think the gay-marriage debate is over?”
“No. I don’t think it is,” Dolan responded.
In other words, lesbians and gays may be winning the battle to have our families recognized as legal and loving, but people like Dolan will keep up the fight to turn back the clock to a time when our families were considered a crime and an abomination.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.