Revising the format a schooch today to post several reactions on the same topic: the radical religious right’s declaration of theocracy, which they’ve dubbed the Manhattan Declaration.
Peterr (firedoglake): From Justifying Discrimination in the Name of Religious Freedom is Not a Good Idea:
Shorter [Archbishop Donald] Wuerl: “God forbid that same sex couples be allowed to adopt children, or care for them as foster parents, or have health benefits through their legal partner’s employment. We certainly won’t be a party to such immorality.”
Wayne Besen (Truth Wins Out): From The New GLBT Pope Problem:
An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’s evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.
Timothy Kincaid (Box Turtle Bulletin): From A review of the Manhattan Declaration:
But this is not just broadly social conservatives. There is, instead, a concentration of those who focus on “opposing the homosexual agenda”. There are a few religious activists who seem dedicated and committed (obsessed, one might think) to fighting equality for gay people: Ken Hutcherson, Bishop Harry Jackson, and Jim Garlow. And then, inexplicably, some who are not religious leaders at all but social activists whose primary occupation is in seeking the political institutionalizing of inequality to gay people: Maggie Gallagher, Frank Schubert, and William Donohue.
Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches): From Manhattan Declaration Is The New Old Culture War:
The Manhattan Declaration assumes that in a country with constitutionally protected religious liberty, any law intended to protect the citizenry’s other freedoms should be subject to the veto threat of the signers of the Manhattan Declaration itself. This is not a new strategy for the religious right. Since the 1970s the Hyde Amendment has “protected” the “conscience” of people who find abortion morally objectionable and don’t want tax dollars paying for someone else’s (although many of those people of “conscience” also oppose war but have barely lifted a finger to stop us from paying for the killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan). Religious right legal groups have used the courts to try to dismantle the separation of church and state on similar grounds, claiming that everything from LGBTQ equality to prohibitions on the public display of the Ten Commandments infringes on their religious liberty as Christians.
Alonzo Fyfe (Atheist Ethicist): From The Manhattan Declaration
Part I: Religious Liberty:
One of the great advantages of having an inconsistent and inherent moral philosophy is that the agent gets to appeal to that half of the contradiction that is most useful at the moment in justifying their actions. If a health care provider wishes the liberty to refuse to provide abortion services to somebody who may want an abortion, prohibiting them from refusing is a violation of their religious liberty. If a homosexual couple wishes to get married according to the dictates of their conscience, apparently, then it is the religious liberty of the Christian signers of this document to prohibit such unions that is at stake.
Michael A Jones (Change.org): From The Manhattan Declaration
and the Right’s Return to the Culture Wars:
Funny, but this document takes Jesus Christ and makes him the most partisan, political figure in history. Talk about deception — they’ve taken a religious figure that spent just about his entire life fighting for the poor, and turned him into a gay basher.
I T (Daily KOS): From The Manhattan Declaration, the Uganda Gay Death Bill, and the attack on GLBT rights:
Now, the battle continues to escalate on our own borders. Emboldened by the success of their dishonest campaigns in ME and CA, the bad guys are ramping up the attack with this new declaration. But it’s PAST TIME for the forces of good to stand up to them and say NO MORE in the same forceful terms that they have used against us. Whispers and soft voices have not worked. It’s PAST TIME for the leadership of liberal, progressive Christian denominations to SPEAK OUT loudly against intolerance and divisiveness and hatred masquerading under religion’s name whether here at home, or overseas. Maggie Gallagher et al do NOT represent all Christians, not by a long shot. It’s PAST TIME for there to be strong voices opposed to the Gay Death Bill in Uganda, strong voices that call the Manhattan Declaration out for the prejudiced, intolerant document that it is.
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