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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
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NEWS
June 2004

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"THIS IS UNCONSCIONABLE," said Sister Patricia McClellan, who belonged to something called the Celtic Christian Church of Pinole. Sister Patricia and several dozen demonstrators, according to the April 4 San Francisco Chronicle, were protesting a march led by William Levada, archbishop of San Francisco, and Allen Vigneron, bishop of Oakland, in support of a ban on homosexual marriage. Sister Patricia was miffed. "Christianity is about seeking out the excluded and the marginalized in society," she declared. "Christ is standing on our side of the fence.''

According to the April 12 Catholic Voice, the newspaper of the diocese of Oakland, the march was preceded by an all-night adoration of the Eucharist, organized by the group Your Catholic Voice. On the morning of April 3, after Mass at Sts. Peter and Paul church in San Francisco, Archbishop Levada addressed the marchers. "We must keep society on the right track," he said, adding that homosexual marriage is a "regression in society." To "stand up for the bedrock of society -- marriage and family," said the archbishop, "the only possible resolution of this is a constitutional amendment." The march then commenced, proceeding through a five-block area of North Beach.

During the Mass preceding the march, Bishop Vigneron told those gathered, "perhaps some of you come with a certain desperation or anxiety. Do not be afraid. We're winning, because God is God."

WHEN HUBBY AIN'T HUBBY. On April 14, the California supreme court asked for help to decide what the court should do about existing same-sex "marriages" if it should determine that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom had no authority to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. According to the April 15 San Francisco Chronicle, the supreme court justices issued a brief with this question to California attorney general Bill Lockyer, Mayor Newsom, and the Alliance Defense Fund, a group opposing homosexual marriage: would the 4,000 same-sex marriages be voided immediately, could they be voided not right away but eventually, or would they remain valid? Lockyer has told the court the marriages are invalid. Robert Tyler of the Alliance Defense Fund said that the marriage certificates issued to homosexual couples "are not worth the paper that they are written on." Tyler said he believes "the Supreme Court should find that they are completely void."

The supreme court had said it would decide if Newsom's same-sex marriages violate the state constitution or not only if a case came to it through the lower courts. Since then, Newsom and same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses after the high court forbade their further issuance have brought suit in San Francisco, saying the state constitution allows homosexual marriages.

"I ONLY WISH THIS COUNCIL had it in its ability to do what San Francisco did," said Oakland city councilman Danny Wan on April 6. Wan, the council's only homosexual member, was referring to San Francisco's issuance of marriage licenses to homosexual couples. But, according to the April 8 Oakland Tribune, the Oakland city council did the best it could to live up to San Francisco's reputation, issuing a call to the United States Congress to oppose President George W. Bush's call for a constitutional amendment recognizing marriage to exist only between a man and a woman. The council also urged the California legislature to pass Assembly Bill 1967, the California License Nondiscrimination Act, that would replace the terms male and female, man and woman in all but one section of the California family code, replacing the terms with "person" and "persons." Practically, if passed, this act would open the way for homosexual marriages in California. Also, in closed session, the Oakland city council voted to file an amicus brief for San Francisco in a case brought against the city by state attorney general Bill Lockyer over the city's allowing homosexual marriages.

POLYGAMISTS MAY SOON WANT their crack at legal recognition of their unions, according to the April 20 San Francisco Chronicle. A group calling itself the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness says that multiple relationships -- including various male, female combinations -- are as "ethical" as heterosexual and homosexual relationships. "Polyamory is never having to say you've broken up," Sally Amsbury of Oakland, a board member of the Awareness group, told the Chronicle. Amsbury has a relationship with her husband of two years; with Conly, her lover of seven years; and with Peter, who lives in West Hollywood with his boyfriend. Amsbury said she hopes for legal recognition of multiple partner relationships like her own but is not optimistic it will happen any time soon. Polyamorists, she said, are "lovers, not fighters. We don't want to get people's backs up."

But not only polyamorists see legal recognition of their "lifestyle" to be the logical result of the legal recognition of homosexual marriage. The Chronicle story noted that in mid April some conservative evangelicals asked San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom whether he supported multiple-partner as well as same-sex marriages. "What possible reason could you find for discriminating against or denying equal access to threesomes, foursomes, etc.?" they asked the mayor in a letter.

"WE'RE NOT A DUMPING GROUND. I feel the Tenderloin is worth fighting for," said Pastor Roger Huang who, on April 5, began a hunger strike in the plaza across from San Francisco's city hall. Huang, who runs the San Francisco Rescue Mission in the Tenderloin, was protesting the opening of a strip club, Chez Paree, next door to the mission, which has a school, Christian Academy, for 36 children, kindergarten through eighth grade. Chez Paree was Club 220, a homosexual hangout; but Terrance Alan, the club's owner (as well as head of the city's entertainment commission), closed the club, reopening it as a venue for female dancers. Huang and others say that the change of venue gives the city the opportunity to close the club down; but Supervisor Chris Daly said the council has no authority to touch Chez Paree. The Rev. Huang, however, disagreed. "The city took a stand against existing law to support gay marriages, an area where we have no jurisdiction," Huang said in a letter to the supervisors. "You have the jurisdiction and the power to help the people of the Tenderloin. Will you do it?"

Three weeks into his hunger strike, the Rev. Huang, the April 26 San Francisco Examiner reported, no longer was demanding the closure of Chez Paree, but its relocation. He was also demanding a moratorium on new liquor licenses, a clean-up of a Tenderloin park, and greater neighborhood say in what businesses would be allowed in their area.

A MILLION MARCHERS descended on the Mall in Washington, D.C. on April 25 to demonstrate for "abortion rights," said march supporters, though other counts have numbered the crowd at 800,000, 500,000, down to 250,000. The "March for Women's Lives," sponsored by several feminist organizations, had a large contingent of Californians. Senator Barbara Boxer was there, according to the April 26 San Francisco Chronicle. "They want to say we are murderers,'' said Boxer. "We are here to say we value our families, and we cherish the right to choose.'' Among other California political leaders attending the march were House minority leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and most members of the Bay Area's congressional delegation. Other Californians included Whoopie Goldberg, Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers, and a 19-year-old University of San Francisco student, Brynne Craig.

Former California first lady Sharon Davis also attended the march. She said pro-abortion Catholics like herself and presidential candidate John Kerry are upset that the Church might deny them communion. "As a pro-choice Catholic, I think we should join John Kerry and not accept Communion," Davis said. "It would be a strong message that we will not be driven out of the church." On April 29, according to Associated Press, Nancy Pelosi said despite any Vatican ban, she would continue to ask for communion. "I fully intend to receive Communion, one way or another," she said. "That's very important to me."

"THEY'VE RETREATED on one front, but they're still pressing forward with the rest of their anti-choice agenda," crowed an April 27 Choice Action Network e-mail report, sent out by NARAL Pro-Choice America. The Washington, D.C. march, said the report, scared the Bush White House. Though, according to Choice Action Network, Dick Cheney's top adviser, Mary Matalin, had said of march participants that they were "out of touch and irrelevant," "even George Bush," said the report, "can't ignore it when 1.15 million pro-choice Americans walk past his front yard." On April 26, a day after the march, the president "had his Justice Department withdraw its outrageous demand that thousands of women who'd had abortions turn over their private medical records for John Ashcroft's perusal."

Such a move on the president's part -- whether on account of the march or not -- encouraged NARAL. "The March has already brought us one important victory, the withdrawal of the intrusive subpoena for abortion records," said the report. "If we keep our movement growing and active, we can keep government out of our private decisions for the next generation."

THE CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT on April 5 said the killing of a pregnant woman counts as two murders under the state's 1970 fetal murder law, said an Associated Press report. In 2002, a state lower court ruled that Harold Taylor, who killed his pregnant girlfriend in 1999, was not guilty of the death of her unborn child because he did not know she was pregnant. California law, said the court, requires a ruling of "malice aforethought" and a "conscious disregard for life" in order to convict someone of murder. The case went to the supreme court, where six of the seven justices voted to reinstate Taylor's fetal-murder conviction. Speaking for the majority, Justice Janice Rogers Brown said Taylor "did not need to be specifically aware how many potential victims his conscious disregard for life endangered."

Both California law and a federal law signed by President George W. Bush in late March make it a crime to kill an unborn child in committing a state or federal offense. But while the California law only protects unborn children after eight weeks gestation, federal law protects them at any stage of development. Both the federal and state laws specifically exempt abortion procedures.

A TRIAL TO DECIDE the constitutionality of the federal government's ban on late-term partial birth abortions ended Friday, April 16. The banned procedure involves removing an unborn child intact and killing her before the head is removed from the birth canal. Last fall, San Francisco U.S. district court judge Phyllis Hamilton was one of three judges nationwide who blocked the new law after President George Bush signed it. As of April, another trial was ongoing in New York; the third trial will open in Lincoln, Nebraska on June 2. According to the April 17 San Francisco Chronicle, during the trial in San Francisco, Eve Gartner of Planned Parenthood argued that the law places an "undue burden" on a woman seeking abortion and that it is unconstitutional because it includes no provision for a woman's health. Gartner argued that the banned abortion method is the safest, minimizing the chances of perforating the uterus. She stated that an alternative method, inducing labor with chemicals, requires personnel that clinics often do not have. Gartner said the wording of the federal law is so vague that it will discourage doctors from performing abortions in the second trimester. "It's like having an elephant in the room with you," she said, "wondering if some prosecutor is going to interpret it in a certain way or not."

But assistant U.S. attorney Sean Lane said the partial birth abortion procedure "blurs the line between live birth and abortion." Federal justice department lawyer W. Scott Simpson said that there is no evidence that extraction abortions are safer than any others and that they cause great and unnecessary pain to infants. Further, he said, "the evidence supports Congress' finding that partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of the woman." Finally, Simpson said, "there's no elephant in the room. There's a baby. Congress can prohibit partially delivering that baby only to kill it."

ON GOOD FRIDAY, April 9, about 240 protestors descended on the Lawrence Livermore Lab in Alameda County to protest the production of nuclear weapons, said the April 10 Oakland Tribune. Among the crowd that carried signs reading, "We are all Downwinders" and others in honor of Father Bill O'Donnell, the Berkeley peace activist priest who died last year, were a core group of 50 who invited arrest by stepping onto the lab's property. Protest organizer Carolyn Scarr spoke of the lab's current attempts to double its plutonium supply and vaporize plutonium for experiments. "This is where the weapons of mass destruction are designed," she said. "We are the biggest owners of weapons of mass destruction." Father Bernardino Andrade, pastor of St. Anthony's Church in Oakley, said, "when I see instruments built to kill, I'm praying that these instruments be changed into instruments of life."

Lawrence Livermore spokesman, David Swoegler, told the Tribune that the lab is also interested in peace. "We believe the best way to achieve peace is the way that's worked for six decades, a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent," he said.

"IT IS BECOMING OBVIOUS that nuclear business as usual cannot continue," said the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, on April 28. The archbishop was addressing the Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2005 Review Conference of the Parties on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. "It must be said, and sadly so," said Migliore, "that more than three decades after the advent of the [Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons], nine years after its indefinite extension, and four years after states-parties made an 'unequivocal undertaking' to achieve total elimination through the progressive application of 13 practical steps, the integrity of the NPT is severely compromised." This treaty, continued the archbishop, "promised a world in which nuclear weapons would be eliminated and nuclear technological cooperation for development would be widespread. The heart of this anticipated cooperation was the bargain struck between the non-nuclear-weapon states, which agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons in return for the nuclear-weapon states negotiating the elimination of their nuclear arsenals."

Non-nuclear states, both those signatory to the treaty and those not, have taken dangerous steps toward the making of nuclear bombs. But, said the archbishop, "nuclear-weapon states have not given evidence" of "the negotiation of effective measures related to the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The modernization of nuclear weapons and development of new nuclear weapons technologies is taking place now and challenges directly the viability of the treaty." Migliore insisted that "at the level of security doctrine, there is a great need to move beyond nuclear deterrence.... The Holy See reiterates its stand that a 'peace' based on nuclear weapons cannot be the peace we seek in the 21st century. Reaffirming fundamental opposition to nuclear weapons as a threat to the survival of humanity, the states-parties must now focus their attention on recommendations that can command common support."

THE SIERRA CLUB has again roundly rejected one form of population control, at least -- immigration restriction. In late April, a record number of Sierra Club members turned in ballots for a club board election that pitted maverick new members calling for restrictions on immigration to the United States against an old guard that held to the club's historic neutrality on the subject. By a landslide vote, members declared that the San Francisco-based environmental organization should stay mum on immigration.

"WE WOULD HAVE HAD to be dumb not to see a business there," said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of Sausalito's Genetic Savings and Clone, in an April 15 San Francisco Chronicle story. Genetic Savings is offering to clone cats for anyone able and willing to pay the $50,000 for the procedure. The company has already produced its first cat clone, a feline named "Carbon Copy," or CC; by November, it says it will have cloned nine cats -- six for paying clients, three for staff members for publicity purposes. Hawthorne told the Chronicle that he hopes to be cloning thousands of pets a year in five years time, at $10,000 per cat and $20,000 per dog. So far, hundreds of clients have signed up to have Genetic Savings preserve tissue from their cats and dogs, paying a fee of $900 and $150 a year for maintenance.

Genetic Savings says it has no future plans to clone human beings.

HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITIES are promoting embryonic stem cell research in California, said an April 12 LifeNews.com report. Producer Douglas Wick and director Jerry Zucker are pushing a state initiative for the November 2004 ballot that would call for state bonds to raise $3 billion for fetal stem cell research -- which requires the destruction of human embryos. The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative has the endorsement of David Baltimore, a Nobel-prize winner and president of the California Institute of Technology, as well as funding from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. The initiative's promoters claim the use of stem cells could eliminate such diseases as diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease, and Alzheimer's. But LifeNews.com countered that "to date, a number of the research trials involving embryonic stem cells have proven disastrous. In contrast, research using adult stem cells, which does not involve the destruction of embryos, has proven quite promising."

If passed in November, the initiative could prove lucrative for biotech companies and universities, which will stand to gain $295 million a year. Initiative supporters claim its passage could boost California's economy, turning the state into a center for embyronic stem cell research. But the California Legislative Analyst's office estimated payment on bonds would be $6 billion over 30 years -- in a state that in 2003/04 had a $12 billion budget shortfall. The passage of the initiative could have ill effects on the federal ban on funding stem cell research. According to the Wall Street Journal, "the initiative could change the U.S. scientific landscape and send a message that the White House faces significant dissent over its decision not to provide federal funds for some stem-cell research."

EIGHT LETTERS to the April 12 Catholic Voice, the paper of the diocese of Oakland, addressed Bishop Allen Vigneron's decision not to advertise the Imaging Future Church conference at the University of San Francisco. The conference was, in part, sponsored by Voice of the Faithful (see article, this issue.) Seven of these letters were critical of the bishop; one, supportive of him. Father Tom Lester of St. Leander parish in San Leandro wrote that Vatican II clarified that "the baptized lay people are truly and fully Church -- the Body of Christ. The laity share responsibility for the welfare and the mission of the Church." Father Lester said he was disturbed that the Voice was forbidden to publicize the conference. "What is there to fear?" asked Lester. "Have we too soon lost sight of the Council's teaching that the Holy Spirit is in the Church and speaks through lay people, too?"

Jim Jenkins of Kensington called Bishop Vigneron's action "heavy-handed." Had the bishop attended the conference, "he would have heard clearly the voices of the people of God struggling to call into existence the future Church which will be distinguished by accountability, inclusivity, transparency and democracy."

Meg Bowerman of Oakland held herself and her husband up as examples of leadership. "My husband and I have learned that we must be responsible to our sons, not for them," wrote Bowerman. "We must listen to their concerns and bring those concerns 'to the table' for dialogue, not monologue." As an "adult," Bowerman said, "I turn to my Church and leaders to be responsible to God and to me. I do not need my leaders to be responsible for me. I trust that with prayer and education God will guide me and all of us, as to what is best for our Church." Bowerman said she has counseled a confirmand she co-sponsors that "a faith without questioning, doubts, and/or action towards justice is a 'dead faith' ... that fear and lack of education about an issue lead to rigidity and divisiveness."

BUT THE ONE LETTERWRITER supportive of Bishop Vigneron, Clare Ehrman of Orinda, noted that Voice of the Faithful "aims to undermine the authority of the Pope by questioning the validity of apostolic succession. Influential members and advisors advocate for the ordination of women, same-sex marriage, and a radical social agenda." If Voice of the Faithful were honest, wrote Ehrman, "it would change its name to Voices of the Dissenters." Until that change, which would allow Catholic laity to "hear them without the propaganda and deception," Ehrman said she thinks "Bishop Vigneron did the right thing by rejecting their advertisement.

"With the depressing evidence of cowardice and deceit among a small percentage of our clergy, I pray for, honor, and support the bishop for the brave and honorable stand he has taken," said Ehrman.

AS CALIFORNIA PREPARES to resume the execution of criminals after a two-year hiatus, three schools of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley issued a joint statement in opposition to capital punishment, said an April 12 Catholic Voice article. Over 50 members of the Jesuit School of Theology, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary signed the statement, issued on Good Friday. "We are missing the message of Jesus when we continue to put more faith in violence than in mercy," the statement said. "One death does not overcome another death." The statement further said, "there is nothing in our Christian tradition that says the violence of revenge is redemptive." Capital punishment "further brutalizes society and makes it easier to take human life in other circumstances" and "signals a disdain for the spiritual dynamism of every human being." The statement called for stricter sentencing and more secure prisons as alternatives to capital punishment.

GAY-STRAIGHT ALLIANCE CLUBS "have become fairly common in California high schools," said an April 4 Sacramento Bee story. Citing the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the Bee claimed that about 40 percent of California public high schools have Gay-Straight Alliance clubs -- about two dozen alone in the Sacramento area. But these clubs, which welcome and encourage homosexual youth in their "orientation" and seek to spread tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality, spread slowly in conservative areas of the Central Valley. Though federal and state law mandate that schools should accept such clubs, conservative school districts put up resistance. Last year, in Clovis, a town near Fresno, community pressure impeded efforts to form a Gay-Straight Alliance Club, though, in the end, the students who wanted it prevailed. And, despite resistance, the clubs are forming at high schools in Tulare, Amador, and Kern counties, according to Carolyn Laub, executive director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

U2 TRANSCENDS GIBSON. In the April 8 (Holy Thursday) edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Father Mark Stetz, pastor of Holy Cross parish in Santa Cruz and regular rock music columnist, wrote an article titled, "Rock of Ages: The Passion of Judas," featuring the song, "Until the End of the World" by the rock band U2. In his article, Stetz suggests the song could be retitled "The Passion of the Christ according to U2 and Judas," because it speaks what might be the thoughts of a contemporary-minded Judas at the Last Supper. Stetz opines that the song by U2 band member Bono offers a "deeper understanding of Jesus' life and divine love." He observes the song's lyrics about "drifting away" could refer to either Judas or us. What role would we play in Christ's life had we been there?

Stetz contrasts the spirituality as expressed by Bono's lyrics with the spirituality expressed in Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ. According to Stetz, Gibson's movie emphasizes how Christ died for our sins; Bono emphasizes how easy it is for us all to sin. Gibson focuses on the human realities of Jesus's suffering; Bono focuses on Jesus' unconditional love. "Stepping away from full communion with all humanity would have been a denial of God's unconditional, unending love," Stetz states. Gibson dramatizes and "traumatizes" the audience with the details of Christ's suffering, but U2 transcends the gory details, while at the same time expressing Jesus' love and anguish. Stetz concludes that U2's song makes Christ's Passion personal.

FIRED FOR THE PASSION. Stephen Hathorn, a teacher at a Catholic school in North Highlands, near Sacramento, was fired in late March after encouraging his seventh-grade students to watch Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ. Hathorn told students in his religion class that they could earn extra credit if they watched the movie with their parents, said the April 3 Sacramento Bee. Neither the Sacramento diocese nor St. Lawrence School, where Hathorn has taught for five years, would give the reason for Hathorn's dismissal; but Principal Marilyn Fleming said it was against school policy for teachers to encourage kindergarten through eighth-grade students to watch R-rated movies. According to one parent, however, Fleming said Hathorn had been fired for insubordination over the movie. Hathorn appealed his dismissal to the diocese, and as the April 24 Sacramento Bee reported, he was reinstated for the remainder of this school year. However, it is uncertain whether Hathorn's contract will be renewed for the next school year.

ON EARTH DAY, Sunday, April 25, Catholic priests were to join Native Americans, Wiccans, Sikhs, and "people of other spiritual traditions" at a "newly opened park at the Port of Oakland to affirm the sacredness of Mother Earth," said the April 23 Contra Costa Times. The interfaith celebration was to feature traditional Native American dancers and drummers," as well as "the launching of Tulle [sic] spirit boats filled with the prayers of spiritual leaders and participants at 3 p.m." The event also promised an opportunity "to participate in morning and afternoon beach clean ups."

During the week of April 25-30, the Spiritual Alliance for Earth, which sponsored the event, reported on the festivities. There was a "liturgy," which "began with Native American drummers, singers, and dancers celebrating our sacred connection with Earth." Though no members of the Catholic clergy were mentioned, the Spiritual Alliance report noted that "Native Americans" gathered about 130 participants, who witnessed "a dramatic ceremony led by Cynthia Winton-Henry's Interplay Dance Group and her students from the Sophia Center at Holy Names College. A procession with colorful banners and dancers led us to the water, where interfaith leaders gave blessings over grain that was placed in small, model Tule boats, which Native Americans used to navigate the Bay."

MCCARRICK ON CALIFORNIA. Washington, D.C.'s Cardinal Theodore McCarrick told a gathering of health care workers that the California supreme court's ruling that Catholic Charities had to follow a state law and provide contraception coverage in its health benefits for its employees set a "dangerous precedent." According to an April 20 Catholic News Service report, the cardinal said, "the supreme court of California has come to a decision about what is and what is not a Catholic institution." That decision, said McCarrick, is "unacceptable to the Constitution of the United States and to everything we believe in."

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