Quote of the Day

. . . The conventional — and erroneous — perception of the gay-marriage issue is that it pits secular forces against religious ones. From New York to California, wherever and whenever the battle has flared, news coverage has focused almost entirely on the religious groups who uniformly denounce it: Mormons, Roman Catholics [i.e., the Roman Catholic clerical caste], evangelical Christians and many Hispanic Pentecostals and African-American Protestants.

Yet the passage of same-sex marriage in New York
last month . . . attests to the concerted, sustained efforts by liberal Christian [including Catholics] and Jewish clergy to advocate for it in the language of faith, to counter the language of morality voiced by foes. In so doing, they provided a kind of political and theological cover to the moderate and conservative state senators who cast the vital swing votes for a 33-to-29 margin.

– Samuel G. Freedman
"How Clergy Helped a Same-Sex Marriage Law Pass"
New York Times
July 15, 2011