Pyongyang-on-the-Hudson

NY Archbishop Fears Gay Marriage Will Make Us Asian

What arguments haven’t we already heard against gay marriage? Well, give New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan points for originality. In a posting on his blog, Dolan laments the so-close-you-can-taste-it impending vote on gay marriage in the state legislature by expressing his fears that all of New York will suddenly become Asia if equality becomes reality.

“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law,” says Dolan. “There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ means.”

Last time we consulted a news site (about three minutes ago), neither North Korea or China was renowned for their pioneering stand on gay marriage, so we can’t quite see Albany as the new Pyongyang-on-the-Hudson. Still, it’s a nice touch to raise the specter of euthanasia (no pun intended) as a logical consequence of marriage equality. And you can always count on the Catholic hierarchy to throw in the obligatory reference to birth control at the drop of a cardinal’s hat.

Just in case you were wondering about the rest of Dolan’s argument, it’s about what you’d expect. “We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought,” he writes, making “obligation” the new synonym for “freedom” (and guess who gets to do the defining).

But–and you know this is coming–he loves us all anyway. “Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people,” Dolan swears. “The Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like.”

Just not the liberty in our relationships to do what we ought.


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