A planned fund raising event for Bill Deware at the Knights of Columbus hall in North Providence was cancelled this week when the Knights of Columbus was informed that Deware, a candidate for State Rep House District 54, is pro-choice. It is not known who informed the Knights of Columbus of Deware’s pro-choice status. Deware says, “I am indeed pro-choice. I am an ardent supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body. I would argue any human being in any situation has a fundamental right to control their own body.”

Deware is a Progressive Democrat. “I got involved with the Bernie Sanders campaign regionally and it showed me I could be more active politically. Locally I was brought to action by the cuts to Medicaid (which impact me and my family directly due to my daughter having multiple handicaps) and the need for tax and ethics reform in RI. I feel people need to get involved in the political process and help restore faith in government. Then we can start to make government work for us again. What we have right now, is not working for us here in RI. We want and deserve better.”

As for his fundraiser being cancelled because of his pro-choice stance, Deware says that “There are many issues that unite us and I would like to focus on those issues rather than divisive ones. For instance; the Catholic Church believes in social justice, racial justice & economic justice, as do I. Jesus healed the sick, helped the poor and didn’t judge. These are areas I would like to focus on in my career and in my life.”

A new location, Lancellotta’s Banquet Restaurant in North Providence, has already been booked for the fundraiser and will take place on the same night, June 30th, as the original event.

Knights of Columbus did not respond to a request for comment.

Dear Bishop Tobin,

On May 10, you asserted in a public commentary that all drug use is sinful and immoral. You urged state legislators to reject the legalization of marijuana. As a member of the Protestant clergy, I reach a very different conclusion.

We read the same Bible, worship the same God, and seek to follow the teachings of Jesus. What, then, explains where we differ, and why? You acknowledge that a case, which you do not refute, can be made for the recreational use of alcohol. Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol, yet you do not attempt to justify this double standard.

You then quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The use of drugs inflicts very grave damage on human health and life.” You cite the words of Pope Francis two years ago: “Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise.”

The reality is that we live in a drug-using society. Most of us consume some kind of drug on a regular basis: alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, prescription drugs, or marijuana. The question that challenges us both, then, is how to respond to the possibility that drug use can become addictive. Sadly, your understanding of addiction is incomplete and outdated.

In 1971, Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan became its general. His wife Nancy was credited with the famous phrase “Just Say No” as the path to avoiding addiction.

We can be grateful that medical science today has helped us to understand more about the complexities of addiction than we did in the era of Ronald Reagan. In light of current knowledge, the War on Drugs is immoral. “Just Say No” seems simplistic, even fatuous.

Addiction is far less about the properties of an individual drug than the inner pain that causes a user to seek temporary relief. This inner pain is, more often than not, the “gateway” to drug abuse, not any particular substance. That’s why not just drugs, but certain kinds of behavior, can become addictive — gambling, sex, the internet, shopping, and even food.

Most people who experiment with drugs move beyond them. You speak of our youth as ‘immune to reality with their electronics – hoodies on, heads down, ear buds in…” But most of the “zombie youth” you deride will outgrow this behavior. It’s this kind of being out-of- touch that leads to youth not paying attention to adults’ advice in the first place.

In December, I participated in a conference in Providence’s Gloria Dei Cathedral. Police, physicians, and clergy addressed the impact of the War on Drugs. One of the panelists, a former president of the Rhode Island Medical Society, noted that about 10% of those who use drugs run a serious risk of addiction. About half of those will avoid addiction through treatment. It is the remaining 5% we must worry about.

Medical experts are determining that trauma and profound stress are the primary, though certainly not only, causes of addiction. Trauma and stress can take many forms, ranging from sexual abuse to acute loneliness and isolation. Pope Francis is correct when he notes a connection between addiction and extreme poverty.

People struggling with addiction are, most often, neither sinful nor weak, as increasingly outdated moral teachings would have us believe. The phrase “self-medication” is not an accident. Arresting people with an addiction is morally wrong and does nothing to alleviate their underlying pain.

My Christian faith also tells me that punishment and “tough love” are rarely the best way to change behavior. We are most likely to reach others when we respond to them with care, compassion, mercy, respect, and honesty. This is what Jesus did. Condemnation was not his instrument of change.

We are living in the dawn of a new drug policy in this country. It is called harm reduction and is based on the tenets that drugs can never be completely eliminated and that we should help drug users without insisting on abstinence. At least 35 states now have needle exchange programs as a life-saving means of avoiding HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C.

In opposing marijuana legalization, you are complicit in the failed and immoral War on Drugs. In Rhode Island, which has already decriminalized marijuana, you are nevertheless supporting fines on poor, most often young people, who can ill afford to pay them, and may face lifetime consequences as a result.

You refer derisively to “benign forms” of marijuana: “cookies, brownies, and mints” in states where it is legal. But isn’t this safer than leaving our youth to sellers in back alleys who sometimes offer toxic, adulterated marijuana, and are happy to provide the harder drugs.

Most importantly, in continuing to focus on marijuana legalization, you are distracting attention and resources from what we both fear most – the dangers of addiction. We share the common purpose of reducing the harm of drugs in our society, but we differ on the means. Your commentary is clever and engaging, but ultimately it is wrong.

Yours in Faith,

Rev. Alexander E. Sharp

Executive Director
Clergy for a New Drug Policy

Tobin was in the news for a blog post he wrote calling on lawmakers to keep cannabis illegal in Rhode Island. “In opening the door to drug use even a little bit, we have so much to lose and absolutely nothing to gain,” he wrote. But as I responded on TV, “The Bishop is essentially siding with mass incarceration if he wants marijuana to stay illegal, and that’s a far greater sin than indulgence.”

I called him a “moral failure for our state and for the Catholic Church.”

In the online segment I made clear my harsh judgement is not for his position on drug policy. It’s also not for taking a strong position against abortion. It’s because he has been completely absent from the public discussion on poverty and war – issues that have been central to all Rhode Islanders lives during his tenure as bishop. “I want the Church to advocate for issues that matter to the people of Rhode Island,” I said.

In his interview with Bill Rappleye (about 3:10), Tobin expressed his views on war.

“Of course I’m against wars, I don’t know anyone who is in favor of wars,” Tobin said. “I think it was St. John Paul who said war is always a defeat for humanity. It’s never good.”

But, he added, “Sometimes there are prudential judgments.”

He continued, “The Catholic Church has a long tradition of talking about a ‘just war theory’. It is never to say someone is just in starting a war, but we certainly believe in the right of self defense. What would someone do to respond to the attacks of terrorism, of ISIS, the terrible persecution of Christians taking place in the Middle East, the attacks on our own country or in France or in Belgium? How do we respond to these violent terrorist attacks without having some means of self defense. That’s where I think someone providing legitimate armaments and self defense has a legitimate role to play. Again, no one is in favor of war.”

On transgender bathrooms, Tobin, a Republican who said he probably won’t vote for Donald Trump, showed some compassion before invoking a popular conservative talking point.

“I have no doubt there are some people for physiological or psychological reasons have to deal with being transgendered and those people deserve all the support and respect and cooperation and assistance we can offer them but I’m also concerned this seems to be becoming a politically-driven agenda. It does seem to me to be very sweeping and overarching and perhaps another intrusion of the federal government into areas that are best decided at the local level.”

“Once I met a lady who was in terrible, terrible pain of cancer and I told her, ‘This is but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss you.’ And the lady, though she was in great pain, she joined her hands together and said, ‘Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop kissing me.’”

Mother Teresa, the audience and Buckley all laughed at this story, reveling in the suffering that their God had inflicted on this woman. For Mother Teresa and her adoring followers, suffering is seen as a purifying gift. To them, the suffering of others has become fetishized, the pain filled deaths of our loved ones a spectacle through which God reveals himself.

Those who do not believe in a God that doles out the gift of soul cleansing suffering reject the terrible “mercies” of Mother Teresa, yet our rejection of her wisdom does little to deter her followers from imposing their views on our lives, dictating how we are expected to live our lives and die our deaths.

During last week’s House hearing on the Lila Manfield Sapinsley Compassionate Care Act, a bill that would allow those facing a terminal illness filled with suffering and loss of dignity to end their lives, opposition was almost entirely organized by the Catholic Church and Barth E. Bracy of RI Right to Life.

• Why I support the Compassionate Care Act – Peter Nightingale
• Our right to die is our right to live – Steve Ahlquist

Bracy admitted to organizing the opposition to this bill when he said to the committee, “We’ve submitted written testimony from many of the people who have testified, we submitted 23 copies around four o’clock…” Some testifying against the bill also regularly testify with Bracy on reproductive rights issues.

Representative Arthur Corvese, a conservative Catholic social warrior famous for the Corvese amendment, an eleventh hour addendum to the now defunct “civil unions” bill that essentially allowed anyone to discriminate against couples who joined in civil unions based on their religious beliefs, was quick to tell Bracy, “I think it’s obvious, Barth, you and I go back a long way, that this bill and others like it across the country are basically nothing more than the philosophical outgrowth of the continuing culture of death that began in 1972. Where abortion kills the young these bills provide a rationale to kill off the old.”

Too often it seems as if Corvese sees his job, legislating in the General Assembly, as little more than a way to impose his Catholic theology upon the entire state. This is a Catholic theology that sees suffering as something to be embraced, not avoided.

Mother Teresa saw suffering as a way to bring the terminally ill closer to God. “It depends, sometimes, what is in their own hearts. If they pray, I think [suffering] is very easy to accept because the proof of prayer is always a clean heart. And a clean heart can see God…”

Father Christopher Mahar, Rector of the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence, seems to agree with Mother Teresa, saying that, “…at the end of life, there are many beautiful choices to make. Choices to reconcile with loved ones, choices to reconcile with God and prepare for eternal life, if one believes in that.”

Representative Robert Lancia was inspired by Mahar’s comments to ask about Pope John Paul II, who, at the end of his life, says Lancia, “could have chosen to end his life.” This is an odd claim, given that assisted suicide is legally forbidden in Italy and that the Catholic Church is against death with dignity legislation worldwide. Of course, Lancia was really seeking to give Mahar a chance to expound on Catholic theology in regards to assisted suicide.

Mahar brought up Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio. According to Mahar, John Paul II was “always a proponent of caring for people not just based on religious principles, but also upon reason.” This is a bit disingenuous, since what John Paul said is that reason, by itself, is incomplete without faith. In other words, reason by itself is not sufficient, religious faith is a requirement.

This is a religious idea, not shared by everyone. Even many of those who embrace the idea of the necessity of faith do not believe that it follows that suffering must be endured and death must always come naturally. This is not even the belief of all Catholics. 52 percent of Catholics polled in Colorado support death with dignity laws like the one under consideration in Rhode Island.

“I was just so impressed by Pope John Paul and how he ended his life,” said Representative Lancia, embracing the story of his Pope’s heroic ordeal, “It was such a positive. When he could have ended his life but didn’t, he went through the suffering and ended in a positive, dignified way.”

“If you come to our house here in Washington,” said Mother Teresa to William Buckley in 1989, “You would be surprised to see on the suffering faces the beautiful smiles. Through the terrible suffering they are content.”

Maybe for the believers, Mother Teresa’s words ring true.

But what of the rest of us?

Tobin has a history of making strong political statements about contentious issues such as abortion, marriage equality and separation of church and state. He is never shy about his opinions of atheism and homosexuality. His political involvement even extends to elections, as when he advised Catholics to vote for Mother Teresa for governor rather than Raimondo or Fung.

This is, of course, his right. And to the extent that Tobin involves himself in the political discourse, he opens himself up to critiques (which I am happy to provide).

When asked by interviewer Michael O’Loughlin about his rhetoric, Tobin explained that his outspoken statements are “an expression of my own style. I don’t use a lot of filters. I just try to speak candidly and openly and personally, but hopefully never in a way that’s offensive.”

Still, the timing of this interview is interesting. The interview seems to have been conducted last Thursday, just days before the high profile and expected demotion of American Cardinal Raymond Burke. Burke famously said that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis “is like a ship without a rudder.”

Tobin’s criticism of the Pope – he once said Francis is fond of “creating a mess” – doesn’t seem much different in substance or style from Cardinal Burke’s statement. Could Tobin’s interview be seen as laying the groundwork for a preemptive defense? Note that the Crux piece never mentions Tobin’s most contentious and direct criticism of Pope Francis.

Tobin claims to be surprised that his words were perceived as critical of Francis, saying, “I guess when I offer these comments, I’m doing what I think the Holy Father himself has encouraged us to do, which is to be open, to be candid, to be transparent, to share our thoughts and our feelings without fear of any retribution or strong reaction.” [emphasis mine] In other words, Tobin really doesn’t want to be demoted like Burke was.

One wonders if Tobin is equally open to the idea of the people he supervises being publicly critical of his leadership.

Thus, Tobin slyly implies that atheists are intolerant.

Put aside, for a moment, the idea that atheists may be more or less intolerant than a conservative, Republican, Catholic Bishop and ponder a moment what Tobin’s words would sound like if he were talking about group of people other than atheists.

“But I wonder if a Jewish mayor would be in a position to respect the sincere convictions of Christians (of all denominations) and to encourage and support the many contributions the Christian community makes in our city and state.”

“But I wonder if an Asian mayor would be in a position to respect the sincere convictions of citizens (of all races) and to encourage and support the many contributions non-Asian communities make in our city and state.”

“But I wonder if a woman mayor would be in a position to respect the sincere convictions of men and to encourage and support the many contributions men make in our city and state.”

“But I wonder if a Catholic mayor would be in a position to respect the sincere convictions of Protestants and to encourage and support the many contributions Protestants make in our city and state.”

A candidate’s religious convictions (or lack thereof) are not relevant to their fitness for office, unless those beliefs run contrary to the Constitution of the United States. Article VI, paragraph 3 of the Constitution reads, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

If your religious beliefs run counter to the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, and you attempt to act on those beliefs in your official capacity as an elected official or judge, then you are unfit for office. Unless one has good reason to suspect that a candidate will not uphold the Constitution, questioning their fitness for office on the basis of religious belief or unbelief is bigotry, pure and simple.

John DePetro, the noisome talk radio show host, made a big deal back in November over Governor Chafee’s idea of giving undocumented immigrants driver’s licenses. A bill to allow this is slowly making its way through the General Assembly. Somehow, in a gigantic leap of illogic, DePetro has decided that Chafee bears some responsibility for the boy’s death. On his blog, DePetro writes, above a photo of the deceased boy:

Governor Gump needs to hold off on giving illegals drivers licenses.  A young American life is taken by an invader. John DePetro has protested Governor Chafee for cutting a deal to get votes in exchange for giving an illegal a drivers license . The illegals threaten they will not vote for Chafee unless they are given a Rhode Island drivers license.

DePetro’s hatred for undocumented workers is palpable and grotesque and DePetro’s revolting invective encourages his callers to respond with even greater levels of stomach-churning bile. Those who maintain a different view from DePetro are of course lambasted. Back in November DePetro allowed a caller named Raymond through and what followed was a litany of racist abuse, which DePetro yelled out as the man tried to express his opinions in heavily accented English. DePetro said:

“We have turkey on Thanksgiving, not stuffed pigeons, the illegals Thanksgiving.”

“You are going to learn our customs!”

“This is our land. No el drive-o on our road-o.”

Talking about a rally at the State House, DePetro said that undocumented workers “should have been there to clean the State House and that’s it.”

“I have a problem with you people on the road. No more loose donkeys on Broad St.”

DePetro’s hate has unhinged him. Diving, or rather belly-flopping into the Boston Bombing story and the local connection to Tamerlain Tsarnaev’s wife, Katherine Russell, DePetro has made a spurious and unfounded connection between “illegals” and terrorists,  scrawling on his blog, “Governor Chafee wanted to roll out the red carpet to everyone and it looks like it is working. Terrorist (sic) and illegals are flocking to Rhode Island.”

That DePetro’s radio show is a cesspool of hate is not a source of shame but a point of pride for the man. His website is full of pictures that attempt to depict undocumented workers as scary non-white “others” in order to appeal to the basest prejudices of his listeners, and smear Governor Chafee:

And yet, DePetro still maintains, despite his hate for and vilification of undocumented workers, that he is a Catholic. Saccharine piety drips from DePetro’s tongue with same same thickness and intensity as the hateful bile he spews against those who are not like him, and the Catholic Church not only says nothing, they actively support him. Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese is a not infrequent guest. Father Bernard Healey, the Providence Diocese’s chief lobbyist to the General Assembly, appeared at DePetro’s Odeum event in East Greenwich.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in “Welcoming the Stranger Among Us: Unity in Diversity” have written the official Catholic teaching on immigration.

We recognize that nations have the right to control their borders. We also recognize and strongly assert that all human persons, created as they are in the image of God, possess a fundamental dignity that gives rise to a more compelling claim to the conditions worthy of human life. Accordingly, the Church also advocates legalization opportunities for the maximum number of undocumented persons, particularly those who have built equities and otherwise contributed to their communities.

The Maryland Catholic Conference has boiled the church’s teaching to seven basic precepts.

All people have a right to have their basic human needs met in their homelands.

If their basic needs cannot be met in their homelands, persons have the right to seek them abroad.

The right to migrate is not absolute and can be mitigated in favor of the common good.

Nations may regulate borders to provide for national security, tranquility and prosperity.

The right to regulate borders is not absolute and regulations must promote the common good.

Nations with the ability to accommodate migrants should respond with generosity.

Families have the right to remain united.

Nowhere in these statements is there hate. Nowhere in these statements are immigrants unfairly associated with terrorism, or are those who seek to help undocumented workers implicated in vehicular homicide. Instead, there are calls for generosity and an appeal to the common good.

John DePetro is a a terrible Christian. Mouthing platitudes does not make someone a decent human being. Showing compassion and understanding, actions apparently outside DePetro’s skill set, does.

And once again the Providence Diocese, under the direction of Bishop Thomas Tobin, has failed to be any kind of a moral leader. In supporting DePetro the diocese has once more abandoned its commitment to protect those in need.

What do former Governor Don Carcieri, Rev. Bernard Healey and John DePetro all have in common? The three biggest enemies of civil liberties in Rhode Island? Three people only popular on WPRO? Three people who progressives wish kept to themselves?

Even more precisely, these three pillars of Ocean State conservatism will be appearing together, on stage, Wednesday, May 8 at the Odeum Theater in the most infamously Republican town in Rhode Island, East Greenwich. (Ed. note: also RI Future headquarters) They’ll be joined by Alex and Ani CEO Giovanni “John” Feroce – who you may have known was a Republican state senator on Smith Hill from 1992 to 1994.

It’s part of the newly-renovated theater’s “mission of providing a variety of social, cultural and educational opportunities,” according to a press release sent by former Providence Journal and PBN editor Frank Prosnitz, who did not mention exactly which category this trio falls into.

It did say it was the first of a three part lecture series at the Odeum Theater for hometown boy John DePetro. Future guests will be unveiled by DePetro at a press conference today at 1 p.m. at the Odeum, 59 Main St.

Between 2000 and 2010 the number of Catholics declined by 14% in Rhode Island, making Massachusetts the most Catholic state by default. Meanwhile, Catholics are breaking ranks with the church on all manner of social issues. A recent poll indicated that 49% of Catholics favor marriage equality legislation, of the kind currently being considered by the RI Senate.  A whopping 82% of Catholics believe that birth control is morally acceptable, in direct contravention to their church’s position. Finally, though most Catholics feel that abortion is morally wrong, 62% of Catholics support keeping abortion safe and legal.

Despite the evidence, Healey continues to speak out and advocate for a Catholic position on social issues that few Catholics, and fewer Rhode Islanders find compelling. Worse, despite the fact that Healey commands an ever decreasing following, he continues to be granted special privileges and access to our democratic system.

At the recent marriage equality hearings in the House Judiciary Committee Healey was allowed to speak for over six minutes, three times as long as Governor Chafee. Other religious leaders, leaders of advocacy groups, union organizers and average citizens on both sides of the issue were allowed no more than three minutes to speak and most were limited to two minutes.

Healey is not just a lobbyist at the the State House, he is also a priest, a representative, he would claim, of God’s Church here on Earth. As such he is granted the extraordinary privilege of opening and closing various and official State House functions with prayer, which is Constitutionally suspect, to say the least. This blending of church and state cuts against the very principles upon which Rhode Island and the United States was founded. Yet Healey continues to to be granted what can only be called clerical privilege.

This morning Healey had a letter published in the Providence Journal titled “Sad defense of abortion” which took Neil Corkery to task for his editorial “Roe v. Wade’s ideals are Rhode Island’s” in the January 24th edition. Healey pretends to have just learned from Corkery’s editorial that the man favors keeping abortion safe and legal, this despite the fact that on April 11th of last year both Healey and Corkery testified on as series of abortion bills in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

Corkery testified in his capacity as the head of the RI branch of Catholics for Choice, and Healey as the diocesan lobbyist. In an editorial published on the Rhode Island Catholic website following those hearings, Healey wrote, “The American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, the Humanist Society of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Medical Society, Brown Medical Students for Choice and even the erroneously named and highly misleading ‘Catholics for Choice’ all turned out to stop the so-called ‘War on Women’ at last week’s R.I. House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on legislation concerning women and unborn children.” In the same piece Healey referred to those in support of abortion rights, including Corkery, as “radical promoters of death.”

Yet in his letter to the Journal, not only does Healey act surprised at Corkery’s viewpoint, he disingenuously claims that Corkery has “always impressed me as a man of compassion for those so often neglected by our society.” One might wonder how many other radical promoters of death impress Healey as people of compassion?

Healey closes his letter with a familiar refrain, that the Catholic Church has maintained a “consistent and constant defense of the sanctity of all human life.” Consistent is a strong word for a church that has altered its position on abortion no less that eight times.  From 1591 to 1869 the soul was thought to enter the body of the fetus upon “the quickening” the first movements of the fetus in the mother’s womb, or about 16 weeks into the pregnancy. It was Pope Pius IX in 1869 who decided that the soul entered upon conception and Pope Leo XIII in 1878 who prohibited abortion even if done to save a woman’s life. Apparently concern for the sanctity of human life does not apply to women.

A consistent position is one that does not change. Don’t get me wrong, I am not in favor of a consistent position that is immune to change based on better evidence. Consistency is too often a negative, not a positive, but Healey’s position is that the Catholic Church has had a consistent, unchanged, God-inspired view of abortion for millennia, and the evidence does not bear that out.

Healey’s use of falsehoods to advance his political positions threatens to vanquish whatever is left of the scandal-plagued Catholic Church’s so-called moral authority. Healey, quick to quote Theodore Roosevelt, might instead want to heed the words of Thomas Paine who said, “It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us. .”

MassResistance has erroneously claimed that pro-equality groups supporting anti-bullying programs in schools “actually want to lure children into homosexuality and, very possibly, sadomasochism,” according to the SPLC. Its founder and executive director Brian Camenker has erroneously claimed that in Massachusetts “gays were trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals,” according to the SPLC.

In an interview yesterday, Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center told me:

In our experience, it is highly unusual for the Catholic Church to work with groups like MassResistance, which has repeatedly, and utterly falsely, linked homosexuality to pedophilia, among other things. This is a group that lumps homosexuality in with criminal behaviors like bestiality, claims gay people are dangerous to children, and says, again falsely, that no gay people were murdered in the Holocaust.

I should add, however, that we’ve not seen any real history of the Catholic Church working with hate groups. It may be that in this case they’ve simply failed to look into the background of the group they’re allying themselves with. At least I hope so.

I hope so as well.

I call upon Bishop Thomas Tobin and the Providence Diocese to repudiate the ugly comments and hateful views of MassResistance and Brian Camenker. I would hope that this alliance was made in haste and in error, and that the Catholic Church would not want to make alliances with groups that put to a lie the Bishop’s assertion that individuals with same-sex attraction are to be treated with respect.

The Roman Catholic position on same-sex marriage is well known. They  believe it is sinful and are against it. But as Bishop Thomas Tobin states, in an editorial reprinted on the FAPSMEG website:

It’s important to emphasize once again, however, that while rejecting homosexual activity, the Catholic Church has consistently promoted respect and pastoral care for individuals with same-sex attraction. They are children of God and our brothers and sisters.

This is the concept of hating the sin but not the sinner, and I get that. MassResistance, under the leadership of Brian Camenker, does not share this sentiment.