The Washington Post opines about how Washington D.C.’s City Council and the Archdiocese could work together:

THE DISTRICT’s same-sex marriage bill continues on its path to passage. So, too, does the battle between the D.C. Council and the Catholic Church over whether and how the Archdiocese of Washington would be able to comply with city law without violating church tenets. Council members David A. Catania (I-At Large) and Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) have offered a fair compromise, which the church should accept.

The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment of 2009 would not require religious organizations to perform same-sex marriages. But if the bill becomes law, church groups that have city contracts would have to provide spousal benefits to their gay and lesbian employees. Catholic Charities believes this would force it to recognize those relationships. The same concern applies to adoption services for same-sex couples.

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl has been trying to secure a religious exemption in the bill. The latest attempt came during a meeting on Monday. The language proposed would allow a religious group not to provide, among other things, “privileges, advantages, benefits, or goods for a purpose related to or arising from the solemnization or celebration of a same-sex marriage, or the promotion of same-sex marriage, that is in violation of the religious society’s beliefs.” This won’t do. If Catholic Charities wants to exclude gay and lesbian couples from its adoption services, then it should do so without receiving taxpayer money.

But it is on the issue of spousal benefits that Catholic Charities’s intransigence is mystifying. The fight going on in the District today took place 13 years ago in San Francisco.

Read more in the Washington Post.

As the New York State Senate recently voted down a measure extending full marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, many continue to argue that the right to marry is vested in the U.S. Constitution:

Yet, ultimately, it seems clear, the issue of gay marriage has to be decided on the basis of our Constitution, our laws and the very essence of our nation’s history.

The Declaration of Independence says that we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

”Does the “pursuit of happiness,” as expressed in the Declaration, justify same sex marriage?

The equal protection clause of the Constitution, embodied in the 14th Amendment provides that “no state shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” –does that justify same sex marriage?

The issue is difficult but the solution ultimately must come from the remarkable documents that our founding fathers created more than two centuries ago.

In an uncanny way, these patriots of yesterday seemed to anticipate the most difficult issues of today. We can hope that their words will continue to guide us and inspire us — and give us solutions to our most vexing problems.

Read more at NBCNewYork.com.

As the country focuses on the debate of marriage equality in the states and in Congress, it is important to recognize the impact equal rights have to individual gay and lesbian families. Chuck Vazquez, a City Councilman from Cathedral City, California speaks about what marriage means to him:

Right now while everyone is getting ready for the Holidays, and all the celebrations and special times they bring, next years political pot is getting ready to boil over with issues. Among those issues will once again be Marriage. People loudly and profoundly will lend their voices to what “they” believe the definition of marriage should be and who should have the right to marry. Millions of dollars will pour into the campaigns, people will get angry, rude, offended, insulted and hurt on both sides of the issue. What so many seem to forget is that these are ALL real people, whether they are for or against, that are embroiled in this battle, they are part of our communities, they are neighbors, friends, co-workers and even sometimes family. I am not here to change anyone’s mind, it’s not for me to tell some else how they should view or think about an issue, however I would like to ask EVERYONE involved to open their minds to the other side.

Read more at Liberty Education Forum.

Heaviliy Catholic Ireland is poised to pass civil partnerships, which would give gay and lesibian couples many of the same rights as marriage:

Ireland’s lawmakers opened debate Thursday on a bill to grant marriage-style rights to gay couples, a social milestone in a country long observant of Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality.

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said the bill would give gay couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples on questions of property ownership, inheritance, medical care and access to state benefits — and also the same right to go to court seeking financial support from higher-earning partners when relationships fail.

Ahern noted that the proposal would have been unthinkable only a few years ago in Ireland, a country that defined homosexuality as a criminal offense until 1993.

He said denying the reality of thousands of gay couples in Ireland “only helps to reinforce prejudice in our society.”

Ireland’s lawmakers opened debate Thursday on a bill to grant marriage-style rights to gay couples, a social milestone in a country long observant of Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality.

Read more in the Associated Press.

As the District of Columbia City Council passes a marriage equality law to the District’s gay and lesbian couples, the debate over whether gay rights are a part of the civil rights movement come to the forefront:

“It is bringing truth to the words ‘all men are created equal,’ ” said David A. Catania (I-At Large).

“When one group is denied a right, we are all denied that right,” said Jim Graham (D-Ward 1).

But perhaps the fiercest opposition to the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the District has come from members of the generation that led the fight for civil rights nearly half a century ago, some of whom said they think that comparing gay rights with the battle that blacks waged is misguided, even insulting.

Since Catania introduced the bill, many of his most avid supporters have been children of civil rights veterans, who see the cause as the continuation of their parents’ and grandparents’ struggle.

Kwame Brown (D-At Large) supports gay marriage, seeing it as the next chapter in the fight for equality. But his father, a political campaign consultant in the city, bristles when the drive for same-sex marriage is compared with the civil rights movement.

“You can choose to be gay or not,” Marshall Brown said. “You can never choose to be black or not.”

Not so, his son said. “People are born that way,” Kwame Brown said. “That could be a generational difference between the way he thinks and the way I think.”

“That’s a fair argument,” the father said when told of his son’s view about sexual orientation. But the elder Brown wasn’t about to equate gay rights with the civil rights movement. Homosexuals, he said, “can hide it so easily, but we can’t hide that we’re black.”

Read more in the Washington Post