BRITAIN: Court Rejects Catholic Bid For Exemption From Gay Adoption Laws

A British appeals tribunal has rejected the demand of the Catholic Church that they be exempted from laws banning discrimination against gay adoptive parents. As we've seen happen in several U.S. cities, church adoption officials say they'd rather close their doors and let children go without families than abide by the law.

Leeds-based Catholic Care have said they will have no choice but to end their work finding homes for children if they are forced to comply with the new equality regulations which prohibit discrimination against same-sex couples wanting to adopt. The case went to the High Court last year before being referred to the Charity Commission, who would not back Catholic Care’s position. And the Charity Commission’s stance was upheld today by a first-tier tribunal which dismissed the appeal.

Catholic League's Bill Donohue To Lady Gaga: Why Don't You Pick On Muslims?

Catholic League blowhard Bill Donahue takes a moment off from defending pedophiles to attack Lady Gaga over her new single, Judas, in the video for which she plays Mary Magdalene. The clip will be released (ta-DAH) on Easter Sunday.

Queer Rising To Protest Easter Parade

Queer Rising will protest the Catholic Church at this weekend's NYC Easter Parade, which as evidenced by the above photo typically draws a fair amount of gay men, drag queens, and fashionistas. Queer Rising cites a recent anti-gay marriage lobbying trip to Albany by Archbishop Timothy Dolan as prompting the protest. Via press release:

"It is good to see members of the LGBT community stand up to the prejudice and hatred of the Catholic Church. The Church's hatred of members of the LGBT community and their opposition to a women's right to choose must be confronted where ever possible. The blood of LGBT people victimized by violence belongs on the door steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral," said Allen Roskoff, an LGBT activist and the President of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club.

Queer Rising will be joined at the protest by Connecting Rainbows. In recent weeks Queer Rising has staged traffic blockades around midtown Manhattan.

ILLINOIS: GOP Sneaks Anti-Gay Adoption Provision Into Bill For The Blind

Illinois Republicans have quietly added an anti-gay adoption amendment into a bill to assist the blind. Windy City Times reports:

An amendment to a proposed bill in the Illinois Senate states that "a child welfare agency that is religiously based or owned by, operated by, or affiliated with a bona fide religious organization may decline an adoption or foster family home application … from a party to a civil union if acceptance of that application would constitute a violation of the organization's sincerely held religious beliefs." SB 1123, the bill including this amendment No. 65, means that unmarried straight or gay couples in civil unions who do not share the religious values or faith of the organization could be denied the chance to adopt or be foster parents.

The Human Rights Campaign reacts:

“With so many children in the foster care system who need a loving home, it is unfathomable that lawmakers would add an amendment to a bill limiting the number of families available to them,” said HRC Family Project Director Ellen Kahn. “Child welfare experts agree that adoptive parents should be judged by their character and their ability to raise a child, not on their sexual orientation. The fact that lawmakers tried to hide this amendment within a bill that has nothing to do with adoption suggests that even they know it’s not in the best interest of Illinois’ children.”

Catholic League Publishes Full-Page Anti-Gay New York Times Ad

The Catholic League today published a full-page ad in the New York Times in which blowhard Bill Donohue blames the church's pedophilia scandals on homosexuality. An excerpt:

The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight—they weren’t children and they weren’t raped. We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape). The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that “more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.

When the National Review Board, a group of notable Catholics, issued its study in 2004, the team’s chief, attorney Robert S. Bennett, said that “any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.” One of the members, Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins, has said that “This behavior was homosexual predation on American Catholic youth, yet it’s not being discussed.” By the way, the figures after 2004 haven’t changed—eight in ten cases involve homosexuality. Worldwide, the Vatican estimates that 60 percent of the cases are same-sex, 30 percent are heterosexual and 10 percent involve pedophilia.

Read the entire ad.

This Week In Holy Crimes

Over the last seven days...

Texas: Pastor Julio Perez charged with murder for hiring a hit man to shoot his wife.
Mississippi: Pastor Eddie Prince charged with downloading child porn on a public library computer.
Washington DC: Whistleblower lawsuit filed against Catholic Charities for charging the poor for flu shots meant to be free under a government-funded program.
New York: Father Francis McCloskey busted in stolen car after attempting to elude pursuing cops. McCloskey is a renowned anti-abortion activist.
California: Father Alejandro Castillo charged with seven felony counts of child molestation.
New Jersey: Rabbi Mordchai Fish pleads guilty to money laundering.
New York: Pastor Jeremy Fulton pleads guilty to molesting five girls as young as ten years old.
Pennsylvania: Archdiocese of Philadelphia sued for wrongful death in suicide of molestation victim.
Oklahoma: Pastor Tommy Pitts charged with 70 felony counts of child molestation. The victims are his adopted daughters.
Wisconsin: Father John Dahlberg charged with embezzling from church fund meant for families in crisis.
Texas: Pastor Owen Davis charged with sexual assault of an undocumented woman he had forced to sign a contract agreeing to sex on demand.
California: Pastor Joe David Nelms charged with sexual assault on a child.
New York: Pastor Joe Flowers charged with molesting an 11 year-old boy.
Illinois: Father John Regan to face trial for embezzling $400K in church funds to support his gambling addiction.

This Week's Winner
Wisconsin: The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is accused of transferring $55M into a cemetery trust account in order to shield assets from suing molestation victims. The Archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in January and this week proposed settling 22 molestation suits at $700K each. In February a lawyer for the victims accused New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan of hiding $130M while assigned to Milwaukee in 2008.

COLORADO: Denver Archbishop Celebrates Defeat Of Civil Unions Bill

"In the face of unfriendly media coverage and heavy political pressure, opponents of the legislation did the right thing. They challenged and tabled the bill, killing it for this session. That sounds like a small act, but it took courage, especially in an environment of bitter criticism. The committee members who opposed the bill deserve our gratitude and support. The civil unions debate is about securing legitimacy for social arrangements and personal behaviors that most societies and religious traditions have found problematic from long experience—and that a great many people see as morally troubling, not because they are 'haters' or 'frightened' or 'bigots' or 'uneducated'—that kind of language is the real bigotry in this debate—but because they’ve carefully thought through the implications for society at large." - Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput.

Catholic Church Fights CT Move To Lift Statute Of Limitations On Molestation

Connecticut lawmakers says they are shocked by the Catholic Church's opposition to a proposed lifting of the statute of limitations on lawsuits for the sexual abuse of minors.

“I’m just so surprised they are opposing this. We certainly had the sense last year that they would not,” Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, said of the bill she proposed that eliminates the limitation on civil suits prospectively. Bills that would have removed any limitation on when a suit could be brought retroactively, aimed to a large extent at the childhood victims of Dr. George Reardon, a former physician at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, failed to go forward in 2009 and 2010. More than 100 lawsuits have been brought against Reardon, who died in 1998, and against St. Francis. Police say more than 50,000 slides of child pornography found in the home where Reardon once lived had belonged to the doctor, who practiced medicine at St. Francis for more than 30 years.

Current Connecticut law permits lawsuits for 30 years after a minor victim's 18th birthday. One advocate for victims of childhood sexual abuse says that half of her clients come forward after the time limit has expired.

(Tipped by JMG reader Casey)

NOM Rhode Island: House Vote On Marriage May Be Very Close

The leader of NOM's Rhode Island chapter appeared on CBN yesterday to praise Catholic and Hispanic churches for "standing up against gay marriage." According to this NOM spokesbigot, marriage equality has a shot of passage in the state House, but petitions from anti-gay churches may have convinced the Senate not to move forward.