Due to some events in my personal life…

About White Knots…

I choose to wear a white knot because I believe in marriage equality. I believe that part of our right to a “pursuit of happiness” includes having the right to marry whomever we choose. I also believe that it is against the very nature of a free society to inhibit marriage based on race, class or gender.

What concerns me is the hateful rhetoric often used during discussions against same-sex marriage.  Some people think homosexuality is a choice or something you are born with. Some people believe in conversion therapy or gay and lesbian people should lead celibate lives. Regardless of these opinions I believe the words we use to describe one another should radiate respect and kindness.

I’m a proud member of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe in the divine nature of human beings. I believe we are all brothers and sisters with a duty to act with love, kindness, understanding and charity toward one another.

I am simply a daughter, little sister, and a sleepy college student and a believer in compassion.

I tried for a long time to be a ‘good’ Catholic girl, to believe exactly what I learned in catechism class but that just made me feel dishonest. Eventually, through prayer and thoughtful contemplation I learned that God didn’t want me (or anyone else) to simply fall in line but instead to follow the dictates of my conscience. My belief in marriage equality is guided by my morals and relationship with God.

I believe that my spiritual journey is just as valid as the next persons. I believe that the people advocating against same-sex marriage are following their conscience. I do not believe most of these people are bigoted, ill informed or stupid. I disagree with them completely but their opinions are valid and guided by their morals and relationship with God.

I do not pretend to know what is best for Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Jews, Muslims or anyone else. I do not advocate for every church to throw open its door and begin performing same sex unions. I advocate for understanding and awareness and compassion for those who feel marginalized.

I believe we all need to do a lot more listening.

I do not pretend to know what it is like to lead a global church, or what it is like to be called of God. Maybe God wants his children to enter into traditional marriages but I don’t think he’d want us to fight in anger with one another or to use his name to diminish the love we have for ourselves

I believe every person is entitled to the right to marry whomever he or she feels they can share a mutual love, serving and honoring and respecting one another.

I choose to wear a white knot to get the conversation started.

The Knights of Columbus and Prop 8

I had a rough Friday afternoon. I rented 8: The Mormon Proposition.

I devour anything I can find that’s Mormon from parousing lds.org for hours and listening to old Mormon Stories podcasts to reading countless pro and anti-Mormon books. Thinking this documentary would just be another piece of the Mormon puzzle, I didn’t foresee sitting on my couch crying throughout most of the film, which is exactly what happened.

The documentary, which I won’t get completely in to (you can read a great review here), showed a website and a series of videos that were sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and….The Knights of Columbus, an organization that every important man in my life is a part of. When Prop 8 was initially proposed the summer before I started college I assumed that the Catholic Church was involved on some level but to find out that we were sought out and participated so willingly shook me to the core.

More recently I had seen an interview with Anne Rice where she stated that the Catholic Church’s involvement with Prop 8 was a part of the reason she decided to leave. I remember thinking “she’s probably right but I don’t have any proof” so I was able to push the idea aside.

The way the Christian community treats their homosexual brothers and sister has always been a source of great anger, frustration and unhappiness for me. I remember as a junior high student seeing anti-gay protests on the news and not understanding their anger or being able to make sense of the fact that I was a Christian but wasn’t like the Christians I saw on the news.

After seeing that many of these Yes on 8 videos were paid for with tithing dollars I searched around the internet a bit and discovered it was true (not that I thought the documentary was wrong but I wanted more than one source).

So that was Friday and now it’s Sunday and Mass begins in four hours. I’m replaying the movie in my head, thinking about Anne Rice, Marek Bozek and the Vatican rulings on the ordination of women and I’m not sure if I can go to Mass.

I can’t separate the hierarchy from local parishes and priests, state lines and myself. They are all intrinsically interwoven, remember what St. Paul said, what happens to the people of Ireland, California and across the world effects us all.