Equality Advocates To Protest Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
An LGBTQ rights group, LoveNotH8.org, is organizing a “flash action demonstration” for noon this Sunday, December 20. From their website:
You will be lending your voice in peaceful demonstration against the recently threatened action by the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. which promises to cease all charitable services to the most needy among us. For many years Catholic Charities has provided for the City’s most vulnerable residents but the Church now threatens to withdraw all support for our City’s abandoned children,the poor,the homeless and the sick, unless, our City Officials agree to reverse DC law and policies put in place to protect same sex union from unlawful discrimination . Our demonstration will stand in opposition to this threat. The Archdiocese of Washington and its new tactics of fear and blind intolerance is indefensible and a grievous offense to all Catholics, especially the many thousands who make up the District’s large community of LGBT Christians. We must all agree that the Archdocese’s can not be allowed to carry on its unconscionable threat tactics to our City.
The Archdiocese too easily forgets the teachings of its own spiritual leader. As a great social activist and a man who willingly accepted people from all walks of life, surely Jesus Christ would admonish such shallow and disgraceful political maneuvering. In the same traditions once proudly held by the Church during its public opposition of state miscegenation laws during the 1960’s, the Church must once again stand on the side of equality, and not on the side of hatred and intolerance as shamefully shown by its recent extortion of our City. We will come together at Dupont Circle on December 20th in peaceful demonstration of equality, justice and freedom for all peoples regardless of their lifestyle or sexual orientation, just as Jesus and so many other great spiritual leaders have shown us.
~Charles Hoover, Organizer, LoveNotH8.org