No one should be surprised that Daniel Avila invoked the devil to describe homosexuality. If anything, we should be surprised it took him so long to do it.
Who is Daniel Avila, the Catholic Church’s self-professed “bishops’ marriage guy,†who has been making headlines the past week for his outrageous comments that the devil creates homosexuals in pregnant mothers’ wombs?
One of Avila’s seemingly-many hats was the Associate Director for Policy & Research of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, before becoming the Policy Advisor for Marriage and Family for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Before we take a look, first, a reminder of what Avila said, before he and The Boston Pilot – America’s oldest Catholic newspaper which serves as the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston — issued retractions and apologies. Avila claimed that God does not cause homosexuality, rather, there is “a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil.â€
No one should be surprised that Avila invoked the devil to describe homosexuality. Of same-sex marriage, Avila is quoted as saying, “It’s like a nuclear bomb exploding in every home, and that explosion will reshape society itself. I don’t think we can even describe the frontiers of change that confront us.â€
Let there be no mistake: Avila sees his crusade against same-sex marriage equality as a religious holy war.
Avila last year wrote he had an “idyllic feeling” during his visit to a NOM, the National Organization For Marriage event in Rhode Island, where, “[o]ver two hundred people gathered under the trees of the Capitol’s south lawn to hear speeches, get their marriage tour t-shirts, and prepare for an upcoming legislative battle in that state over the definition of marriage.” he also called the pro-same-sex marriage supporters “insurgents.”
In August of 2010, Avila penned, “Marriage and Civil Rights: The Anatomy of a Social Institution from a Constitutional Perspective,” in which he writes, “given the institutional nature of civil rights, an individual rights claim should not gain civil rights status without democratic approval.” In other words, Avila advocates for a plebiscite, a referendum, on same-sex marriage, along with, assumedly, all civil rights, in direct conflict with the Founding Fathers’ wishes.
Avila also claims, “there is no abstractly conceived civil right of equal protection that guarantees marital status for all comers,” in direct contradiction of the 10th and 14th Amendments, and “concludes that the United States Supreme Court should reject a same-sex marriage constitutional claim.”
Many of Avila’s arguments you’re probably familiar with. He, in legalese, essentially rails against activist judges, pulls a Newt Gingrich about how undemocratic it is for a Supreme Court judge to be the final say in issues like marriage equality — which he likens to “extraordinary judicial protection for gays and lesbians” — writing of “the supposed power of just one individual, acting in concert with the judiciary, to redefine what is right and just and thereby change longstanding social institutions.”
Avila falsely claims “in a democracy the people play an essential role when it comes to creating and shaping civil rights.” Again, the Founding Fathers knew, and created the Bill of Rights for the very reason of protecting the rights of there minority from the will of the majority.
Avila also, foolishly, in my opinion, attacks the Supreme Court, claiming, “the judiciary is ill-equipped to change the social institution of marriage,” and adds, ” the courts lack the institutional capacity and necessary democratic warrant to declare same-sex marriage to be a civil right.”
Really? Why?
Perhaps most offensively, Avila claims “all couples consisting of both a man and a woman offer, through the reality of sexual difference, a fundamental and unique social diversity that society and the law should celebrate.” In other words, diversity is good only when it suits his (religious) purposes.
Unsurprisingly, the “it’s always been that way” is one of Avila’s arguments, as he states, “the federal courts should presume that limits grounded in tradition and democracy are rational because of their popular support…” The logical questions would be, “Just like it was before slavery was ended?”
Short-sightedlty, Avila writes that,
Reshaping rights without democratic warrant will expose citizens to unfair threat of punishment and other disadvantages. For this reason, the people should be allowed to vote on whether to recognize personal claims as civil rights and, in particular, whether to redefine the civil right of marriage.
The day will come, most likely, soon, when the majority — which poll after poll after poll already shows us — will vote for marriage equality. What will Avila fall on then to support his feeling that homosexuality, as he has suggested elsewhere, is a “natural disaster”?
Sadly, Avila has not seen, evidently, any of the polls. He writes, falsely there is “..widespread democratic support for traditional marriage policy…” In reality, we know that there are more than a half-dozen nationwide polls over the past 15 months that all show a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage equality.
Bottom line, Avila is the embodiment of the Catholic Church’s unrepentant and unyielding fight against same-sex marriage equality. The Church is pouring time and money and support into doing everything it can to stop the march of progress. And when you’re doing “God’s work,” apparently, any and all tactics are justified.
Finally here’s Avila delivering a speech at the SPLC-certified hate group Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit a few weeks ago, at a symposium titled, “Straight Talk on Gay Marriage.”