Local
O’Malley defends marriage bill at Md. House hearing
Dozens testify for and against Civil Marriage Protection Act
Gov. Martin O'Malley testifies before the Senate Judicial Proceedings committee in favor of the Civil Marriage Protection Act. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley remained firm in his support for a bill to legalize same-sex marriage Friday during a contentious joint hearing on the bill before two committees of the state’s House of Delegates.
After O’Malley and two prominent black ministers testified in support of the bill, the three were grilled with questions by two of the bill’s strongest opponents, Del. Don Dwyer (R-Anne Arundel County) and Del. Neil Parrott (R-Washington County).
The two delegates disputed O’Malley’s claim that the bill would protect the religious rights of those who say same-sex marriage conflicts with their faith and asked the governor to support new language in the bill that would clear it for an immediate voter referendum.
“I think the people have already spoken in a real sense by sending each of you here to make the decision on this issue,” O’Malley said in response to the delegates’ calls for a referendum.
“It is not right or just that the children of gay couples should have lesser protections than the children of other families in our state,” he said in his testimony in support of the bill. “Nor would it be right to force religious institutions to conduct marriages that conflict with their own religious beliefs and teachings.”
He added, “This bill balances equal protection of individual civil marriage rights with the important protection of religious freedom for all.”
O’Malley and the two ministers who sat beside him at the witness table, Rev. Delman Coates, pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md., and Rev. Donte Hickman Sr., pastor of Southern Baptist Church in Baltimore, were the first three of dozens of witnesses expected to testify at the hearing.
The hearing, which was conducted jointly by the House of Delegates Judiciary Committee and Health and Government Operations Committee, began at 1:15 p.m. and lasted until close to 11 p.m.
Some witnesses opposing the bill expressed concern that House Speaker Michael Busch broke tradition by adding the Health and Government Operations panel to join the Judiciary Committee in overseeing the bill after determining that support for the bill in the Judiciary panel was waning and supporters may not have the votes in the committee to send it to the House floor.
Under House rules, the bill would be sent to the full House for a vote if one of the two committees votes to approve it.
Dwyer and Del. Emmett Burns (D-Baltimore County), one of the strongest opponents of same-sex marriage in the legislature, came to the witness table to testify as the first opposing witnesses at the hearing.
While speaking as a witness, Dwyer presented a documentary style video to the committee that alleged that legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts forced school children to undergo “indoctrination” in public schools on homosexuality.
The video included an interview of the father of an elementary school student who said he was arrested and jailed for staging a one-person protest against the school policy.
Same-sex marriage supporters in Massachusetts and Maryland have characterized as untrue claims that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to school curriculum changes. They say curricular changes to address issues of sexual orientation in Massachusetts were under consideration before same-sex marriage became legal in the state and would likely have been adopted even if Massachusetts didn’t legalize same-sex marriage.
Del. Bonnie Cullison (D-Montgomery County), one of seven out gay members of the Maryland Legislature, disputed Dwyer and Parrott on the school curriculum question during the hearing, saying “not a syllable” could be found in the Civil Marriage Protection Act that would change school curricula.
Burns, in referring to O’Malley’s contention that the marriage bill protects religious freedom, called such a claim irrelevant, saying legal recognition of same-sex marriage would be a disaster for children, families and all people of faith in the state.
“I don’t want your protections,” he said. “I don’t need your protections. I don’t want the bill.”
Similar to a hearing held on the marriage bill on Jan. 31 by the State Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee, many of the same witnesses, including ministers and other clergy, testified on Friday and appeared to be evenly divided, with more than a dozen clergy members testifying on both sides of the issue.
“Regarding the rite of marriage, the practice of our local church is rooted in our understanding of the history and etymology of the term matrimony,” said Rev. Coats, who testified in favor of the bill at O’Malley’s side. “Therefore, wedding ceremonies witnessed and presided over at our church acknowledge the union of a man and a woman in a sacred ceremony,” he said.
“With that said, I am here today to express my full support of the proposed Civil Marriage Protection Act as proposed by the governor,” he said. “As a matter of public policy, I believe it is the obligation of the state to insure that all of her citizens are protected equally under the law.”
Hickman said, he too, believes the bill adequately distinguishes civil marriages from religious marriages.
“I believe that marriage is a God-ordained, spiritual and mystical union between a Christian man and a Christian woman,” he said. But he added, “I support the Civil Marriage Protection Act because it is civil and not religious. And as a matter of public policy and human rights it doesn’t threaten my religious convictions nor does it obligate me or my church to officiate or promulgate same-sex marriages.”
O’Malley appeared to respond with caution to Parrott’s repeated questions about whether a same-sex marriage bill in Maryland would lead to the teaching of homosexuality to elementary school students in the state’s public schools.
“In Massachusetts this same bill forced teachers to teach same-sex marriage to their students even when it violated their own religious beliefs,” Parrott told the governor. “Are you OK with that in this bill?”
“No, and I don’t believe that’s what this bill does,” O’Malley said.
“Historically, parents do not have the right to pull their kids out of classes when it violates their religious teachings regarding marriage and family,” Parrott said. “Actually some of them have gone to jail in Massachusetts. Are you OK with that consequence to this bill?”
“No, I’m not aware of that and that is not in this bill,” O’Malley replied. “There are specific, clear prohibitions against forcing any religion to change or teach things that are contrary to its religious beliefs.”
Parrott ended the exchange by asking O’Malley if he would be inclined to amend the bill to “specifically protect students, teachers and parents so that [homosexuality] is not taught in the school system.”
O’Malley replied, “I think that anything that reinforces the inalienable and indispensible right of the free exercise of religions and individual conscience is a good thing.”
The governor’s press spokesperson couldn’t be immediately reached to clarify whether O’Malley was suggesting he might support new language in the bill to ban the teaching of gay-related subjects in the state’s school system.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE an organization that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community.
The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Community Jewish Community’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
A gay man was murdered in Petersburg, Va., on March 13.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, who was also known as Saamel and Mable, was a drag queen who won the Miss Mayflower EOY pageant in 2015. Reports also indicate Sanchez-McCray, 42, was a well-known community activist in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Local media reports indicate police officers found Sanchez-McCray shot to death inside a home in Petersburg.
Sanchez-McCray’s brother, Jamal Mitchell Diamond, in a public statement the Washington Blade received from Equality Virginia and GLAAD, said Sanchez-McCray was not transgender as initial reports indicated.
“Our family has always embraced the fullness of who he was. He used the names Saamel, Shyyell, and Mable interchangeably, and we honor all of them. There is no division within our family regarding how he is being represented — only a shared commitment to preserving his truth with love and respect,” said Diamond.
“He was also deeply committed to community work through Nationz Foundation, where he worked and completed multiple state-certified programs to support marginalized communities,” added Diamond. “That work meant a great deal to him.”
Authorities have not made any arrests.
The Petersburg Bureau of Police has asked anyone with information about Sanchez-McCray’s murder to call Petersburg-Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
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Gay man murdered in Va.
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