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Tuesday, June 18, 2013
LGBT Community Reacts to Catholic Rebuff of Francis House Center
by Ken Pierce, published on March 8, 2012 at 8:49 PM
Storyline: Equality Action Now
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Press Conference Called in Front of the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center Tomorrow 1:00pm
March 8, 2012 – Earlier today news broke that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, earlier this year, decided that because the new Executive Director of Francis House Center, Reverend Faith Whitmore, supported LGBT marriage rights and the organization, Planned Parenthood, they would abruptly pull their yearly donation to the homeless organization.
While Rev. Whitmore was eloquent in an interview with the Sacramento Bee and News 10 of how she took the news when she received the letter from the Diocese, members of the LGBT community, the faith-based community and homeless rights advocates were quite upset.
Ken Pierce, President of the Board of Directors of Equality Action NOW, a Sacramento grassroots civil rights organization responded by saying, “I have worked with Francis House for three years now and have never asked their position on LGBT or civil rights before I decided to give my time and money to help the poor and homeless.”
“The LGBT community knows what the Catholic Church teaching is, I used to be a Catholic myself, but this in my opinion is a direct slap in the face to Sacramento homeless and poor families. It is they who will suffer if a program has to be cut back or cut out all-together because the Center cannot afford to keep it.”
The Executive Director of Equality Action NOW said, “Where is Catholic humanity – Francis House Center provides care to homeless people and families! When did the personal lives of program and executive directors need to be scrutinized? This is a worse fauz paux than the Komen fiasco. I am donating to Francis House Center!”
“My concern is this indicates a sad change in the relationship that exists between religious service organizations.” wrote Rev. Brian Baker, Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral of Sacramento and member of Californa Faith for Equality. “There was a time when groups would look past various doctrinal differences and find the common area where they could serve the community. Now it seems cooperation and partnership is the latest casualty in the fundamentalism driven culture war that is destroying our society.”
Leaders are calling for the LGBT community to please step up and show “how we all pitch in and support our homeless neighbors”.
A special press conference has been called by the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center and Equality Action Now in front of the Center (1927 L Street, Sacramento, CA 95811) at 1:00pm. The public is invited to attend. A “plate” will be passed for donations to be directed to Francis House Center of Sacramento.
Disclosure:
Ken Pierce is President of the Board of Directors and Communications Director for Equality Action NOW, a local Sacramento grassroots civil rights organization. You can reach Mr. Pierce by email at: ken@equalityactionnow.org
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This a press release and not an "Op-ed" piece.
Is that what you guys are calling this now? Good to know.
Good day.
It doesn't appear that he was trying to pass this off as an original article. I'd like to clarify I was not just CALLING it a press release, it actually IS a press release that he copy and pasted to the site and likely distributed to their email list.
In addition to original content, we invite community contributors to post press releases as long as they are within our guidelines.
I would love to speak with you more about the way our site works by phone or person if you have anymore questions. I can be reached by email at support@sacramentopress.com or by phone at 916-443-5403.
Thanks for your questions!
I am who I say I am.
Lastly, I thought Mr. Pierce was a SacPress journalist. I will modify my first comment.
How odd, or perhaps how disingenuous, that complaints about "Inclusiveness" are coming *precisely* when "mainline" Protestant and "liberal" Catholic churches became so "inclusive" that they stopped standing for anything. As a result, these churches are falling apart.
Happy-clappy pseudo-Christians have thrown out Church teachings. "Progressive" church publications wallow in nonsense with Reverend Clown and Dr. Feel-good applauding Deaconess Heretic for the latest "Progressive" Protestant, "but my conscience tells me" argument, that flies in the face of plain Scripture. Simultaneously, "Progressive" Catholic publications began defying the Papacy, particularly "just war" doctrine, in favor of first borderline pro-Soviet and now borderline pro-Jihadist policy positions, to say nothing of letting gays infiltrate the priesthood, with disastrous results.
Protestant evangelical "megachurches" and traditional Catholic factions like Opus Dei grow because they are "bitter clingers" who have the "bigoted" notion that Dad's dumping Mom for Tom, or Mom's dumping her man for Jan, might just really screw the kids up. O.J. Simpson and John Walker Lindh, two people from very different backgrounds, did suffer the exact same kind of family breakup as kids.
Protestant evangelical "megachurches" and Catholic Opus Dei factions also have the "bigoted" notion that theirs may just be the true way to salvation, especially when they listen seriously to what all too many Muslim imams are saying and doing, just as they listen seriously to what their ministers and priests say and do. Taking a religion seriously? You don't say!
Meanwhile, at the "progressive" churches, Father Flapdoodle or Reverend Leftylib are getting indicted on account of credible accusations of homosexual rape. Indeed, statistically, liberal "mainline" Protestant denominations like the Episcopalians have even *higher* proportions of pedophile or homosexual abuse than do Catholics!
Of course, the word from the good leftist Catholic or Episcopalian or Unitarian hierarchy is that they are victims of "sexual McCarthyism". But the ex-parishioners / congregation members who got wind of it aren't surprised. After all, if Fr. Flapdoodle and Reverend Leftylib aren't preaching traditional Catholic or Protestant sexual morality, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they aren't living it either.
Well, call it a press release or an article it was all 100% original and written, researched, spoke to everyone I received a quote from, and called Rev Whitmore to tell her what we were doing and more info. I was able to send it out and go live here within an hour of getting word of hearing about the issue at hand. Pretty good right?
Thirdly, for sure any organization has to right to fund or not fund any organization they like for any reason, good or bad. Myself and my organization has the right, since we (LGBT people) were the focus of the reason why the Church decided to pull their funding, do have a say in this and we exercised our our freedom of speech (and press).
As a result, of this article/press release we had a nice crowd at the Sacramento Gay and Lesbian Center and it was well covered by Fox News, News 13, and Outword magazine. To be perfectly honest the real reason to call attending to this issue in this way was to drum up interest in our own community to try and replace the $10,000 lost by the pull-out of the Church. I think we are going to accomplish just that in the coming weeks. After the press conference other LGBT individuals and organizations jumped on the band-wagon and will be doing their own fund-raising for the homeless and poor....because we get it......it isn't about politics or what anyone believes, it's about helping our brother's and sisters and their families. Right???
Look for a follow-up to this piece soon!
The understand your motives for writing such an article and I do not fault you for doing so. My point was that your article, press release, op-ed, or whatever it is would be much more credible if you weren't quoting yourself. In other words, my criticism is/was more about your writing style/quoting choice than it was about the content of your work.
I hope this clarifies things.