Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attacks on Catholic organizations:
We were told that once the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed marriage between two people of the same sex that it wouldn’t create new problems for religious institutions. It was a lie. In its wake has come a rash of lawsuits aimed at Catholic organizations. To be specific, agenda-ridden homosexuals have joined with the sexually confused to wreak havoc.
Shelly Fitzgerald, a guidance counselor at an Indiana Catholic high school, was dismissed after it was learned that she was “married” to another woman. She then did the media lap, parading her victimhood on Ellen Degeneres’ TV show. She took her complaint to the authorities.
Now Fitzgerald has been joined by another “victim” at the same school: Guidance counselor Lynn Starkey has been told her contract will not be renewed because she is “married” to her girlfriend. She plans to sue the Archdiocese of Indiana.
Oliver Knight is a sexually confused woman who thinks she is a man. She was denied a hysterectomy at a California Catholic hospital after her status was identified. She is now suing five Catholic hospitals because one of them denied her the operation.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a lesbian activist, has decided to deny state funds to Catholic adoption agencies because they will not place children with same-sex couples. She made this move by reaching a settlement with the ACLU by refusing to enforce a religious liberty law that insulated religious institutions from state encroachment in these matters.
None of these decisions were made by happenstance.
The guidance counselors knew what the house rules were of the Catholic school they worked for yet decided to violate them and then claim victim status. The sexually confused woman knew that Catholic hospitals will not sanction her new status by performing the operation. And Nessel’s hostility to religious rights could not be more clear.
Religious rights have indeed been imperiled by the high court recognition of homosexual marriages. The decision has emboldened a new wave of lawsuits by sue-happy gays seeking to deny long-standing religious exemptions to Catholic institutions.
The collision between the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty and homosexual rights must be addressed by the Supreme Court again. People of faith should not be subject to unnecessary state coercion; their autonomy is paramount.
