Whenever I get up in arms about religious organizations, my friends remind me of all the good work they do. Homeless shelters, feed the hungry, social outreach, community building, these are all part of the church/shule/mosque environment. So I nod and feel a little guilty for being so judgmental.

But then the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington goes and does something so silly and weird, I get all incensed all over again.

Today, they announced that they would be pulling their social services in Washington D.C. if the gay rights measure is approved. Their argument: they might be forced to extend employment benefits to same-sex spouses if they choose to keep working with the city.

First, Catholic charities gets huge amounts of money from D.C. in order to perform their good works. As in, they are being paid to help people, they are not necessarily doing it out of the goodness of their heart. If they don’t want to provide these services, the city can hire some other group to perform their functions.

Second, extending employment benefits to the few individuals who work for you who don’t already get those benefits is really so costly that you have to stop serving the 68,000 people in need in D.C.? Really? Ok then, why is it that we want you involved in social services again?’

Third, if we do make politics secular – as in no religious involvement at all – wouldn’t we be making things easier for gay, Jewish, Muslim and athiest homeless people in D.C.?

I know it’s a knee jerk reaction, but my response to the Catholic threat is “good riddance!”

I promised not to waste any more space on Carrie Prejean unless it was discovered her parents were Dom DeLuise and Billie Holiday. Unfortunately that background is just a silly dream. Feel free to call me a liar. Read More: Withers: What Carrie Prejean should have said

Trying to decipher the machinations of deal making in Albany, New York is impossible. Add to that a political culture that is a wreck of mess, and it should come as no surprise  the state is facing budget ruin. Read More: Withers: Albany pols promise gay marriage vote

There are very few Americans who have never heard of Roe v. Wade: the landmark decision that legalized abortion for women in the United States. Since that moment in history, abortion has become a tenuous privilege, restricted greatly (in part by the various prohibitions against so-called “partial birth abortions”), but not impossible.

But, as many know, accessing health care is as much about dollars in the bank as it is about legalized health care services. It doesn’t matter so much if it’s legal if no one can afford to use the service.

Read More: Ruby-Sachs: Abortions Fly Out the Window

Dear Maggie Gallagher,

I just watched the video you made concerning the victory of anti-marriage equality advocates in Maine.

And though we’ve never met (a product, no doubt, of some great cosmic alignment of the stars in the universe — one that I consider myself grateful for every single day), I feel as though I know you. So I felt compelled to write to you this morning, in the hopes we might better understand each other.

In your video, you say we are stunned and hurt and upset over the loss in Maine. You’re right, Maggie. We are. We’re stunned that the “Yes on 1″ campaign used the same revolting, slanderous messages that have been used against us for years — that we’re child predators, that our marriages would rob people of religious freedom, that all we want is to indoctrinate children into the big scary horror that is Homosexuality. We’re hurt that people still believe all that nonsense, that decent, intelligent Americans still fall prey to such blatant fear-mongering from people who can’t use actual arguments against ours. And we’re very upset, Maggie. We’re upset that for the second time in a very short time, strangers have been given the power to decide how the law treats other people, and strangers have decided for gay men and women whether or not they can keep the right to codify and protect their relationship.

See, Mags (can I call you Mags? Come on, I mean it with affection. I nickname all my friends, and we’re friends, aren’t we?), I watched your video, and I realized you have absolutely no idea what we’re stunned, hurt or upset about. And if we’re going to be pals, I think you should at least take the time to know something real about me. So, lend me your ear, Mags, because I want to let you in on the secret you’re missing, the little piece of the puzzle you haven’t fully figured out yet.

With a little devilish twinkle in your eye (and don’t think I didn’t see it there, because I did! I so did! The mediocre webcam lighting didn’t fool me for a second!), I saw you talk about our loss with a barely repressed glee — we lost and you guys won! — and every time you mentioned us you called us “advocates” or some other impersonal nomenclature, and all of a sudden, I got it. I got you, Mags. Finally. After such a long time of not getting you.

This fight — You think it’s all about ballot boxes and campaigns and videos and votes and which states you win and which ones you lose and what commercials can we run on which stations and what do the polls say and how can we beat them, how can we win?

For us, it’s not about that at all. For us… it’s our lives, Mags.

Fess up, Mags. You can tell me the truth. Because I’m not going to tell anyone (seriously, nobody reads this, don’t worry): It’s a game to you, right? Because that’s easy, right? It’s easier just to create these cartoon versions of actual cultural moments because to actually deal with what’s happening and with real people’s lives would be complicated and harder to spin? It’s just a way to cast people in roles that make them feel good about themselves (you know, you’re the little guy standing up against the big bad monolith and if we all just stick together — and donate some funds to the cause — we’re gonna bring that big bad monolith down! Right? I’m right. Come on, Mags. You can tell me.)

Mags, I have to share this with you, because I feel we’ve become close: you remind me of someone. Well, a bunch of someones actually.

We have these women all across Lafayette (I’m in Lafayette, Louisiana, nice little city in south Louisiana, you should stop by!), these women who have wealthy husbands and really terrific houses (in River Ranch, it’s our planned community, kind of creepy if you ask me) and they have very little to do with their time other than wait in their really terrific houses for their wealthy husbands to come home in the evenings, so their days are filled with the pursuit of Meaning — not little old regular meaning, but Capital M Meaning, the kind that transforms a life from a collection of connected days to a living, breathing agent of change in the world.

They look for Meaning everywhere — in every club, gathering, organization they can think of (because nothing says Meaning like being in a room with other people looking for Meaning as well, right? Meaning by association! Awesome!) — and when they find a message they can wrap their mind around, they grab onto it with a vice grip and wrestle it to the ground, they take that message and tuck it into the deepest part of who they are and they repeat it and shout it until the message takes root there and becomes less of a message and more of an identity, a signpost of worth, a foundation upon which Meaning can be built.

They don’t have to believe the message. It doesn’t matter if it’s true to them or true in any sense of the word. It just has to work with others. Because when your Meaning is wrapped up in a message, the only way to sustain it is for others to agree with you.

You remind me of those women, Mags. All this shrieking and hyperbole and grand religious metaphor — it doesn’t sound to me like a belief. It sounds to me like a grasp at Meaning.

Because there are a lot of people in this country who still get scared of men like me, right? And all it takes is a little grandstanding, a nicely chosen word, a little divisive rhetoric and all of a sudden, those people are looking to you with admiration, looking to you for guidance, and you’re getting on TV and the news and suddenly Maggie Gallagher isn’t just someone’s name — it Means something.

I don’t blame you, Mags. Everyone wants Meaning. But you’re earning on the backs of people like me, people who work hard, contribute positive things to the community, who love with honesty and integrity and who don’t deserve to be slandered and spit on and attacked in the way your organization has attacked us.

That’s not cool, Mags. And there are times when I suspect you know it. Because while others may just dismiss you as a raving lunatic with delusions of grandeur (just saying what I’ve heard), I think there are nights when you turn out the light and lie there in dark and you know, in the secret place we all have inside of us, that what you’re doing is wrong.

Next time you have one of those nights, think about me, Mags. I’ll be in the dark in some other part of the world, and I’ll be sleeping well. Because I haven’t built my sense of self on the backs of anyone. I found Meaning in the right place — within myself.

Be well, Maggie Gallagher. I look forward to your next video.

1. Why does  anyone care what former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair thinks?

2. Should  lame duck governor Jon Corzine sign a gay marriage bill?  At first blush, I say no.

3. Why do people always include the word “hot” when they use the term Latin band.

4. Will pushing for gay marriage save New York’s David Paterson?

5. This story about  premature aging for some who are on HIV medications, proves again why safe sex is important. Wear a condom peoples.

6. Congratulations to Charles Pugh and Sandra Kurt. Local elections are just as critical as the national ones.

7. No work for me today. Levi Johnston is apparently in New York for his Playgirl photo shoot.

8. Anyone have any Palm Springs Pride stories? Please if you want to moan about how ashamed you are about Dykes on Bikes or some other “freaks”, keep the diatribe to a minimum. We all know gay marriage would be the law of the land if gays and lesbians just wore J. Crew and acted right.

9. Discovered Hill Street Blues on Hulu. I’m screwed.

10. Too many books. Not enough time.

Though it looked likely, it was still nice to see the official announcement that the “everything but marriage” ballot initiative passed in Washington State. Now, I know that Washington is a much more liberal state than Maine and equating the two would be a mistake. But I wonder, how much the removal of the word marriage assisted in the ballot victory?

Read More: Ruby-Sachs: Why Not Go For Everything But Marriage Everywhere?

Let’s end a tiring week (the Maine vote and yesterday’s Fort Hood incident) on some levity. Former reverend and present fame supplicant Ted Haggard is returning to spiritual guidance. In his living room. Read More: Withers: Haggard won’t ever be quiet

After the announcement today about the Fort Worth Bar Raid, I think it’s about time we had a frank discussion about police officers. Throughout LGBT history in the United States, the gay/trans community has been pitted against police. It’s police, in fact, who inspire our holiest of high holidays: Pride.  The clashes are universal, span from coast to coast and need to stop.

But it’s not suspensions and internal reports that are going to end this problem.

To be a police officer in Fort Worth, TX one must have completed high school or achieved a G.E.D. And that’s it. No diploma from a community college. No college degree. No Masters program in criminology or forensics or law. Then officers are trained, by the police force rather than an independent body.

A Lieutenant in the Fort Worth police department gets paid $36,000 a year.

But police officers are outfitted with guns, given immense amounts of power and asked to make sophisticated legal decisions in an instant. Are we surprised that they screw up a lot? Are we surprised that the people they recruit are not the most open-minded, educated members of a community?

The Fort Worth police department wants to solve this problem by doling out a few suspensions or by instituting training that considers the rights and experiences of LGBT community members.

I think there’s no chance the Fort Worth Texas police force, or pretty much any police force, is going to improve their relationship with the LGBT community until we start insisting the officers get more life experience and academic training, the salaries increase to be competitive with degree requirements and the force itself start to take its job seriously enough that bare minimum standards just aren’t good enough anymore.

A 365Gay history lesson: last year before the Proposition 8 vote, I wished it failed because I knew a few would jump on the “black people are such homophobes” line. Unfortunately Golden State citizens voted against marriage equality and that tired memo got a lot of play here and elsewhere. Research the site and read the comments. They ranged from folk informing me how “my brothers and sisters” screwed over the LGBT community to suggestions it would be a good idea for gays to discriminate against blacks in retaliation. Look at the stuff if you want. Read More: Withers: Why no race blame game after the Maine loss?