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!”

Archbishop Rembert Weakland, former head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, said in an interview Monday that he wrote about his sexual orientation because he wanted to be candid about “how this came to life in my own self, how I suppressed it, how it resurrected again.”

Called “A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop,” the book is set to be released in June.

“I was very careful and concerned that the book not become a Jerry Springer, to satisfy people’s prurient curiosity or anything of this sort,” Weakland told The Associated Press. “At the same time, I tried to be as honest as I can.”

Weakland stepped down soon after Paul Marcoux, a former Marquette University theology student, revealed in May 2002 that he was paid $450,000 to settle a sexual assault claim he made against the archbishop more than two decades earlier. The money came from the archdiocese.

Marcoux went public at the height of anger over the clergy sex abuse crisis, when Catholics and others were demanding that dioceses reveal the extent of molestation by clergy and how much had been confidentially spent to settle claims.

Weakland denied ever assaulting anyone. He apologized for concealing the payment. The Vatican says that men with “deep-seated” attraction to other men should not be ordained.

In an August 1980 letter that was obtained by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Weakland said he was in emotional turmoil over Marcoux and that he had “come back to the importance of celibacy in my life.” He signed the letter, “I love you.”

The revelations rocked the Milwaukee archdiocese, which Weakland had led since 1977. He was a hero for liberal Catholics nationwide because of his work on social justice and other issues.

The archbishop, now 82, said he seriously considered the potential pain for the archdiocese of renewing attention to the scandal and thought about waiting “until I was dead” to have it published. But he decided to move ahead with the project.

“What I felt was that people who loved me as bishop here, when they read the book will continue to love me. The people who found it difficult, I hope will be helped a little bit by the book,” he said.

In a sign of the deep emotions still surrounding Weakland and his departure, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has released a public statement alerting local Catholics to the upcoming book.

“Some people will be angry about the book, others will support it,” the archdiocese said.

Weakland also writes about his failures to stop sexually abusive priests. In a videotaped deposition released last November, Weakland admitted returning guilty priests to active ministry without alerting parishioners or police.

“Any deposition is just a part of a whole picture and that picture has not been painted yet. And anybody can take out of that any sentence they want,” Weakland said in the interview.

“I try to deal with this, I hope in an honest way, admitting my weaknesses in not being able to see this earlier, but at the same time doing what I could confront it.”

Advocates for abuse victims said that Weakland’s cover-up of his own sexual activity was part of a pattern of secrecy that included concealing the criminal behavior of child molesters.

Weakland, a Benedictine monk, served in Rome as leader of the International Benedictine Confederation and also worked on a liturgy commission for the Second Vatican Council, which made reforms in the 1960s meant to modernize the church.

Weakland said he wrote in the memoir that he was unprepared for “how lonely it is” to be a bishop and how difficult it can be to get the “feedback and support you need.”

U.S. Catholics have long debated whether the priesthood had become a predominantly gay vocation. Estimates vary from 25 percent to 50 percent, according to a review of research on the issue by the Rev. Donald Cozzens, author of “The Changing Face of the Priesthood.”

Weakland said Christians needed to speak more openly about gays in the priesthood without the “hysteria” that often characterizes the debate.

The archbishop has been living in a retirement community near the Milwaukee archdiocese and plans to move to St. Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, N.J., this summer. He said he was not bitter about how the scandal had eclipsed his decades of work in the church.

“I refused to let myself become a victim and refused to let myself become angry,” he said. “I want to take responsibility but I want to move on.”

The Vatican announcement confirmed a previous decision by the priest, Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, to give up the promotion.

In January, Benedict promoted the 54-year-old Wagner to the post of auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria’s third largest city.

The move sparked an outcry from Austrian Catholics and church groups who argued that the decision could motivate people to leave the Catholic church.

Wagner had questioned whether the “noticeable” increase of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina – which devastated New Orleans in 2005 – was a result of pollution caused by humans or the result of “spiritual pollution” such as the acceptance of homosexuality.

Wagner also has characterized Harry Potter novels as satanic.

Following the controversy, Wagner said last month that he was giving up the job as auxiliary bishop.

He said he considered his decision to be in the interest of the church and that he looked forward to continuing his job as pastor in the Upper Austrian town of Windischgarsten.

The Vatican’s brief announcement Monday said the pope had “exonerated … Wagner from accepting the office of Linz auxiliary bishop.”

The Vatican’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters that Wagner had put forth his request to give up the job to the Vatican, and that the pope had accepted it.

Linz Diocesan Bishop Ludwig Schwarz said the Vatican’s confirmation “officially brings to a close a turbulent period for the Linz diocese and the Austrian church.”

Wagner’s promotion was one of two recent controversial decisions by the Vatican that led to unusually open criticism of Vatican policy, even from top Roman Catholic churchmen.

The other involved lifting the excommunication of a bishop who had said that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.

Later, the Vatican distanced itself from British Bishop Richard Williamson’s remark and demanded that he recant it.

Lifting the excommunication of Williamson and three fellow members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X had been part of the pope’s effort to reach out to ultraconservatives.

Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino says Misericordia University shouldn’t have sanctioned a Feb. 17 visit by author Keith Boykin. He says viewpoints that contradict Catholic teaching should not be presented “under the guise of ‘diversity.’”

The school’s Diversity Institute describes itself as an educational resource center that promotes multicultural understanding.

The school said in a statement that it “welcomes the opportunity” to discuss the matter with Martino.

The conservative evangelical Focus on the Family, which fights LGBT issues across the country, gave $657,000 in money and services.

The amounts vastly surpass the $189,000 in direct cash and compensated staff time from the Mormon church.

The new figures were turned over to the state weeks into an investigation by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission that institutional donors to ProtectMarriage, the umbrella group behind Proposition 8, had not reported the value of workers salaries and other expenses.

In November, Californians Against Hate filed a complaint with the Commission accusing the Church of Latter Day Saints of failing to report the value of work it did to support Prop 8. An investigation began in late November into the Mormon contributions and those of other groups.

Proposition 8 was approved by 52 percent of voters. Following passage of the proposition the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the vote.  They were joined by additional suits by the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court said it would hear oral arguments in the case on March 5.

The lawsuits charge that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone, by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians.

They also say that Proposition 8 improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities. The suits say that under the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown is also asking the Court to invalidate Proposition 8 on the ground that certain fundamental rights, including the right to marry, are inalienable and can not be put up for a popular vote.

No kidding.

“American Idol” has been on the television longer than consensual same-sex sex has been legal in some U.S. states.

This month, perhaps this week, France will introduce to the United Nations General Assembly a statement about human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including torture, arbitrary arrest, killings, political, social and economic discrimination and the criminalization of same-sex love.

Scott Long of Human Rights Watch called the statement, “One of the most comprehensive affirmations of human rights relating to sexual orientation and gender identity that any international body has seen in recent years.”

The statement, building on the UN’s record of promoting LGBT rights, is neither a resolution nor a declaration. It will not be binding. It will not have the force of law in the member states. It will not even be voted upon.

But it hopefully will have symbolic impact and it will send a message to the 86 countries that criminalize same-sex sexual activity. The penalty for such activity is imprisonment in some nations and death in at least seven nations — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan.

All the European Union members, as well as a number of non-EU countries and Latin American nations, have signed on to the statement to decriminalize homosexuality.

The United States, however, has not signed on to the document.

To anyone’s surprise?

And the Vatican has taken a stand against the statement.

To anyone’s surprise?

In defense of the Vatican’s opposition, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said a statement to decriminalize homosexuality would lead to bias against those who discriminate against gays and lesbians.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore told Reuters. “For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”

The French government and some GLBT rights groups responded by calling Migliore’s reasoning wrong or misguided and emphasizing that this statement is intended to discourage nations from sentencing gays to prison or death, an argument that should but doesn’t sway the Vatican. Apparently the Catholic Church’s abhorrence of the death penalty is not as great as its abhorrence of homosexuality.

Because I’m a columnist and not the French secretary of human rights or the spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry, I don’t need to be political. I can confide: I think it would be great if the statement was used to put pressure on nations that promote discrimination, disrespect human dignity and violate human rights.

I can also say that the GLBT community has long maintained that decriminalization has far-reaching impact in regards to employment, marriage, benefits and raising children.

In pushing for decriminalization in the United States, activists and attorneys argued that laws criminalizing consensual sodomy were used to justify denying gays and lesbians jobs and promotions and custody of their children.

My old reporter’s notes quote a director at the American Civil Liberties Union, following the release of the Supreme Court ruling against sodomy laws, as saying, “For years, whenever we have sought equality, we’ve been answered both in courts of law and in the court of public opinion with the claim that we are not entitled to equality because our love makes us criminals.  That argument — which has been a serious block to progress — is now a dead letter.”

The Court itself said that the U.S. Constitution protects the right of gays to form intimate relationships and “retain their dignity as free persons.”

Gays, the Court said, have the same right as heterosexuals to “define one’s concept of existence, of meaning, or the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

The statement soon to be read at the United Nations will not have the influence in any nation that the U.S. Supreme ruling had in this country.

But the statement will affirm, as the Court did, gays rights to form intimate relationships, to live with dignity and to seek equality. And, if this is what the Vatican fears, we should say, “Watch out.”

“The dignity of every man is really guaranteed only when all his fundamental rights are recognized, protected and promoted,” the pope said at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the declaration.

But in New York, the Vatican’s permanent observer at the UN, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, was lobbying UN member states on behalf of the pope to reject a proposal that would add language to the document condemning “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The proposed amendment to the declaration was presented at the General Assembly on Wednesday by France. The document has been signed by the member states of the European Union.  It was drafted by France which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency.

More than 80 nations have laws denying or limiting LGBT civil rights. Some Muslim countries impose the death penalty on homosexuality while others have lengthy prison sentences.

The Vatican, however, maintains the declaration would force countries to legalize same-sex marriage.

Faith leaders from national LGBT groups issued joint statement Wednesday denouncing the Vatican’s double standard.

“As faith leaders we were shocked by Vatican opposition to this proposed initiative. By refusing to sign a basic statement opposing inhumane treatment of LGBT people, the Vatican is sending a message that violence and human rights abuses against LGBT people are acceptable,” said the statement signed by faith program directors from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Human Rights Campaign, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and National Black Justice Coalition.

The statement also criticized the Bush administration for not taking a position on the declaration.

“Compounding the Vatican’s opposition is the inaction to date of the government of the United States. As faith leaders and citizens of the United States, we call on the U.S. government to join the 50 countries throughout the world that have officially supported this U.N. proposal,” the statement said.

The General Assembly has yet to vote on the declaration.

The Vatican has long been an opponent of LGBT rights – especially marriage. It fought hard against same-sex marriage rights in Holland, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa, all of which went on to legalize gay unions.

In the U.S., the Catholic Church was heavily involved in the fight against gay marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut which now allow gay marriage and was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8, which overturned the California supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage in that state.

In October, the Church said it was considering psychological testing for prospective priests to screen out candidates “with strong homosexual tendencies” and heterosexuals “unable to control their sexual urges.”

The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn’t attend college, according to results released by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Age and race, meanwhile, were not as strong factors as assumed. According to the poll, 56 percent of voters over age 55 and 57 percent of nonwhite voters cast a yes ballot for the gay marriage ban.

People who identified themselves as practicing Christians were highly likely to support the constitutional amendment, with 85 percent of evangelical Christians, 66 percent of Protestants and 60 percent of Roman Catholics favoring it.

The poll also showed that the measure got strong backing from voters who did not attend college (69 percent), voters who earned less than $40,000 a year (63 percent) and Latinos (61 percent).

The proposition, which passed with 52 percent of the vote, overturned the state Supreme Court’s May decision legalizing gay marriage in California. The measure inserts language into the constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The poll found that, overall, 48 percent of voters oppose the idea of making gay marriage legal. Forty-seven percent support it, while 5 percent are undecided.

The results mirror previous PPIC polls from the last three years, suggesting that the $73 million spent for and against the measure did not do much to change public attitudes on allowing gay couples to wed, said survey director Mark Baldassare.

“At no point in time, before or after the election, did we have a majority of Californians saying they supported gay marriage,” Baldassare said. “My takeaway from this is that until there is a major shift in public opinion one way or another, it’s going to be another issue where voters are deeply divided.”

Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, said the PPIC poll demonstrates that same-sex marriage advocates “need to make inroads in every category. If 2 percent of voters had voted differently, we would have had a different result,” he said.

The poll was based on a phone survey of 2,003 California voters in the Nov. 4 election who were interviewed from Nov. 5-6. The sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.

A separate poll by Harris Interactive for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation released on Wednesday found nationally three-quarters of Americans favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. 

The proposed declaration condemns “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” and will be presented at the General Assembly on Dec. 10 by France.

The document has been signed by the member states of the European Union.  It was drafted by France, which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency.

Dec. 10th was chosen to present it to the General Assembly because the date marks the 60th anniversary of the UN declaration of human rights.

More than 80 nations have laws denying or limiting LGBT civil rights. Some Moslem countries impose the death penalty on homosexuality while others have lengthy prison sentences.

The Vatican in a statement said the declaration would force countries to legalize same-sex marriage.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer at the UN, said in the statement that the declaration would discriminate against states which support traditional marriage.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations … For example, states which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” Migliore said.

Franco Grillini, founder of Italian LGBT rights group Arcigay, called the Vatican position “total idiocy and madness.”

“The French resolution, which is supported by all 27 members of the European Union, has nothing to do with gay marriage. It is about stopping jail and the death penalty for homosexuals,” Grillini told the Reuters news service.

The Vatican has long been an opponent of LGBT rights – especially marriage.

It fought hard against same-sex marriage rights in Holland, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa, all of which went on to legalize gay unions.  In the U.S., the Catholic Church was heavily involved in the fight against gay marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of  which now allow gay marriage, and was instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8, which overturned the California Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage in that state.

In October, the Church said it was considering psychological testing for prospective priests to screen out candidates “with strong homosexual tendencies” and heterosexuals “unable to control their sexual urges.”

Where else would it be possible for millions of people to march for gay pride, worship Brazil’s patron saint, compete in a half-marathon and celebrate Children’s Day activities – all on the same Sunday?

The proposition initially raised a few hackles – with both church officials and gay activists insisting the other postpone their event – but ultimately went off without a hitch at the city’s famed Copacabana beach.

The celebrations began with hundreds of the faithful marching through the streets to honor Our Lady of Aparecida, the country’s patron saint.

By midmorning, participants in the World Half Marathon Championship zipped along the beachfront, while at noontime parents took their young ones to Children’s Day events by the sea.

As evening arrived, the raucous gay pride parade had taken control, with go-go boys gyrating in time to electronic dance music atop 20 semi-trucks.

Few seemed to mind the confluence of such different events.

“I think there is space for everyone,” Sandra Cannone, who participated in the religious procession, told the O Globo newspaper.

Guilherme Cruz, 20, attending the gay pride parade, said he didn’t mind sharing Copacabana’s space.

“I don’t have any problems with the church procession,” he said. “But we have to fight for our rights as homosexuals. We also have the right to be here.”