Posted on 08/06/2004 8:52:40 PM PDT by freedom44
Eugene, Oregon, Aug. 06 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN) - A lesbian couple has sued a Catholic school and its parish after a daughter was refused admittance.
After describing her irregular domestic arrangement to school principal Dianne Bert last year, Lee Inkmann was told her daughter would not be allowed to attend O'Hara Catholic School, because the lesbian relationship conflicted with Church doctrine, and could be confusing to other pupils. Inkmann and partner Trish Wilson are suing for $550,000 in damages, naming the school principal, as well as Father Mark Bachmeier, pastor of St. Mary's Catholic Church, in their claim.
Portland Archdiocese spokesman Bud Bunce told the Associated Press that the "archdiocese plans a vigorous defense ... it is believed that this situation was handled appropriately. The lawsuit filed includes numerous false statements of fact, and is believed to be totally without merit."
Hey. I forcibly ran some moonies off my property back in '79, and that's the last I have seen any of them. Dunno if I could challenge your druggie claim though - I do drink a lot of coffee.
the first amendment includes the freedom of association I believe.
They say it is implied by freedom of assembly. I would rather have it spelled out.
But the real problem is that a long time ago someone decided that rights are somehow nullified if we are engaged in commerce. I've always thought that was a swindle.
Update from this very minute on the eleven o'clock news... One of the sex abuse claimants (an attorney, go figure) has today admitted he made up his story.
How do you nullify a right??
Parochial school tuition is a fourth the cost of private school tuition?
Why put the other children who also attend the school in a position to deal with the child of lesbians? How will the child react when the school teaches, rightly so, that homosexuality is a sin?
It isn't like this child can not be educated elsewhere. She is not being denied an education. She is being denied admittance to one school. Are you saying there aren't other places she can go to be educated?
How do you nullify a right??
One way is to purchase it with tax breaks. For example, non-profit organizations are not allowed their free speech rights. Same way with people who live in federally subsidized apartments.
Rights are also bartered away. Giving corporations and HMO's certain kinds of legal immunity in exchange for their first amendment rights.
Another way is to claim that the right of the federal government to regulate commerce somehow trumps an individual's right to free speech.
Are you going to keep these other children in some kind of a cocoon where they never see the children of lesbians, or of color, or of the wrong political belief set, etc.? Your statement about this child being educated elsewhere means that the kids in the OTHER school are going to have to deal with it, instead. Are Catholic kids any better than anyone else?
How will the child react when the school teaches, rightly so, that homosexuality is a sin?
Do you think that the lesbian parents haven't figured this one out? Do you think that they haven't explained to this child, much as interracial parents have for decades, "There are people who don't like us. You need to tell us if something harmful happens, but you will probably not be able to change those peoples' minds about us." No doubt, they'd have to give the child the same speech if enrolled in ANY school.
Parents who do not want their young children exposed to the homosexual lifestyle should have the choice to do so. Regardless if you agree with that or not. Should the church change its teaching because homosexuals are offended?
As for Catholic kids being better than others, they do receive better education. That is a fact. It is also a fact that a private religious organization has the right to decide what students they will accept and which students they will not.
Your second point is ridiculous. This tendency for liberals to equate homosexuality to race is ridiculous. NOBODY has the choice as to what color skin they are born with or what ethnic group they are born into. EVERYBODY has a choice as to who they will live with, have sex with on a regular basis and decide to live their lives with.
Too late, we're not going back to a time when we pretended that homosexuals didn't exist. If you could censor all the TV, magazines, etc., you still wouldn't be able to keep track of all the conversations kids have with each other. Even if a family wishes to teach that homosexuality is wrong, it cannot do so with a tactic that completely denies the existence of it. It's out there in the newspapers every day, the more forbidden that you make the information, the more the young people will want to read about it.
Besides, are you afraid this child is going to bring a vibrator to "show and tell"? It's just not going to come up in everyday conversation on the Catholic school playground.
Should the church change its teaching because homosexuals are offended?
I've never advocated that. I would, however, expect the school to make at least small attempts to prevent this child from being abused by peers who would tease about it. Maybe you're comfortable with the epithet "fag" being hurled around school hallways, both public and private, but I hope we'd find a way to move beyond that. What better place than a school that teaches moral instruction to educate its students not to name-call?
As for Catholic kids being better than others, they do receive better education. That is a fact.
Generally, I do believe that. I went to Catholic school for first and second grade, and I had enough knowledge packed into me, to make 3rd through 6th grades in public school seem like a free ride. But Catholic kids, as people, are no better or worse than anyone else, and I question your thinking that they somehow deserve to be shielded from the realities of the existence of homosexual people in this world.
I remember growing up with an attitude that my religion was the only "right" one, and everybody else was going to hell. We were even forbidden in that time to go to a non-Catholic church for a wedding or a funeral. It seems like not only an antiquated notion today, but somewhat anti-American, too.
This tendency for liberals to equate homosexuality to race is ridiculous. NOBODY has the choice as to what color skin they are born with or what ethnic group they are born into.
Did this child have a choice as to which family she was born into, or arrived into? The fact that she would suffer some persecution from people for what her parental figures did, puts her in the same category the children of interracial marriage, in places where such is still not accepted. She still needs coping strategies for dealing with the immaturity of people who foist their disagreement with what is done by people she loves, on her.
Disagree with the parental figures' orientation all you wish, as I see it, there is no rational reason to deny this child what we both acknowledge is a quality education, if those parental figures are willing to pay for it, and are not asking for the Catholic Church to sanction their relationship.
EVERYBODY has a choice as to who they will live with, have sex with on a regular basis and decide to live their lives with.
Sorry, kids don't get that choice. Even when somebody's fighting for them. I lost half of a custody battle with my ex, when she wanted to marry a convicted child molester. I got my son's custody, but not my daughter's. Believe me, I fear child molesters far more than I do homosexuals, or the children of homosexuals.
What difference is it, what the parents do/have done? They're not going to engage in lesbian behavior on PTA night! In any case, this is Eugene, Oregon, lots of parents will put pressure on the school to allow this child. I strongly suspect that six months from now, those parents might be legally married under Oregon law (I see virtually no chance of passing a marriage amendment in Oregon), and the school won't really have much of a choice, anyway.
The court's decision on the Boy Scouts makes it clear that the church, as a private business (not to mention having rather unique 1st Amendment protections), has every right to limit it's private school enrollment. And, unlike the BSA, they do not rely on government for facilities space. In the long run, this might actually increase private school fortunes after straight folks come to find refuge from the government-mandated "homosexualization" of public schools.
You read it wrong, with good reason with the editing problems.
In a nutshell, and what I answered to you was simple. My problem with this entire case is a homosexual couple attempting to force a religious institution to change their basic tenants because of a decision they have made.
Once again, this has as much to do with the child as Michael Newdows USSC case on the pledge had to do with his child. It is about a minority population attempting to change the basic institution of our country (in this case, a fully recognized church) because they have made the decision to live their life in a way that is rejected by the vast majority of society.
If Oregon rolls over on gay marriage then the people of that state will deal with that decision. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen to the few states that will allow gay marriage and the states that refuse to recognize it.
One last thing, you do enjoy putting words into peoples mouths, that is obvious - however I will give you a pass due to the editing problem I had. Let me repeat one more time, my problem is not with the child in this case, it is however with her parents and their attempts to force a religion to change 1,000 of years of teaching to suit their wants.
... this has as much to do with the child as Michael Newdows USSC case on the pledge...
This is a couple trying not to force a change in a basic religious tenet on a whole church, they just want to get a rule change in who can and cannot be admitted to the school. They make the point that their behavior is not that of their daughter's, and her admission should be decided on the merits of the daughter's qualifications, not who she lives with. The Newdow case was trying to force a change in classroom behavior, namely the dropping of the words "under God" from the Pledge, and it was trying to use the courts to force it on everyone, whether or not Newdow's child went to that school or not. That's why I don't see the two things as a fair comparision.
... they have made the decision to live their life in a way that is rejected by the vast majority of society.
I have no doubt it appears that way to you in South Florida. Out here in the Pacific Northwest, where church attendance is statistically low, and even among those who do attend, its at a liberal Christian denomination's house of worship, there is much more of a live-and-let-live attitude on all kinds of things, including homosexuality. I've been to Eugene, and parts of it look like it never left 1969. The city is home to the University of Oregon, and if you follow polls on acceptability of homosexuality, you'll find that younger, college-age people are far more apt to be completely tolerant of gay marriage, and homosexual relations in general. Yes, I'm sure you know some college age people where you live who don't think so, but if the polling statistics are to be believed even a little bit, it means that in the liberal areas, they're VERY liberal, balancing out those in the South who still follow traditional religious teachings and beliefs regarding homosexuality.
If Oregon rolls over on gay marriage then the people of that state will deal with that decision. It will be interesting to see what is going to happen to the few states that will allow gay marriage and the states that refuse to recognize it.
Interstate 5 runs north-south through the western half of Oregon. From Portland on the north, to Ashland on the south, practically every sizable city along that corridor has a college. The ones in the center and north attract people from Portland, and its suburbs, and as you recall, this was where an attempt at legalizing gay marriage started in Oregon. There is a county in the central part of that state, where Oregon State University is, that is STILL refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone, gay or straight, until the law is sorted out in the Oregon courts, in order to avoid discriminating against anyone.
Outside of that I-5 corridor, Oregon is fairly sparsely populated. There is one whole county in eastern Oregon that is just slightly smaller than the entire state of Massachusetts! Of course, it has a LOT less people. These are the realities that I'm referring to, when talking about how Oregon will not vote to make marriage male-female only. Once the vote goes down in November, look for the courts to green-light gay marriage, they know that if they do so before the election, they might just keep it from passing, and they don't want to do that.
As to your question of how things will work, I go back to the years 1967-1973, when abortion was legal in a few places, but not most. Of course, the difference there is that when a woman traveled to California or Washington (and also Oregon) when she came back, it was without her baby. When gay couples come back from pro-gay marriage states, I expect most states to declare the marriages against public policy, some that have liberal judiciaries to decide that the marriages are valid, and the whole thing will get thrown into the Supreme Court some five or six years from now, at most.
Then, we'll find out if the Court considers gay marriage a fundamental Constitutional right, or simply a states rights matter.
One last thing, you do enjoy putting words into peoples mouths, that is obvious...
You're right, I got out of line on that one, and I thank you for your forgiveness on it.
I grew up in Silverton and I was just back up visiting and all the kids have tattoos and piercings and are antibushniks....Can't believe how brainwashed and lost the kids are--They drink and smoke dope and see nothing wrong with anything.....they love Michael Moore....he is their guru....I imagine Eugene is worse...I was in school there for awhile....kindof near Timothy O'Leary.
So is divorce. If the school refused to admit a child of a couple who had been married to others and the divorced and married would people be so quick to support them?
Using this same logic, these lesbians - by their lifestyle - have determined that they are going to flaunt their disbelief of the church's teachings, yet expect their daughter to get a Catholic education. Just as with the above parents, the church and its school should have the right to reject these parents' attempts to flaunt their disbelief.
Having grown up with many relatives in Catholic schools, I know that most schools have non-Catholics in them, but they agree that their children will receive Catholic teaching and don't flaunt their disbelief of what is being taught. There's the difference.
I feel sorry for the little girl, but, hey, I wish I could have gotten my kids into a good private school. We couldn't afford it for this many kids. Private school is not a right.
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