By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Compromise is like the tango: It takes two to really make it work. It assumes goodwill on the part of the disputants, a willingness to bargain in search of a reasonable common ground.
The Washington Post reported a few weeks back that the Michigan Catholic Conference (MCC), which, in the Post’s words, “oversees the health care insurance provided for individuals working for Catholic institutions in the state,” is willing to “play its part” on the issue of providing health care for homosexual employees. “The MCC announced in a letter in early March that it is modifying its coverage in a way that will make it possible for gay employees of the church to get health benefits for their partners and spouses.”
Here is the MCC’s proposal, as described by the Post: “In a letter to pastors and church employees, the conference stated that health care coverage will be expanded to include legally domiciled adults.” Individuals will be considered legally domiciled adults, “if they’re 18 or older, are financially interdependent with the church employee, and have lived with that person for at least six months.”
This means, according to Dave Maluchnik, director of communications for the MCC, a “person’s sexual orientation or behavior will not factor into the church’s decision to provide employees with health care. Instead, the church’s primary consideration will be residency.”
Maluchnik told the Post reporter that “the church’s teaching on marriage and human sexuality is not changing. Our health benefit plan is expanding its eligibility to include a legally domiciled adult and, as such, the benefit is not dependent upon the relationship.”
Maluchnik went to say that the plan “does not include the words ‘gay’ or ‘same-sex relationship’,” and that the “rule change could just as easily apply to a friend, cousin, sibling or parent who lives with the employee. This decision was made following extensive consultation with the National Catholic Bioethics Center and also with our legal counsel to help us ensure that the health plan is compliant with federal and state laws and at the same time being consistent with Catholic teaching.”
There may be some roadblocks as this effort at a compromise with homosexual activists moves forward. For one thing, the MCC’s offer requires those in charge of Catholic institutions to act as if they can’t see the difference between an individual sharing living expenses with a cousin or parent and a homosexual couple. Is that a realistic expectation?
I think we can give the MCC the benefit of the doubt. There are too many possible scenarios to make the assumption that they are engaged in self-deception, a “wink and a nod,” if you will, if they give health benefits to roommates of the same sex. Within my lifetime it was not presumed that roommates of the same sex were homosexually active. Think of Felix and Oscar on The Odd Couple. It is hard to see why anyone would accuse the MCC of acting dishonestly if they assumed that employees who share a room with a member of the same sex are counterparts of Oscar and Felix. There is no reason for the MCC to assume, absent evidence to the contrary, that two people living together are not merely trying to save rent money.
Whether the MCC should be open to providing health-care coverage for two individuals of the same sex who are members of groups such as Courage is more problematic. Courage describes itself as made up of Catholics “who experience same-sex attractions and who are committed to helping one another to live chaste lives marked by prayer, fellowship and mutual support, in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality.” Courage members are admitted homosexuals.
Perhaps theologians and Church leaders can provide the MCC with guidelines for this situation. Is it a bridge too far to accept in all cases that admitted homosexuals living together, who profess to be living chaste lives, are actually doing so? How would the employer make that determination? A version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” might be impossible when the person in question has already “told.”
But all of these issues may prove to be moot. The key question going forward will be whether homosexual employees of Catholic institutions will respond in good faith to the MCC’s offer. It is not certain that they will.
Consider the reaction to the MCC’s offer from Equality Michigan, which describes itself as “the advocacy arm of the state’s LGBT advocacy and anti-violence organization.” They praised the MCC’s ruling as an example of the benefit of “having federal agencies take a lead on ‘issues of fairness’ and predicts that in time, people will realize there’s no reason not to outlaw discrimination.”
This statement leads one to wonder if homosexual activists will play their part in making the MCC’s offer to compromise work. What is the endgame Equality Michigan is working to achieve? It must be stressed that the MCC’s offer hinges upon Catholic institutions being able to maintain a credible defense that they do not know the nature of the relationship between the “legally domiciled adults” whom they employ.
If the homosexual employee living with a member of the same-sex insists upon proclaiming to the world that he or she is “in a relationship” or “married” to his partner, this defense will evaporate. Some discretion, some compromise, will be needed on the part of the homosexual employees. Will groups such as Equality Michigan, committed to “outlawing discrimination,” permit that?
Probably not. As we have seen in recent years, the leaders of the homosexual movement are insistent upon proclaiming publicly that their relationships are “normal.” They demand that society accept the moral equivalence between their “marriages” and heterosexual marriages. They criticize homosexuals who “sell-out” by “staying in the closet.” They seek to shame those who hold to the traditional Christian teaching about the nature of marriage with the label “homophobe.” The bottom line: They insist that the Catholic teaching on marriage is in error.
Consider, for example, the position taken by Patrick Brewis, a former employee of a Catholic Church in southeast Michigan. In an interview in PrideSource, a publication supportive of the LGBT agenda, Brewis said he is skeptical that the MCC intended to genuinely help LGBT Catholics:
“In the language that the Catholic Conference put out, nowhere do they mention the words gay, same-sex marriage, gay relationship or the like,” adding, “I think it’s a mistake to construe this as any kind of overture by the Catholic Church to the LGBT community.”
Brewis continued, “The only way for change and transformation to happen in the church is to make yourself visible.”
Brewis means by this that he wants homosexuals living together who are employed by Catholic institutions to be able to make it known proudly and publicly — through marriage notices in the newspapers, public displays of affection at employee social events and participation in “gay rights” parades and demonstrations — that they have a right to refuse to abide by the religious doctrines held by their Catholic employer.
If that is the position of homosexuals working for Catholic institutions, they are not calling for compromise in this matter, but issuing a demand that the Catholic Church abandon a biblically based, centuries-old teaching. There is nothing reasonable, moderate, or conciliatory about that.
It is why the military’s attempt to make “don’t ask, don’t tell” work failed. Homosexual activists pressured the military into changing its policy on homosexuality; they want to do the same to the Church.
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