Back to the June 2004 Newsletter Index

MD. Catholic Conference Fights 'Mockery of Marriage' Law

While Loyola College, an ostensibly Catholic institution, was hosting a speaker who urged faculty and students to fight for “domestic partner benefits,” the Maryland Catholic Conference was battling a bill in the Maryland General Assembly that would have given certain “marriage” rights to both homosexual and heterosexual co-habiting couples.

HB 1284, titled the Medical Decision Making Act of 2004, was dubbed the “Mockery of Marriage Act” by its opponents, who were shocked when the bill passed the House of Delegates by a 103-30 vote and went on to the Senate.

A Maryland Catholic Conference “Alert” described the proposed law as follows:

“HB 1284 requires the Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene to create a ‘life partnership’ registry for any same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couple over the age of 17.

“Couples holding a ‘life partnership’ certificate, regardless of the duration of their relationship, are granted the same rights as married spouses, and greater rights than parents, children and siblings, in decisions dealing with such matters as the provision of life-sustaining medical treatment, organ donation, or the disposition of a partner’s remains.

“Couples may apply for ‘life partnership certificates’ by submitting a notarized statement by certified mail indicating that they share a common residence and a ‘mutually interdependent’ relationship. . .

“Same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples granted a ‘life partnership’ certificate may file a notice to terminate their relationship at any time, for any reason . . . 90 days after one of the partners files for termination of the ‘partnership,’ either or both of them can enter into a new ‘life partnership’ and have it certified by the state.”

The Maryland Catholic Conference Alert concluded:  “The bottom line here is this:  Under the guise of providing certain health-care decision-making rights to same-sex partners and unmarried heterosexual couples, HB 1284 makes a mockery of marriage.

“If it’s enacted, it will grant marriage-like status and the state’s official stamp of approval to same-sex and unmarried-heterosexual relationships.”

HB 1284 was killed in the Senate’s Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.

‘INTRINSICALLY DISORDERED’

        “Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. . .

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’

“They are contrary to the natural law.  They close the sexual act to the gift of life.  They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.

“Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church Par. #2357