A number of Roman Catholics have been elected or appointed to key posts since the 2008 elections. John F. Kennedy did not have it so easy. Is discrimination against Catholics fading in America? Are secularists and social conservatives finding common ground?
Voters elected their first Roman Catholic vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., last year. Both major political parties are chaired by Catholics - Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine for the Democrats and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele for the Republicans.
Dan Gilgoff notes the trend on his U.S. News & World Report blog.
“The winners of the two biggest races, gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey, are Catholic Republicans who appear to be committed to their faith. Virginia’s governor-elect, Bob McDonnell, has talked about his Catholic upbringing shaping his political views. New Jersey’s governor-elect, Chris Christie, and his wife send their kids to parochial schools. …
“… In the summer, President Obama appointed Catholic Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latino to the Supreme Court.
“Anyone have an explanation for this trend, other than it being a sign that the discrimination that Catholics faced in the United States for decades has mostly faded? Here’s one: In an America that’s increasingly polarized between the secular left and the religious right, Catholic political figures are well poised to appeal to the social-justice impulses of the former and the cultural conservatism of the latter.”
Perhaps.
Catholics were in the forefront of the voter-driven battles in California and Maine on gay marriage and won on both occasions.
A California measure lost last year. On Tuesday, Maine voters leveled a heartbreaking defeat to supporters of gay marriage, knocking down at the polls a state same-sex marriage law that had been passed earlier in the year. In all 31 states in which same-sex marriage has been put to a popular vote, the issue has been batted down.
The church “stands for the basic rights of all people, including homosexual persons” and “decries any unjust discrimination against persons who experience same-sex attraction,” the Archbishop of Louisville Joseph E. Kurtz said Wednesday.
However, said the archbishop, who is chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, “Protecting marriage between a man and a woman has nothing to do with denying basic rights to anyone, though it is often framed in such terms.”
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