Jill at Feministing is up in arms about a gay activist acting against type:
Daniel Hughes, president of the student group Progressive Alliance for Life, said he is among the students who have confronted administrators with concerns over summer internship funding. He said he threatened to take the matter to the church officials if action wasn’t taken. Aleinikoff said Georgetown’s decision had nothing to do with external pressure.
Hughes said the university is finally taking the appropriate action by honoring church teachings.
“I don’t think Georgetown needs to enact Catholic doctrine on every issue  that wouldn’t be desirable,†he said. “But the most bedrock Catholic teaching is the protection of life. No advocacy group that works against that principle should be supported by the university.â€Â
Hughes said he doesn’t understand the complaints. Students, he said, need to realize that there are tradeoffs to coming to a Jesuit institution, such as the fact that some alumni donate because they support certain beliefs associated with the church.
Yes, whiny titty-baby Daniel Hughes threatened to go to church higher-ups if Georgetown didn’t de-fund his fellow students. And he doesn’t really care if Georgetown abides by other Catholic doctrines (anti-war, anti-death penalty) as long as they can continue to oppress women.
The background is this: Georgetown University Law Center has a public interest program that provides funding to students who take unpaid summer internships. Students have long accepted positions at a wide variety of organizations, including pro-choice groups. But this year, a student who was hired by Planned Parenthood’s public policy and litigation department was denied funding because of Planned Parenthood’s support of abortion rights.
Particularly problematic here is that students were blindsided by this policy. There are many pro-choice students at Georgetown, and they had no warning that the public interest program would not apply to them. After all, students still receive funding to work at other organizations that violate Catholic doctrine.
I’m not going to argue over whether or not the Catholic Church is anti-war per se, because even Jill, I think, understands that that’s not exactly the case. However, she ought to consider whether or not Mr. Hughes is or is not correct that the Catholic Church is expressly pro-life: it is. Is it expressly anti-gay? I’ve never heard homosexuality propounded upon from the pulpit even once in a Catholic Church. Not once.
Still, the idea that one’s sexual orientation and preferences ought to be a matter of as much interest to the Bishops of the Church of Rome as the right to life is seems to me absurd. The Church’s teachings with respect to homosexuality are in flux, I think it’s safe to say. On the other hand, it’s ridiculous to state that on the matter of life the Church ought to adjust itself to secular morality. Ought a university affiliated with the Church provide money for people who wish to promote a secular morality at the expense of that advocated by the Church? Why, wouldn’t that be a bit like NOW putting aside some of their budget to counsel fathers engaged in custody disputes?
How could a gay Catholic advocate on behalf of a policy of defunding such internships? Well, let’s think about it. Imagine that the Holy Grail of a genetic basis for homosexuality is discovered. Imagine further that it is detectable through amniotic fluid. Should a woman, therefore, who wishes to have a child who is likely in turn to give her lineal grandchildren be prohibited from aborting that fetus, or not? Is Jill willing to admit that in such a case the choice ought only to be that of the woman in question?
She and her readers consider it a matter of selfishness on Hughes’ part that he’s willing to sacrifice the desires of some students to the mission of the Church that charters and supports the University, while advocating for homosexual rights. In point of fact, he is being compassionate at considerable risk in what he considers to be a rational way. Instead, we get this insane cant:
The thorough hypocrisy of people like Hughes never fails to amaze me. And Georgetown’s emphasis on curtailing women’s rights instead of taking a holistic life-affirming view is disappointing, but not surprising. Georgetown of course has a right to fund what they want to fund, and refuse to back organizations that depart from their institutional and religious values  but that isn’t the case here, at least not in any sort of consistent way. This is just about being loudly misogynist and anti-abortion.
[emphasis mine]
Really? Is it misogynist to ban the killing of fetuses or newborns on the ground that they’re female, as happens still in China? Do you think that Georgetown is hypocritical for underwriting gay rights organizations, because it doesn’t fit your cartoon view of what the Catholic Church is? Fundamentalist Islam is quite consistent in this respect, isn’t it, when it calls for both the subjugation of women and the stoning of homosexuals (unless they are jihadi)? Please explain to me exactly why it is that a gay man ought to understand that your desire for abortion on demand, publicly funded, benefits him. Oh, and you’re a thoroughgoing hypocrite for imagining that the Church ought to treat issues of sexual preference the same way it does human life per se. Can you show us an instance in which Georgetown funded a law student to help advocate for a death-sentence lobbyist or organization? Didn’t think so.
There’s no question that the Catholic church is currently opposed to abortion and birth control. But to argue that opposition to abortion has been more “foundational†to the Church than opposition to homosexuality is just factually inaccurate.
You don’t know shit about the Church, Jill. But have a happy Easter, and enjoy a zombiefest. Couldn’t think of anything more appropriate for a lockstep progg.
Nothing quite as life-affirming as jamming a pair of scissors into the skull of an unborn, then sucking its brains out because carrying around the little bugger might inconvenience your next zombie-fest.
I love feminists. They make insanity look so positively… Normal.
I almost have to wonder if ladies like Jill are being narcissistic in their framing of every opposition to abortion in terms of misogyny. That it is inconceivable that someone could find abortion objectionable… unless they wanted to oppress women by doing so!
Wow, I didn’t know the good Emperor Misha dropped by here. Our neighborhood, the series of tubes we jokingly refer to as the internets, is getting smaller and smaller.
The Church’s teachings with respect to homosexuality are in flux, I think it’s safe to say.
I didn’t realize Joe Ratzinger is considered to be a liberal pope by some.
OHNOES, I am everywhere. Omnipresence. Google It!
Seriously, though, this site has been one of my favorites since, well since forever.
Oh… And first! Sorry. I never had a chance to say that anywhere.
I didn’t realize that Ratzinger was the Church, alphie. Do you think you know something about it?
I didn’t realize Joe Ratzinger is considered to be a liberal pope by some
The total tonnage of what this jerk “doesn’t realize” has got to be something like mass of Earth+Moon cubed.
less67 stone x the mass of Rosie anyway.
What shit is there to know about the church? Atheists want to know!
Shit is all that atheists know about the church.
“I have a right to slaughter my unborn child!” has always struck me as a questionable moral stance.
But I don’t have a womb, so I prudently keep my mouth shut. Mostly.
Dan,
I think Joe Ratzinger is the Catholic church’s Decider.
Any underling of his who starts supporting gay rights will be looking for a top-flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries.
It matters not that they know shit about the Church. They are loud, shrill and always certain and seldom correct. Needless to say, the last characteristic is seldom mentioned.
“Shit is all that atheists know about the church. “
there’s only 1? That is the shit!
Don’t you hate it when a private school acts all, you know–privatey?
I’m also pretty sure that if you receive “funding” for an activity then it is not “unpaid.”
There’s always a big stock of pointy hats for them over at the Episcopal Church. Not too many folks in the pews, but check out that endowment!
Jill is obviously no mental giant. The sex scandals involving Catholic priests in recent years have involved largely same sex participants. How many priests were defrocked or excommunicated? Apart from the legal liability and bad press created for the Church, Jill may have overlooked some pretty public evidence contrary to her distortions here.
I don’t have to wonder about that.
I have to say I’ve found that blog more or less entirely tedious and predictable.
I didn’t realize I’m considered to be a liberal dope by everyone.
Because I’m really a Goldwater Conservative.
Or was it Reagan?
Refusal to financially support abortion = oppressing women. BECAUSE YOU CELIBATE BASTARDS OWE US BABY KILLING!!!
Whiny titty-baby Jill is an extraordinarily confused lass.
Dan, you ought not reply to that which shall not be named.
Are you talking about the Pope, Mikey?
From his Easter speech:
Afghanistan is marked by growing unrest and instability; in the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.
Sounds like it’s time to swiftboat him, eh?
*snif*
Someone dropped an a-bomb in here. Smells like dog crap.
Jill actually said “whiny titty baby”?
Lay off the drugs, Jill. Seriously. IQ points are dropping like flies, over there.
Late to the party, but there is no Catholic doctrine against the death penalty. We don’t like it, we’ll complain about it, but that’s as far as it goes.
The Catholic Church recognizes a governments right to protect its people, that includes the death penalty, however, since it involves infliction of evil on another, the penalty must be justifiable. The issue is, given the fact that we now have the ability to lock someone away for life, is the death penalty out-moded?
I think it is, with exceptions as stated above. For instance if the charismatic leader of an anti-American suicide cult were imprisoned and our laws forbade holding him incommunicado – we’d be justified in executing him to protect our citizens. It’s a strong test, sure, but it’s a strong punishment. Same goes for war, as much as this jackass likes to think so, there is no doctrine against war per se. If it’s justified. I would think that if the UN voted to use force against a malevolent dictator who was defying the will of the UN, that would be pretty justified to me. But hey, some people might not see it that way.
Get this jackass to read a Chatechism and stop telling Catholics what their own fucking doctrine is.
Since those jobs are already filled by Those Who Do the Jobs Americans Won’t Do®, there are still plenty of positions in academia in the classroom and in administration.
Got that, folks? Abortion is all about saving lives. Hundreds of thousands of them a year. And it improves millions of them!
Except for the ones it ends. Jill, you are insane. Completely and totally disconnected from reality.
Hmmmm.
The funny thing about rabid feminists is as they age their politics change rather dramatically. From my, admittedly meager, recollections I believe most of the 1960’s radical feminists eventually got married, settled down and either had kids or adopted them.
Which makes you wonder if they regretted the decades lost.
Er, marc? I was merely echoing your use of “the church.”
When you blink, do you discover a whole new world?
Hmmmm.
Really? In America? Hundreds of thousands of women who get abortions would otherwise *die* from childbirth?
How amazingly circa 1622 AD.
memomachine
Because of the misogany!
According to Lancet exit interviews of hundreds of aborted fetuses.
Did you back-wards assed knuckledraggers really not know that pregnancy was a curable disease?
The Church’s teachings with respect to homosexuality are in flux, I think it’s safe to say.
No more than abortion, which is to say: some at the radical fringe are trying to ignore what the Bible clearly says and inject culture into it. This has always been the bane of the church.
– Worthwhile note: (back of the book contemplation)
– “It must be profoundly confusing these days to be a gay femanist, Secular Progressive, pro-Islamist, activist Catholic.”…. Like – fuck yeh…