Tuesday, August 26, 2008

California Bishops Support Anti-Gay Sentiment

The California Catholic Conference of Bishops spoke out against a California Supreme Court ruling requiring a doctor to inseminate a lesbian. In this case, Guadalupe Benitez wanted to become pregnant so that she and her partner could raise a child together. Dr. Christine Brody told them that she does not perform that procedure for unmarried couples. A course at the time that this occurred, lesbians were not allowed to be married in California.

The bishops, in responding to this case, are decrying that doctors will be required to go against their religiously formed consciences in cases of artificial insemination. The contradiction here is that this doctor has no problem performing artificial inseminations (which is officially against Catholic church teaching), she just does not want to do it for a couple whose relationship she does not acknowledge. Dr. Christine helps families break Catholic sexual ethics on a daily basis, but the bishops do not express a specific problem with that; they have a problem with her denying this "sinful" procedure to lesbians. The California Catholic Conference is really embarrassing themselves.

A Faithful Catholic

2 comments:

Terrence Berres said...

No link? Here's the Catholic News Service report.

You say "Dr. Christine helps families break Catholic sexual ethics on a daily basis, but the bishops do not express a specific problem with that..."

If not, I assume it's because it's not the issue in this case. If this case involved instead a physician who declined to perform artificial inseminations at all on religious grounds, do you have any substantiation for your claim that the California bishops would not support the physician's position?

Dad29 said...

she just does not want to do it for a couple whose relationship she does not acknowledge

No. It's a relationship which does not legally exist.

Big difference.