LGBT advocates lauded a speech Kaine, who is Catholic, delivered at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual gala over the weekend.
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Bishop Long said that his lecture was an effort “to articulate an understanding of the vision of Pope Francis of what the church is and our response to this vision in the light of the challenges we face today”.
Kaine, who became a marriage equality supporter relatively recently – in 2013 – has diverged from Catholic doctrine on other issues during his political career, CNN notes.
Nonetheless, Kaine went on to say: “But I think that’s going to change, too”.
Hasson concurs. “The Church’s doctrine, drawing from the Bible and tradition, teaches clearly that sexual activity outside of the marriage between a man and a woman is not good – it is harmful and destructive, like all sin”. Marriage is the only institution uniting one man and one woman with each other and with any child who comes from their union. It is very good.’ Pope Francis famously said, ‘Who am I to judge?’ And to that I want to add, who am I to challenge God for the attractive diversity of the human family? If I say a baby’s life can be taken, well then I’ve just said his health care can be taken and so can his education and his right to vote and his right to immigrate and his right to anything else, to be protected from terrorism. I don’t understand. This is basic logic and the people like Tim Kaine who present themselves to us to lead this nation, not only are they contradicting Catholic faith, they’re contradiction reason and they’re contradiction the objective of public service, which is to serve the public, not to kill the public.
Bishop DiLorenzo’s statement suggested that same-sex marriage purposely deprives children of the right to be “nurtured and loved by a mother and a father”.
New Ways Ministry, a Catholic LBGT ministry, thanked Kaine for his sentiments, saying they are shared by other American Catholics. The U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in all states in June 2015.
In defense of his position, Kaine said that his support of homosexual relations is rooted in the teaching of the Bible, and specifically the Book of Genesis. Still, some LGBT groups criticized his past reluctance to describe his support of marriage equality, instead opting at different times for civil unions and “the legal equality of relationships”.
The Clinton campaign declined to respond to the Bishop’s statement. A devout Catholic does not publicly defy the teaching of the Church. “What we see is a counter witness, instead of a faithful one founded in the truth”, read a blog post authored by Malone, USCCB president Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., and Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, chair of the USA bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
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Kaine’s Bishop, Francis X. DiLorenzo, was unequivocal in his response.
