On Saturday, Minority Leader John Boehner came to a fund-raising breakfast for Congressman Pat. Thing is, he'd done a dinner for 5th District Congressman Virginia Foxx the night before.
Google Pat and John and you get only old stuff. Google Virginia and John and you get her inivitation.
Gee, wonder why John even came to the breakfast if he didn't want anyone to know or see them together?
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Trying to get my mind around these connections.
One thing the three honorable members of Congress all have in common is that they are Catholics.
And they're a particular variety of Catholics: right-wing ones.
In Feb. 2006, Catholics for Faithful Citizenship issued a press release noting that Boehner's representation of Catholic moral teaching is tunnel-visioned and overlooks key issues such as poverty, war and peace. It's focused almost entirely on abortion and pelvic morality.
The aforementioned press release is at:http://press.arrivenet.com/politics/article.php/752788.html
Boehner's strong anti-gay record can be reviewed at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Boehner's+antigay+record-a0143240716
Foxx has been recognized as "True Blue" by the anti-gay Family Research Council.
An interesting configuration, indeed: three Catholic politicians, two of them representing an area with a small percentage of Catholics. A Catholic political group characterizes the stand of one of these three (Boehner) as cafeteria Catholicism, because it focuses exclusively on abortion and pelvic morality while ignoring the abundant social teachings of the Catholic church.
And then there are the rumors that one of the three is gay but closeted....That one (Pat M.) was quoted a while back in Time magazine saying the Catholicism of the Charlotte region is purer and truer than Catholicism elsewhere in the country.
What holds this group together, I wonder? And how would the alliances hold up if one of them turned out to be a closeted family values Republican voting against gay rights while living a secret gay life?
Makes you wonder....
Quick addendum: it was the Charlotte Catholic diocese, which covers all of western NC, that McHenry was talking about in that Time article on truer and purer Catholicism--not the city itself.
To answer my own question about what binds these strange bedfellows together: I'd say, Follow the money.
It's true they are all Catholic and share their own peculiar brand of Catholicism, which departs from where most American Catholics are. Polls show the majority of American Catholics supporting basic rights for gay folks, and supporting legislation to outlaw discrimination against gay folks.
The Charlotte diocese has some extremely wealthy and well-connected Catholics, whose money is used 1) to thwart media investigation of skeletons in the Catholic closets of the region and 2) to buy glowing press for the Catholicism of the region and its political leaders.
Follow the money, and the picture will become a lot clearer--that strange picture of anti-gay Catholics who may include closeted gay Catholics all sharing the same political bed....
Lots of money is flowing behind the scenes in some of these stories, and tracking it to its sources would be enlightening, indeed.
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