gays had better stay off the jericho road

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum

By Tim Craig and Michelle Boorstein

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Same-sex marriage bill, as written, called a threat to social service contracts

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.

“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.

The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.

The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue

The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

“Lets say an individual caterer is a staunch Christian and someone wants him to do a cake with two grooms on top,” said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 6), the sponsor of the amendment. “Why can’t they say, based on their religious beliefs, ‘I can’t do something like that’?”

After the vote, the archdiocese sent out a statement accusing the council of ignoring the right of religious freedom. Gibbs said Wednesday that without Alexander’s amendment and other proposed changes, the measure has too narrow an exemption. She said religious groups that receive city funds would be required to give same-sex couples medical benefits, open adoptions to same-sex couples and rent a church hall to a support group for lesbian couples.

Peter Rosenstein of the Campaign for All D.C. Families accused the church of trying to “blackmail the city.”

“The issue here is they are using public funds, and to allow people to discriminate with public money is unacceptable,” Rosenstein said.

Rosenstein and other gay rights activists have strong support on the council. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the judiciary committee, said the council “will not legislate based on threats.”

The problem with the individual exemption is anybody could discriminate based on their assertion of religious principle,” Mendelson said. “There were many people back in the 1950s and ’60s, during the civil rights era, that said separation of the races was ordained by God.”

Catania, who said he has been the biggest supporter of Catholic Charities on the council, said he is baffled by the church’s stance. From 2006 through 2008, Catania said, Catholic Charities received about $8.2 million in city contracts, as well as several hundred thousand dollars’ worth this year through his committee.

“If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer take city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes,” Catania said. He also said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

Terry Lynch, head of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, said he did not know of any other group in the city that was making such a threat.

“I’ve not seen any spillover into programming. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen if [the bill] passes,” he said.

Cheh said she hopes the Catholic Church will reconsider its stance.

“Are they really going to harm people because they have a philosophical disagreement with us on one issue?” Cheh asked. “I hope, in the silver light of day, when this passes, because it will pass, they will not really act on this threat.”

unloading luxury in the blue ridge

William J. Moses and Patricia Kluge are unloading their pad, plan to move next door they say, but who knows what is really going on with this ex-stripper  maverick mistress?

Albemarle, The $100 Million Listing

by Deidre Woollard  Oct 31st 2009 at 1:01AM

Earlier a bunch of you lamented that we didn’t have the $100 million listing in Charlottesville, Virginia up yet. Thanks to a kind gentleman for directing me toward the listing which has now gone live. The Wall Street Journal broke the story that Virginia winemaker and philanthropist Patricia Kluge has put Albemarle House, her 300-acre English country estate up for sale for $100 million,making it one of just a handful of listings in the nine-figure range. Kluge is the former wife of John Kluge, a billionaire who founded the Metromedia. She has been living in the area for a while making wine and working on a development called Vineyard Estates which is selling multi-million homes in the area.

Her estate is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn-Highland on over 300 acres. On the grounds there are three ponds, a pool as well as a pool house, log cabin, a greenhouse and several staff cottages. The main house was completed in 1985 and spans over 25,000 square feet with 45 rooms. The home was designed by architect David Easton and his team and includes a theater, library, recreation room with spa and sauna, a card room and an Islamic gallery featuring an antique Syrian fountain. It’s a bit of a pastiche, gilded Versailles-like rooms contrast with simpler spaces that have a more Early American style. Should you have some leftover cash after buying the home you can turn the front grounds into an 18-hole golf course. Arnold Palmer has already designed it.

Any guesses on a final sale price?

Gallery: Albemarle

may you be brave in times of trial and feel god close to you

thy will be done

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo illustration by Kalandrakas, www.jessleecuizon.com

West coast advertising executive Robbins Milbank knew great success and great sorrow in his life. In good times and bad, Milbank says he found strength in his belief in the Lord’s Prayer—and the connection it gave him to God.

Thy Will Be Done

I believe it is very easy to build God in your own image and very hard to rebuild Him when you crumble. I was born to see and experience the love of God. I saw Him in my father, whose kindness and wisdom led me through a thousand anguishes of youth. I saw Him in my wife–especially in her. I told my father about her when I was nine years old. “We’re going to marry,” I said.

He smiled. “I’m glad you feel like telling me. I hope you’ll always want to tell me things like this.”

For many years I was rich, seeing and loving and touching these children of God. I knew what I believed, because I believed in them and they in me.

They died. First my father. Then my wife. Why do I still arrange my desk-work in neat piles? Why do I straighten a piece of furniture? Why do I try to arrive at appointments a minute early? Why do I lie down to sleep or get up in the morning? Have you ever wandered through an empty house looking for a purpose? You do a lot of little things automatically.

I’d like to talk about my house. It talks to me quietly in the night of the love it still shares, of the garden that still surrounds it, of the laughter of our children and grandchildren and our pride in them. I lie on my bed pulling words around, trying to understand their meaning. Words like “I believe.”

This is know: I believe in the Lord’s Prayer, all of it, but particularly where it says, “Thy will be done.” For me, that’s one clear channel to God. That one belief, “Thy will be done,” carries me through each act of each day. It teaches me to live with all that is given me and to live without what is taken away. It rescues me from the idea that happiness for myself is either important or desirable. But it doesn’t at all destroy happiness as a gift I can give, miraculously, from an empty vessel.

I believe I’m held here in trust, that I have no right to violate that trust through negation, no right to turn inward or away from people or jobs I can do. What if I do start through habit and finish in a half

I believe it is very easy to build God in your own image and very hard to rebuild Him when you crumble. I was born to see and experience the love of God. I saw Him in my father, whose kindness and wisdom led me through a thousand anguishes of youth. I saw Him in my wife–especially in her. I told my father about her when I was nine years old. “We’re going to marry,” I said.

He smiled. “I’m glad you feel like telling me. I hope you’ll always want to tell me things like this.”

For many years I was rich, seeing and loving and touching these children of God. I knew what I believed, because I believed in them and they in me.

They died. First my father. Then my wife. Why do I still arrange my desk-work in neat piles? Why do I straighten a piece of furniture? Why do I try to arrive at appointments a minute early? Why do I lie down to sleep or get up in the morning? Have you ever wandered through an empty house looking for a purpose? You do a lot of little things automatically.

I’d like to talk about my house. It talks to me quietly in the night of the love it still shares, of the garden that still surrounds it, of the laughter of our children and grandchildren and our pride in them. I lie on my bed pulling words around, trying to understand their meaning. Words like “I believe.”

This is know: I believe in the Lord’s Prayer, all of it, but particularly where it says, “Thy will be done.” For me, that’s one clear channel to God. That one belief, “Thy will be done,” carries me through each act of each day. It teaches me to live with all that is given me and to live without what is taken away. It rescues me from the idea that happiness for myself is either important or desirable. But it doesn’t at all destroy happiness as a gift I can give, miraculously, from an empty vessel.

I believe I’m held here in trust, that I have no right to violate that trust through negation, no right to turn inward or away from people or jobs I can do. What if I do start through habit and finish in a half dream? The belief suffices: “Thy will be done.”

I believe there is nothing passive yielding my will to God’s. It keeps me very busy using the brain He gave me to study fields that need plowing; using the heart He gave me to remember these fields belong to His people; using the faith He gave me to pass up self-satisfaction for doing something I want to do anyway.

I noticed something: you may notice something quite wonderful in most everybody you meet, even in those who annoy you or frighten you. But each, in his way, is truth–neither to be rejected nor run from. If you believe “Thy will be done,” there is less temptation to run away from yourself. You can’t escape, anyway.

A Princeton graduate and son of a prominent New England family, Robbins Milbank worked as a logger in British Columbia for six years. He later moved into advertising, becoming a vice president at McCann-Erickson, and wrote docu-dramas for television.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan for posting this in excerpt form……..