The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy funneled $2 million into entirely unsuccessful efforts to advance discrimination against LGBT people in the four marriage ballot states of Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington this election cycle, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.
The HRC report provides a snapshot of just how much money the Church, along with its close ally, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), poured into campaigns aimed solely at depriving LGBT Americans the freedom to marry.
The Vatican
The historic results of last week’s elections only highlight the growing disconnect between the fair-minded Romany Catholic laity and the anti-LGBT Church hierarchy, said the HRC, which cited a 2012 Public Religion Research Institute poll that found that nearly 60 percent of Catholics support marriage equality.
In fact, polling indicates marriage equality is one of the least important issues Catholics are currently concerned with. That same poll, from Belden Russonello, found that 83 percent of Catholics feel their bishops should not influence their vote.
“The American people went to the polls and affirmed one of the core values of the Roman Catholic Church: the belief that all humans are worthy of dignity, respect, and love,” said HRC President Chad Griffin.
“The Church and NOM can continue pouring money into discriminating against LGBT people, but the writing is on the wall for their anti-equality agenda. The Roman Catholic hierarchy should be focusing on taking actions that actually improve people’s lives, not spending precious resources on spreading malicious lies aimed at tearing down an entire community of people.”
In Minnesota, the Roman Catholic Church spent upwards of $1.3 million, funding nearly 25 percent of the failed attempts to write discrimination into the state’s constitution. The Church’s funding included hundreds of thousands of dollars from dioceses across the country.
The report also highlights the Roman Catholic Church’s donations to states where voters affirmed marriage equality – more than $100,000 in Maine; well over a quarter-million dollars in Maryland; and $307,000 in Washington.
Much of this funding likely came without the knowledge of parishioners; and as diocesan schools and important programs like soup kitchens and domestic violence initiatives struggle for resources, the Roman Catholic Church has instead chosen to fund political campaigns targeting gay and lesbian couples.
Despite voters rejecting the anti-LGBT agenda financed by the Roman Catholic Church and NOM, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently re-committed to fighting against equality for LGBT Americans.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – a leading anti-LGBT voice within the Roman Catholic Church and one of the chief architects of California’s Proposition 8 – said the Church must continue funding discrimination because people “don’t understand” marriage.
The report breaks down publicly reported in-kind and cash expenditures from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Knights of Columbus, and NOM to the four ballot states.
Final campaign figures from Maine and Maryland will be available in the coming weeks.
The complete HRC report is here.
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time to start making them pay taxes. don’t you think a church that owns it’s own country has enough money to pay taxes
It’s too bad they couldn’t spend the money on poor people or public housing or something useful other than trying to deny people their rights. Smh…
churches need to pay taxes.
… Organized-H8!!!
I find it sadly ironic that they oppose so vehemently gay marriage, when a crapton of their priests are gay.
WOW…waaaaaaaaay too much money and time on their hands…
TAX THEM!!!!
Why does anybody give this church a dime?
Wow, that money could be used for so many better things like…I don’t know…Feeding the homeless….
Two million they should have given to the poor and those,who lack food and thd staples of life shame on them
Those cunts forgot to give some money to REAL charity. How shameful.
A complete waste of money.
YET, 2 million children world wide starved and died :( WOW. how sad, so much wasted money to fight love, only to be on losing side while poor, hungry, weak and truly needy of 2 million bucks suffer!
F*cktards. I don’t see the Pope selling his vestments or the artworks in the Vatican Museum to help feed, clothe, house, & treat the poor… & there is little question that such treasures would fetch huge prices. Billions. & what about all the real estate the Church owns?
Why is that, I wonder? Could it be that the teachings of Catholicism, with regard to the poor, are just so much hot air & bullsh*t? Well, why IS that???
Could it be that Catholicism is more concerned with its own survival than with helping the poor?
That marriage equality really threatens the survival of the Catholic Church, because it takes out of the Church’s hands the decision to reproduce & make more believers?
& if the Church can no longer force poor families to have more children, because of access to family planning, won’t it mean that those families might be able to climb out of poverty?
& if those poor families climb out of poverty, won’t that mean that they no longer need to go to the Church for comfort, solace, or spiritual uplift?
In a nutshell:
Keep ‘em poor + Keep ‘em reproducing = More “believers” (customers) for the Church.
Marriage equality means the Church won’t be in control of the “means of [re-]production” anymore.
Fuck the Vatican! I can’t even begin to imagine how many hungry children they could’ve fed, cured or put clothes on with that kind of money.
Time to tax the Catholics
BUGGER THE CHURCH!!
iN Additon to that we need to IMPRISON drug cartels for giiving gay and lesbian people like us the DELUSION OF DRUGS, WHICH ARE all illegal are worth it…this is A MAJOR PROBLEM AND ITS NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN SAN FRANCSCO OR COWBOY HAT SICK DALLAS TX
1
Maybe they should feed the hungry and house the homeless….
2 million they could have spent feeding the hungry……..
boy that’s a surprise should have spent that much saving boys from being molested by clergy
2 million? thats nothing
shame!
There going to need cough up a billion soon:-)
Time to tax all churches who raise and use $$$ to promote hate instead of Charity!
Another good reason religious organizations should not be tax exempt
Wow-and to think they could have used that money to feed children, fight disease, you know-silly stuff like that!
Instead of feeding the HUNGRY, like many people had mentioned. They rather spent money putting fences around their corrupted churches to prevent homeless from going inside or sleeping near..
They make me sick, just like the mormons, christians ect…..
While they used that money to pursue a homophobic inquisition, their bishops and the Pope are deliberateluy ignoring the murder of GLBTQ people in Uganda and other parts of Africa. Wher is the love of the Jesus they allegedly proclai, the good news and caring, compassion and offering sanctuary protection to those whose lives are endangered. They have crossed the line and should be charhed with complicity for war crimes in Africa and disseminating hate before the World Court at the Hague.
That may be what they funneled internal spending would make it more.
That $2M could have been spent living the beatitudes.
The desperate poor outside the Vatican will never see that
I shine using those funds to feed and education and house those in need…. Just a thought
2 million? Maybe 2 originating from Rome itself, but the Catholic fraternity ‘Knights of Columbus’ are said to have coughed up $10 million, and god alone knows how the amount both in cash and kind [the mandatory letters from the pulpits, etc.] that individual bishops chipped in. The cynic in me wonders if some in the Church know that they’ll lose a ton of prospective priests if young gay Catholic men suddenly realize that they are as good as everyone else, just as deserving of god’s love and a family of their own as their straight brothers and sisters.
They should lose their tax exempt status in the US immediately!
Glad they gave their monies to a losing cause.
This is wrong in so many ways. That money would’ve been better spent helping the needy. Not the least of which, isn’t the Church giving money to influence laws a violation of the separation of church and state? You want to influence the law? Then you should start paying taxes.
How stupid can people get? This is one of the reasons why I hate churches. They say they’re gonna help people when they don’t. That money could’ve gave kids and their families in Africa food and the medicine that they need. That money could’ve went to the homeless. Or it could’ve went to fighting animal shelters to stop killing animals for no reason. The list goes on and on but they chose to spend it on a lost cause. We should make a petition that shuts down churches like this because they don’t do nothing but lie and promote bullying.
They could have fed a lot of hungry kids with $2 million.
Fucking haters! You lose and you’re going the way of the dinos!
How much did they spend on loaves and fishes?
ZE-RO
They could have fed the hungry with that!
HA HA SUCKERS!!!!
This $$$ is better use to kid that have food!!
Behind money lies fear.
And also, @Elsie: Regarding animal shelters, kill shelters are the only ones that receive any government funding. That’s why they are so much more abundant. No-kill shelters, like Peggy Adams Animal Shelter or Big Dog Rescue Ranch are stripped of their right to assistance and become entirely reliant on private funding. It’s so unfortunate, but that’s why!
When God comes down for that big blue sky and starts throwing the damned and hateful into the fire of hell to burn in the devils flames all these haters from religions are going to be shocked when they become first in line for that fall into hell fire and brim stone.
wow what a waste of money on something that should be legal
How many people could that have given food and shelter or even an education to?
How much did they spend on the fight against child molesters?
And because of the tax breaks the church gets, its our money they are spending. Just not fair.
There should be a fine or something for that
http://www.wehomo.com/gay-marriage-where-do-we-stand/
The Catholic Church is merely a social network. It has no more to do with God than the Pharisees in Biblical times whom Jesus condemned. It is a shame that we allow them to have such an influence in the media with their hate filled messages of judgement and condemnation all the time.
This should be evidence enough for the IRS to open a full investigation into whether they are misusing their tax exempt status.