Dan Yorke radio show hosts bishop on same-sex marriage

Hour-long talk comes in wake of A.G. Lynch's statement that Rhode Island should validate Mass. unions

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PROVIDENCE - Saying he feels a strong obligation to speak out on issues of moral and cultural import, Bishop Thomas Tobin took to the airwaves Friday afternoon, and for an hour on WPRO's Dan Yorke radio talk show discussed why same-sex marriage isn't marriage, and homosexual behavior can never be accepted or condoned.

The bishop was continuing his response to an opinion issued Feb. 20 and made public on Ash Wednesday by Attorney General Patrick Lynch stating that "Rhode Island will recognize a same-sex marriage lawfully performed in Massachusetts as a marriage in Rhode Island."

Bishop Tobin suggested that the marriage of Lynch's sister a week earlier to another woman had to "affect his view of the world." He added, "I like him very much. He's a very fine man and does a good job, and is often put in difficult positions. But he's wrong on this issue."

The bishop learned of Lynch's statement after returning from Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital. "Television news reported a decision on gay marriage," he said. "I found it ironic and unfortunate; the attorney general was giving me something else to pray about and to repent for."

Still, Bishop Tobin mused, it could have been worse. "He could have waited until Good Friday."

Significantly, Bishop Tobin put the issue of homosexual acts in the context of a broader morality, telling a male caller who identified himself as gay that just as he is called to celibacy, " I must be celibate as well." And so, for that matter, must all people be who are not married - a position Yorke noted is not very popular.

Bishop Tobin noted that homosexuality has been opposed in all cultures throughout the course of human history.

Church teaching "is not against gay people," he emphasized. "It is against specific acts. Gay people will listen to this and say, 'You cannot separate our sexuality from who we are.'"

Nonetheless, the bishop noted that abstinence is "another inconvenient truth," alluding to the title of Al Gore's documentary on global warming. "Society says don't talk about it, tries to avoid it. There's no one else [other than the Church] willing to take on the issues of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, gay sex." It is the entire religious community and people of moral conscience who must speak out, he urged.

Yorke asked the bishop about his initial statement in response to Lynch, in which he referred to a "relentless gay agenda."

Bishop Tobin elaborated, referring to the "political and social pressure of the gay community" in such events as the annual Valentine's Day rally.

"Sometimes people accuse the Catholic Church of imposing its agenda," he said. "Who's imposing an agenda on whom on this issue? That's troublesome to me. I'm trying to energize the Catholic community." Specifically, the bishop wants individuals to be in contact with their elected legislators to make their views known and to encourage them to uphold the traditional values of marriage rather than eroding or undermining the definition.

The lively, hour-long exchange took place in prime-time talk radio between 3 and 4 p.m., and made front-page headlines in Saturday's Providence Journal. Bishop Tobin was given the first hour of the program, which airs on WPRO 630-AM weekday afternoons.

(This article originally published in The Providence Visitor)