It’s official. After a contentious few weeks same-sex couples began marrying in Iowa today, despite the actions of anti-gay activists who delivered petitions demanding state offices refuse to issue licenses to gay couples. But so far the day has proceeded without incident, many couples hoping to have the mandatory 3-day waiting period waived so they can exchange their vows today.

Watch:

Congratulations to our brothers and sisters in Iowa!

Catholic Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz said that gays could serve as priests in the Catholic Church provided they passed the required academic and psychological tests.

From The Philstar News Service (quotes in bold translated from Tagalog):

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said the Church imposes no ban on effeminate or those perceived to be gay men who want to be priests.

“They are the same just like everybody. So there’s no discrimination,” Cruz said in a radio interview this morning.

He said it all depends on how the person controls his sexual urges when he is already in the seminary or convents.

“Just like gay people we as priests also have to fight the temptation towards women,” Cruz said.

He noted that there are gay priests serving in the Churches but they have passed the required academic and psychological tests.

The archbishop said there are many heterosexual men who have not been allowed to enter the seminaries because they failed to meet these requirements.

This is not the first time Cruz has voiced support for the gay community, having favored the rights of gays to join religious processions.

From the Manilla Standard…

But Dagupan-Lingayen Archbishop Oscar Cruz disagreed, saying he did not oppose gays joining the religious procession as long as they acted with dignity and wore formal dresses.

“If they are devotees, they are religious and they look decent, I believe they have the right to join in,” Cruz said.

“I think it would be better for us to see gays who act formally and decently in the Santacruzan rather than young and beautiful women who are not clean and [are] immoral,” he said.

I am try so desperately hard to avoid jokes about heterosexuals unqualified to be priests and unclean, immoral women. But I must resist. 🙂

In any event, this is as “gay friendly” an attitude we are likely to get from the church in one of the most Catholic countries on the planet. Bravo Father Cruz! Bravo!

Visit the Archbishop’s blog…

Note: Thanks to my husband for providing the translations…

Frank Rich in yesterday’s NY Times seems to think so, where he guts the infamous NOM video “Gathering Storm” and explores the movement’s waning support in the face recent gay marriage victories in Iowa and Vermont.

Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”

Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.

And Rich closes with this zinger…

“It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.”

Read the full NY Times essay. And in case you missed Colbert’s hilarious take on “Gathering Storm…”

Republican Vermont governor James Douglas has vetoed the gay marriage bill that recently passed both legislative houses. From his office…

“This legislation does not address the inequalities espoused by proponents. Regardless of whether the term marriage is applied , federal benefits will still be denied to same sex couples in Vermont. And states that do not recognize same sex marriage or civil unions will also deny state rights and responsibilities to same sex couples married in Vermont. This bill will not change that fact.

Vermont’s civil union law has afforded the same state rights, responsibilities and benefits of marriage to same sex couples. Our civil union law serves Vermont well and I would support congressional action to extend those benefits at the federal level to states that recognize same sex unions. But I believe that marriage should remain between a man and a woman.”

From WCAX in Vermont…

The Senate is expected to override the veto tomorrow morning. It is unclear what the House will do, and is currently shy the two thirds majority required to override the veto. The 11 Democrats who originally voted against the bill now support it, unhappy that the governor announced his intent to veto the bill before they had passed it.