The Catholic Church is the spiritual home to 1.1 million Minnesotans. Roughly 1 in 5 of the state's citizens -- and 2 of 5 of its regular churchgoers -- are Catholic.
At its highest levels, led by Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt, the church is pushing for passage of a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between only a man and a woman, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars and urging the faithful to vote "yes."
Some parishioners and Catholic-related organizations are pushing back with equal fervor.
The chief group opposing the amendment says it has thousands of Catholics on its side, and its first TV ad featured a Catholic couple voting "no."
There's a diversity of views within the faith, and it doesn't always cut along predictable lines.
It includes, as in the stories below, people with homosexual orientations or who are straight but have people close to them who are gay and are supporting the amendment. It also includes current, retired and former priests who have dedicated their lives to serving the church but are opposing its leaders on this question.
Whether the amendment passes or fails on Election Day will depend a lot on how Minnesota Catholics vote.
FROM LESBIAN TO 'VOTE YES' ORGANIZER
At a recent Catholic parish festival, a woman walks up to a table promoting the marriage amendment and challenges the volunteers staffing it. We're all children of God, she says. Where does Jesus say homosexuality is
wrong?A volunteer steps forward. She talks about the effects on children of families being broken by same-sex attraction and says that even though society evolves, God and his plan for the world do not.
The two sides part, each saying they'll pray for the other.
After the woman walks away, someone in the pro-amendment crowd refers to her as an "idiot." The volunteer says, no, it's a lack of proper formation.
For the volunteer, who asked to go by the initials M.A.D. because she fears repercussions at work if identified, building what she sees as a properly formed conscience took years.
She lived as a lesbian for 18 years, nearly 11 of them in a committed relationship that she considered a marriage.
But it was ultimately unsatisfying. She is now living a single, chaste life. And she works as a parish captain in her church, helping organize support for an amendment that would put gay marriage further out of reach in Minnesota.
How did she make that journey?
Reluctantly, at first.
After she decided to re-establish her bond with the Catholic church and leave her partner, she remembers trying to barter with God to let her stay low-profile. " 'I'll talk to people that you bring to me, but please, please, Lord, do not make me an evangelizer, do not put me on some street corner to tell my story,' " she recalls saying. "And now, I'm sitting here."
The "Vote No" campaign is counting on the power of personal conversations about the effect of the amendment on real people to persuade voters to oppose it. M.A.D. in a sense is making the opposite case: You can have close friends or family members who are gay, or even be gay yourself, and still vote yes.
"That's why I got involved, because, one, I've been there, and, two, I believe I can love and care for somebody with same-sex attraction and still support the amendment," she said. "They're two separate issues."
A PRIEST'S TURNAROUND
As a young Catholic priest, Ed Flahavan found the idea of gay sex, much less same-sex marriage, "disgusting and highly abhorrent." He recalls being "shocked" by the attempt by two Minneapolis men to get married in 1971.
Over time, his views on homosexuality changed.
He began to know and respect gay and lesbian parishioners in the congregations he served, and to be let in to their lives and the lives of their kids. He had a gay nephew die of AIDS. He served on a state task force collecting testimony from homosexuals about the discrimination they faced.
He recalls being forced to rethink his assumptions. "How does a person become or discover that they are in fact gay or lesbian? And I came to the conclusion that this is the way they are born," he said. "Then all of the rest of the stuff started to follow from that."
Now 81, Flahavan is a former priest, having resigned in 2005 to get married.
He's one of the leaders of a group of 102 ex-clerics publicly urging Minnesotans to vote no on the amendment.
He's even performed a few same-sex commitment ceremonies.
He's not ready to say gay marriage should be a sacrament of the Roman Catholic church -- "It's not a mature enough question yet" -- but he's all for allowing gay marriage under law.
"If two people love one another, want to live the rest of their days together, nurturing and holding, strengthening each other in the long run to the door, and have a family, I think they should enjoy in law the same privileges that I enjoy with my wife."
A QUESTION OF FOCUS
Too often, arguments on this topic don't remain civil, and there can be a special kind of vitriol aimed at those who stop living as gays and lesbians and take up the cause against gay marriage.
"There's a tendency for all of us to want to create a perception that fits what we believe. So for example if I was maybe in the (gay) lifestyle, and other people were threatening, challenging that perception with a different truth that I didn't understand or didn't believe, I could just ignore all that and say, 'Oh well, they're homophobe, or they don't really know what it's like, or they're just self-hating,' or something. Whereas sometimes it's just a question of we're different people, and we have different experiences," said a man who asked to be called "Nick" because of potential workplace repercussions if identified.
Nick had homosexual relationships for years. He's now chaste and has a strong personal relationship with Jesus, but that doesn't mean the same-sex feelings have gone away, he says.
"It's kind of a difference about what your focus is. For a lot of years, my focus was trying to find as much pleasure as I could about life, because life wasn't particularly pleasurable. I tried booze, I tried guys, I thought about suicide ... I finally figured out there was only one person who could fill that emptiness, at least for me, and that was Christ.
"There are at least a good number of us out there who have same-sex attraction that don't see any conflict with the marriage amendment, with voting yes," Nick says. "I think it's important for each one of us to be as faithful as we can to our own faith traditions and finding meaning in them, and also be willing to listen to others."
A CRITIC WITHIN
Last fall, Nienstedt told priests and deacons that he expected them to support the marriage amendment and that "there ought not be open dissension on this issue."
He had more specific instructions for the Rev. Mike Tegeder, priest at St. Frances Cabrini Church in Minneapolis who's been a rare internal, public critic of the church on this issue.
"If you choose not to offer your resignation, but continue to act openly or speak publicly about your opposition to Church teaching, I will suspend your faculties to exercise ministry and remove you from your ministerial assignments," Nienstedt wrote to Tegeder in a letter last November.
Asked why the archbishop hasn't removed Tegeder, given the priest's continued public criticism, spokesman Jim Accurso said the archdiocese doesn't comment on personnel matters. More generally, Accurso said, "we are not aware of a single incident where the conduct of an employee regarding the marriage amendment has raised the issue of discipline."
Nienstedt has declined Pioneer Press requests to be interviewed about the marriage question.
To Tegeder, Nienstedt's push is "putting things really out of kilter."
What threatens marriage most is a bad economy and divorce, he said. Trying to deny a small percentage of people with homosexual orientations the right to have committed relationships under law "seems to be cruel."
"That's the odd thing about Nienstedt's making a big issue out of this. There's a small percent of gay people, but what is it, 50 percent of marriages break down or something? Using the constitution to do what he says he's doing, defending marriage, it's like using a bazooka to kill a fly. You're going to get all kinds of collateral damage; you're not doing what you're trying to accomplish."
A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE
Seated at a St. Paul coffee shop last week, the Rev. Thomas Garvey opens a book containing the documents of Vatican II and points to a passage. "Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths," the text reads.
"You read that, and you say 'Who is anybody to tell me how I ought to think?' " Garvey said.
Garvey, 83, is retired but still serves in the archdiocese.
He was offended by Nienstedt's telling priests to fall in line on the marriage question.
It might be OK for the archbishop to require unanimity on a clear topic, Garvey says -- "Jesus Christ the son of God? OK, I'd buy in to that." But not an issue like same-sex marriage, where people's life experiences lead them to different places of conscience.
Garvey's own conscience on the matter was formed over more than five decades in ministry.
He saw a film years ago in which a young lesbian was sobbing over the isolation she felt in her own family. "Watching her mourn her treatment said to me pretty clearly we got the wrong position on this," he said.
Working with gay and lesbian parishioners solidified his view that they were no different from any other church members and deserved the right to be united with someone of the same sex under law, if not as part of a Catholic sacrament.
He and two other retired priests wrote a public letter to that effect this past spring, representing, they said, "many other priests who support this position."
The archdiocese issued a response saying in part that the retired priests' statement was "factually incorrect and does not represent Catholic teaching."
AGREE TO DISAGREE
Erich Hastreiter is a married father of three and a practicing Catholic. He's close to several gay people through work but is an active supporter of the marriage amendment. He tells a story about one experience debating the issue with others in the faith.
He was out to dinner with two gay couples and the aunt and uncle of one of the men, and the marriage amendment came up.
"Of course, all six of them were firmly in the camp of 'No' and that everyone should have that right. And then I just said that I believe that it's fundamental Catholic teaching; it's been around for a long time. Even on the social justice side, it's just safeguarding the right for children, and what's upholding the highest ideals for society long-term for future generations."
Several at the table had grown up Catholic and were familiar with the points he was making, Hastreiter said. The conversation was civil and respectful, and it ended well.
The uncle "essentially just started laughing and he said, 'Well, obviously we're not converting you, and you're not converting us,' and then everybody laughed, and we went back to having more drinks and eating really good food."
What it comes down to is "we agree to disagree," Hastreiter said. "At the end of the day, even though I have close relationships, my faith comes first."
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