Sep 04, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

The Catholic archbishop of Wash-ington this week announced his strong support for a voter initiative to ban same-sex marriage in the District.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl weighed in on the same-sex marriage issue the same day that Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of a Beltsville, Md., Protestant church, filed papers with the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics calling for placing a marriage initiative on the ballot in 2010.

The one-sentence text of the initiative filed by Jackson and seven other supporters says, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in the District of Columbia.”

Wuerl and Jackson said their decision to begin efforts on the marriage initiative this week were aimed at building opposition to a same-sex marriage bill that gay D.C. City Council member David Catania (I-At Large) is expected to introduce this fall.

“One challenge we see today is a lack of understanding by many people about what marriage is,” Wuerl said in a statement. “Marriage simply recognizes a relationship that is fundamental to nature: the complementarity of man and woman.”

Wuerl also sent a letter Tuesday to 300 local Catholic priests reiterating the church’s position that marriage must be restricted to a union between a man and a woman.

Jackson’s introduction of a marriage initiative this week comes less than four months after the election board and a judge with the D.C. Superior Court ruled that a voter referendum proposed by Jackson in April to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage recognition law could not be held because it would violate the city’s Human Rights Act.

Gay activists this week predicted the election board and the court would rule the same way on Jackson’s proposed initiative. But some activists speculated that the Beltsville minister’s game plan was to draw national attention to the D.C. gay marriage flap in an effort to persuade Congress to intervene to ban same-sex marriage in the nation’s capital.

Congress took no action on a law the D.C. Council passed 12-1 in May and Mayor Adrian Fenty signed that allows the city to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states or countries. By not voting to disapprove it, Congress allowed the law to take effect in July.

Gay activist Bob Summersgill, who has coordinated the local LGBT community’s advocacy efforts for domestic partnership and marriage equality legislation before the D.C. Council, said congressional Republicans hostile to D.C. home rule devoted most of their attention to issues like city funding for abortions and gun control and paid little or no attention to the city’s same-sex marriage recognition law.

He said Jackson and other opponents of same-sex marriage were almost certain to fail in an attempt to persuade the courts or Congress to clear the way for an initiative or overturn a gay marriage law.

“I think they’re doing this to raise money,” he said.

This week, one of Wuerl’s top assistants, Rev. Barry Knestout, an auxiliary bishop and vicar general for the Archdiocese, sent a separate letter to the election board expressing support for the proposed initiative.

“Originating in God’s creative plan, marriage is rooted in natural law, which forms the foundation not only for church teaching, but also for civil law,” Knestout said in his letter.

“Civil governments have recognized marriage throughout human history as between a man and a woman because of marriage’s unique role in protecting the rights of children to have both a mother and a father and because it creates a stable and secure foundation for society.”

The LGBT Catholic group Dignity Washington responded by sending its own letter to the election board calling on board members to reject the proposed marriage initiative on the grounds that it would violate the city’s human rights law.

“I would like to express our concern that members of the clergy, including Archbishop Wuerl and other interested groups, are trying to disrupt the activities of our elected officials and members of [the City] Council,” said Raymond Panas, president of Dignity Washington, in the letter.

“Marriage is also more than a religious ceremony which has been suggested to be part of God’s divine plan,” Panas said in the letter. “In the District, a marriage creates a civil contract that provides many benefits under the laws of the District.”

He said Dignity hoped the election board would reject the proposed initiative and “allow the District leaders to address this issue in the forum for which the citizens elected them.”

Gay activists and at least two local marriage equality organizations have pointed to a large number of local religious leaders who support same-sex marriage. They note that more than 100 clergy from ...