It’s an ironic turn of the flow of history. The Seattle archdiocese was once renowned for its dedication to social justice care inclusive of all, including LGBTQ individuals, and thus was investigated in the 1980s by the Vatican at the instigation of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Now that Ratzinger is Pope Benedit XVI, the Seattle archdiocese has been transformed into being one of the swords of the Vatican’s crackdown on those who resist its legendary three D’s of discipline, dogma and docility. Archbishop Peter Sartain has been assigned to impose the three D’s on, of all people, the church’s own nuns. A Vatican assessment has accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of nuns in the United States, of deviating from Catholic teaching in areas such as homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, and women’s ordination. Sartain has been handed the power to put them back in line.

Coming on the heels of Sartain’s unique and aggressive stance against Washington’s marriage equality law (see post below), he now moves into a very high-profile role amongst U.S. bishops. Why give the job to someone in such an out-of-the-way diocese as Seattle’s? Well, as some have speculated, a cardinal’s red hat may be waiting — depending on Sartain’s own acts of determined discipline.

“New Vatican job for Sartain: Make Nuns Toe the Line,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 4/18/12

“Sisters of Compassion Need a Hand in Dealing with the Pope,” Seattle Times, 4/26/12

For part of the historical background, see the “Catholic Hill” excerpts on this site.

Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain has urged all parishes in the archdiocese to collect signatures for a referendum to overturn the Washington marriage equality law. This is in stark contrast to the more courageous and welcoming stance that a previous archbishop, Raymond Hunthausen, took three decades ago. While the Catholic Church has long expressed opposition to the government treating lesbians and gays equally in the application of civil marriage law, this appears to be the first time an archbishop has actively promoted the use of the churches themselves in such an aggressive anti-gay manner.

See Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “Catholic Bishops Bless Gay Marriage Rollback;”  The Stranger, “Archbishop Turns Every Seattle Mass into an Anti-Gay Political Rally” and Seattle Times,  “Catholic Church Mixes it Up with Politics.” Also:  SartainLetter

For background on the contrasting welcoming stance by Archbishop Hunthausen in Seattle thirty years ago, see the excerpts on this website at On Catholic Hill. 

Good news…. Gay Seattle joined by Imagining Gay Paradise

A companion volume to Gay Seattle has now been published and is available in hard cover, paperback and digitally.   Gay Seattle examines the ways lesbians and gay men constructed a new home in the temperate rainforest climate and culture of the Pacific Northwest despite being exiled by sodomy laws and anti-gay medical practices.The new book,  Imagining Gay Paradise: Bali, Bangkok and Cyber-Singapore takes the exploration to the tropical beaches and peninsulas of Southeast Asia, tracing a century-long saga of gay men who created an aesthetic paradise in Bali in the 1920s and 1930s, an erotic paradise called Babylon in Bangkok in the 1980s, and a cyber-paradise in Singapore at the turn of the 21st century. You can get more information and read excerpts at the site linked above.

Both books will be the topic of a reading and discussion scheduled at Seattle University, April 12, 7-9 p.m. Stay tuned for more details about that and future discussions, particularly in Bali, Bangkok, Singapore, and Amsterdam.

Buy Gay Seattle from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or University of Washington Press

Add Gay Seattle to your Goodreads:

Buy Imagining Gay Paradise from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Columbia University Press, or Hong Kong University Press

Add Imagining Gay Paradise to your Goodreads:

This February, the fight for gay and lesbian marriage in Washington state is finally moving toward a successful legislative conclusion — some four decades after two men,  Faygele benMiriam and Paul Barwick, went to the court house in King County to demand a license. They were, of course, denied. The two later filed a lawsuit that made its way to the Washington State Court of Appeals which ruled that marriage was between a man and a woman only. What’s fascinating, of course, is that both men worked more from a fraternal understanding of how extended and innovative gay relationships could be constructed rather than a romantic mindset. Neither especially believed in that triple supremacy of romantic, heterosexual monogamy — but they did believe queers everywhere had a right to claim whatever type of relationship they wanted.  Theirs is one of the many stories you can read in Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging.

For the present, the accolades go to those legislators, especially state Senator Ed Murray, who patiently worked through years of objections with a step-by-step approach: a judicial challenge to the states Defense of Marriage Act (sorry to say the judges had not enough courage to strike down the law); a domestic partnership law; an “everything but the marriage word” domestic partnership upgrade; and finally gubernatorial support and legislative success.  A new story for another edition of Gay Seattle!

Jump to excerpts from Gay Seattle about the first attempt by two gay men to secure a marriage license in Seattle in 1971

 For an update on current relations between the Seattle Catholic Archdiocese and the local LGBTQ community, following the recognition by Washington state of marriage equality, see “Mass Uprising” by Dominic Holden in The Stranger.