Manya Brachear -An Intellectual Bag of Hammers on Gay Marriage

Religion in Chicago Media - Bags of Hammers: Manya Brachear and Cathleen Falsani (emerita)

Supporters of gay marriage call the renewed effort to highlight natural law a clever but disingenuous appeal to the masses. Manya Brachear, The Seeker, of The Chicago Tribune

Let's see, you got invited for tea for an update on the man's cancer therapies and then you wait ten days and called your host a liar?

She's The Seeker!

Here's the deal, on December 10th Cardinal George invited members of the Chicago media over to his house for tea.  Illinois Reps. Greg Harris and Heather Steans are bursiting bowels, theirs and the usual Springfield chattel, old and new, to rush through the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act exactly one year after somehow living through the the Religious Freedom and Civil Union law, which was signed by Governor Pat Quinn, who will sign anything Personal Pac President and Illinois boss wrangler Terry Cosgrove tells him to sign. When Terry Cosgrove opens his yap, Planned Parenthood and Fred Eychaner's dollars pour out; when he clams up so do the dollars.

Among the doyennes and dowagers  of pop culture, religion, economics and of course politics, balancing tea-cups above their cankles, was Chicago's own Seeker, Manya Brachear, the religion/well-spiritualist one-time columnist and extant religion scribbler for The Trib, who somehow managed to convince Chicago that Cathleen Falsani, formerly of the Sun Times, was not just surfing in Nebraska. Yep, Manya Brachear is an intellect to cause hushed awe and reverence among the appliance at Sears Hardware.

Cardinal George explained to this congress of viragoes, yet again, that the Catholic Church and those who attend it maintain that the sacrament of marriage was instituted by Christ to give grace -Will and Grace not withstanding:

"Marriage comes to us from nature," Chicago's Cardinal Francis George said in a recent interview. "That's based on the complementarity of the two sexes in such a way that the love of a man and a woman joined in a marital union is open to life, and that's how families are created and society goes along. … It's not in our doctrine. It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of reason and understanding the way nature operates."

So, for next twenty days,  The "now moved-on" Seeker , Terry Cosgrove/Fred Eychaner rolo-dex and caught up with the voices necessary present a slam-dunk Gay Marriage New Years buffet of outrage:

"On sexual ethics, nature is neutral," said Bernard Schlager, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. "We're moral beings. We may look to nature for some aspects of how we are in our lives, but we answer to a higher standard. Sexual behavior is an expression of human love."
According to the tradition of natural law, every human being must seek a fundamental "good" that corresponds to the natural order to flourish. Natural-law proponents say heterosexual intercourse between a married man and a woman serves two intertwined good purposes: to procreate and to express a deep, abiding love. . . . And . . .Other people of faith disagree. Last Sunday, more than 250 Illinois clergy members, mostly Protestant and Jewish, endorsed the gay marriage bill as "morally just to grant equal opportunities and responsibilities to loving, committed same-sex couples. . . .

Alice Hunt, president of Chicago Theological Seminary, said the natural-law argument seems like a "strategic move."
"They quickly saw biblical marriage wasn't going to work," she said. "It doesn't work for me because you're still depending on one person or some group of people's interpretation of natural law. When you look at the history of marriage, there are many ways marriage has taken shape over time."

• Nature is neutral?   Tell that, Bernie Schlager, to Old John Stuart Mill who noted that “It (Nature) impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes them with stones… starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other hideous deaths in reserve…. All this Nature does with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and of justice.” 
• Marriage has taken shape in many ways? Concubinage? polyandry?  polygamy? Good old beer-goggled fornication?

Ten days and that was all Manya could come up with.  Manya, Gay Marriage Illinois is a political power play controlled by our elected officials in Springfield, Santa leaves toys for kids, the Easter Bunny is always seen in the company of former Gov. Pat Quinn, the Red Sun of Krypton turns green on reaching the earth's atmosphere,Oliver Stone has a history show on cable and big old bag of hammers has nothing on you.