There are high levels of subjectivity present when one is making a judgment as to whether or not discrimination is present toward any religious tradition.

The former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark and now the Cardinal in Washington seemed to me to interpret every disagreement I had with Catholic policy or practice to be an act of discrimination. I regretted it, but would never cease opposition for fear he might be offended. Allow me to put that into context.

I would never think of opposing Catholic theology or Catholic moral practice when that Church is attempting to inform the Catholic faithful or even to educate the faithful about the teachings of the Catholic Church. If individual Catholics disagree with their church’s theological understanding or if they refuse to obey a Catholic moral precept, then they must decide whether or not to live as people unfaithful to their church’s perspective or for the sake of their own integrity to leave that community of belief.

That is, however, a matter between that person and his or her church. When representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, however, try to force the precepts or practices of their church into the laws of the land that will inevitability govern the lives of all people, whether Catholic or not, then opposition, I believe, should be public and vigorous. That is not an act of religious discrimination, it is a part of the public process of political debate.

If people like the former Archbishop of Newark identify his church’s position on public moral issues with the absolute law of God, it is easy for him to demonize his opponents and to confuse opposition with prejudice against his church. That, however, is his problem, not a problem of discrimination.

I, for example, think the Roman Catholic Church is totally wrong in its definition of homosexuality as deviant and unnatural. I think that definition feeds discrimination against gay and lesbian people. I regard it as profoundly uninformed.

This Church has been wrong before as history so clearly reveals. A century ago this Church called left-handedness deviant and unnatural and tried to correct “nature’s mistakes” by tying the left hands of children in parochial schools behind their backs to “retrain them” in what is “normal.” Four hundred years ago they were wrong about Galileo and the centrality of the planet earth in the universe. For that the Vatican actually apologized in 1991, but the price paid for that error was very high in the scientific community. Bruno, for example, was burned at the stake for his “heresy” in suggesting that the earth rotated around the sun.

I also think the Roman Catholic Church is wrong in its definition of women that renders them incapable of being priests, bishops and even the pope. That, however, is a matter for that church to decide and those who disagree always have the right to choose to leave.

When this church’s definition of women, however, extends to the public arena and they seek to do such things as to criminalize abortion, close family planning clinics, prevent necessary sex education in public schools, try to prevent the distribution of condoms for drug addicts and even in the married relationship between an HIV positive husband and his uninfected wife, or attempt to keep the now legal morning after pill from being available over the counter, then I think people have the right to confront that church and resist that imposition.

No single religious perspective should be imposed by law on those who are not part of that religious tradition. I regard it as a strange thing when a gathering of all male ecclesiastical leaders feel that they have the moral right to proclaim in the name of God they call “Father,” what it is moral or immoral for a woman to do with her own body. It seems to me that the exclusion of women from that decision-making process renders the judgment inept at best, immoral at worst. I believe the Constitution was designed to protect citizens from just that kind of religious abuse.

Finally, I believe firmly in a person’s right to determine, within obvious limits, how he or she will die. Given both our enhanced longevity and our ability to postpone death without necessarily enhancing life, I think people have a right to choose death with dignity. I, therefore, oppose attempts on the part of any church to make that illegal for all.

In that opposition I once again hear Roman Catholic Bishops claim an anti-discriminatory bias. That is simply not so. If Roman Catholic people want to do what their Church requires, that is no problem for me. If that Church seeks to make non-Roman Catholic people abide by their teaching by seeking to write it into the laws of this land, that is a different matter.

I would, therefore, not want to be a patient in any hospital where policy was set by that hospital’s religious perspective, which might prohibit any patient from having available to them any legal procedure that might limit pain and that the patient and his or her doctor agreed to choose. Is that discrimination? I do not think so, but I have the sense that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church frequently interprets such opposition to be a discriminatory act.

Roman Catholics certainly have the right to define their faith and practice for Roman Catholics. They do not have the right to define the faith and practice of the non-Roman Catholic population. Roman Catholics have to decide for themselves whether they are willing to accept the teaching of their church.

Leaving that church, however, is then their only alternative, since this hierarchical church does not provide a forum for the people in general and women in particular to affect or to change their teaching.

If this question is asking whether religion of a person is a factor in hiring, promotions, housing, use of public facilities, or justice under the law, then I see nothing that indicates discrimination. Does opposition to the attempt of any religious tradition to impose its rules on the entire body politic constitute a form of discrimination? I do not think so. I think such opposition is every person’s duty and I rejoice in being the citizen of a religiously diverse nation.

I intend to do everything in my power to keep it so.