Church gives pre-election scorecard
Gay marriage votes identified in mailings
As legislative elections loom, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference is sending letters to all 710 parishes in the state urging Catholics to ''share their profound disappointment" with lawmakers who did not vote to ban gay marriage earlier this year.
The mailings, issued by the lobbyist for the state's Catholic bishops, also prodded Catholics to offer their ''highest praise" for lawmakers who opposed gay marriage during this spring's Constitutional Convention, saying they acted ''so courageously in favor of traditional marriage."
While the letters made no reference to Election Day, they are arriving just five months before all 200 seats in the House and Senate are up for grabs on Nov. 2. The mailings did not endorse particular lawmakers or compare incumbent legislators to their opponents, but they follow earlier attempts by the bishops and the conference to influence the Legislature on gay marriage.
The Massachusetts Legislature voted by a slim margin in March to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2006 that would ban gay marriage, but establish civil unions for gay couples. Gays and lesbians began marrying legally in Massachusetts May 17, the result of a November ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court.
The recent church mailings assessed lawmakers based on the votes they cast during the Constitutional Convention in February and March and urged priests to ''share this information with your parishioners through your parish bulletin and other means."
''We leave it up to each pastor to disseminate or not disseminate our analysis of votes; it's his prerogative," said Gerald D'Avolio, executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the Beacon Hill organization that lobbies for the archbishop of Boston and the bishops of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester. ''I think it's a matter of right that we let people . . . know the position of the people who represent them."
Although many special-interest organizations issue regular scorecards grading lawmakers on a variety of issues, the church mailing drew some criticism yesterday.
''I think the Massachusetts Catholic Conference is itching to get its tax exemption revoked," said Robert Boston, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonpartisan, Washington-based advocacy group that is critical of involvement by religious organizations in electoral politics. ''It would be difficult to look at this as anything other than a command of who to vote for and who to vote against, and the IRS code is very clear that churches and other religious bodies may not engage in that type of activity."
Daniel Avila, associate director for policy and research at the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, disagreed, saying the timing of the mailing had nothing to do with the elections. Rather, he said, it was merely sent on the heels of the debate.
The bishops have been outspoken in their opposition to gay marriage, sending a 1-million-piece mailing to Catholic homes urging priests to deliver homilies and prayers on the subject and appearing at rallies to encourage Catholics to lobby their local legislators. Pope John Paul II and other church officials have also spoken repeatedly about the importance of stopping gay marriage, which is now legal in Massachusetts and in the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Canada.
About half of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and 67 percent of the Legislature's seats are filled by Catholic lawmakers. However, many of the state's lawmakers have made a career of opposing the church on moral issues such as birth control, abortion, and the death penalty.
The mailing, which was dated in May but still hadn't arrived in some parishes yesterday, drew strong support from Catholics opposed to same-sex marriage.
''It's important for everyone to know how their elected officials have voted on issues that are important to Catholics, and ultimately Catholics may wish to remember that for future purposes," said Bill Hobbib of Newton, a software industry executive who has been an outspoken supporter of the church's efforts to preserve marriage as a heterosexual institution. ''It is perfectly reasonable for any organization to give a scorecard of how legislators have voted on particular issues, and no one in the church is taking political sides in a partisan way, but simply reporting how did they vote on an issue important to us, like they might do on abortion or stem cell transplants or school vouchers or any other issue important to the church and society."
A political scientist who is studying the Catholic Church's role in the gay marriage debate in Massachusetts said the letter is another manifestation of the unusual energy the bishops have committed to this issue. He said that the bishops ''realize the intensity has to be maintained, when the issue is fading away a little bit," and that ''it's fair to say that they want to call legislators to account."
''The outreach to people in the pews has been more intensive than anything I can recall," said Maurice Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. ''I don't think it's inappropriate -- this isn't as far as religious groups could go. But legislators will feel heat over it. What the Massachusetts Catholic Conference was able to show during the constitutional convention debate was that it is effective to reach out to people in the pews through their pastors."
In Vermont, where Bishop Kenneth A. Angell was a vocal opponent of civil unions for gays and lesbians, nearly a dozen lawmakers who supported civil unions were defeated in 2000.
Reflecting a new degree of computer sophistication for the church, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference mailings are tailored by parish, telling each priest the votes of lawmakers who represent the district where the parish is located. They assess eight votes taken during the constitutional convention debates earlier this year. The letters also point priests to the Massachusetts Catholic Conference's website, where they have assessed the voting records all lawmakers who took part in the gay-marriage constitutional debate.
In a document posted on the web, the church singles out for praise two Democratic senators, Robert S. Creedon Jr. of Brockton and Richard T. Moore of Uxbridge, and 15 representatives ''who took an active role in the debates and/or behind the scenes to garner the greatest protection possible" for heterosexual marriage. The 15 House members were from the Democratic and Republican parties and included Representative Philip Travis of Rehoboth, who championed a constitutional amendment that would have banned gay marriage and Vermont-style civil unions.
In addition, the document lists 45 legislators who ''voted in agreement with the MCC's position 100 percent."
The document describes 76 legislators as ''core supporters of same-sex marriage opposed to letting the people vote" on a constitutional amendment proposal.
Raphael Lewis can be reached at RLewis@globe.com. Michael Paulson can be reached at MPaulson@globe.com. 