Catholic Group Urges Schools to Stop Honoring Corporations Seeking Homosexual ‘Marriage Rights’

In response to an amicus brief submitted by 379 corporations and businesses encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare homosexual “marriage rights,” the Cardinal Newman Society is urging Catholic schools, colleges and universities to refrain from providing honors, speaking platforms, or positions on boards and committees to the leaders and board members of these corporations.

In a press release Wednesday, the Cardinal Newman Society, whose mission is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education, stated the following:

We will publicly warn Catholic families and their bishops and pastors about any school, college or university that chooses to honor any board member or senior leader of the 379 corporations and business groups that joined in the March 5^th brief. Any such honor does harm to the Catholic Church and undermines our bishops, who have clearly explained why Catholics must defend marriage without compromise.

As Breitbart News reported last week, many major U.S. corporations have joined in the friend-of-the-court brief in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, claiming that having varied marriage laws in different states around the nation is costing them economically by denying them the supposed business value of “diversity.”

According to the brief:

Some of the states in which amici do business make marriage equally available to all of our employees and colleagues; others prohibit marriages between couples of the same sex and refuse to recognize existing same-sex marriages. This dual regime burdens amici. It creates legal uncertainty and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative complexities on employers, and requires differential employer treatment of employees who are similarly situated save for the state where they reside.

Arguing that the corporations’ claim that same-sex marriage is necessary to avoid their own “economic burden” is “shortsighted and materialistic,” the Newman Society said their position “rejects the primacy of the family in American economy and society as well as the principles of American federalism.”

The Cardinal Newman Society observes that in 2004, the U.S. Bishops declared, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, ‘Catholics in Political Life,’ 2004).”

“Just as these corporations chose to stand up and defend their self-interest, Catholic schools and colleges should stand up and defend the truth,” Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, said in a statement to Breitbart News. He continued:

When educators freely choose to honor someone, they send a strong message to their students and to the public about what is honorable. But what these corporations have done is to attack the very foundation of society, the family, for the purpose of easing compliance, reducing costs and boosting profits.

“We will identify and expose any Catholic school or college that honors a leader of any of these corporations,” Reilly asserted.

A complete list of the corporations and businesses that signed the amicus brief can be found here.