Gov. Martin O’Malley, House Speaker Michael Busch and Delegate Heather Mizeur, along with other liberal Catholics, are momentously misguided: Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriage.

In the Feb. 24 Washington Post, O’Malley contrasts his “vocation” with Catholic bishops, saying his calling “requires … service to others in an arena of compromise.” O’Malley said he would sign the same-sex marriage bill if it made its way to his desk, and Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said he would vote for it.

Catholic lawmakers who compromise church teachings, with intent to upend natural law, or who commiserate to establish state authority to stipulate church matters regarding marriage do not serve others: They mislead, and they transgress.

In a Feb. 28 interview with Maryland.com, Mizeur (D-Montgomery), one of eight openly gay members in the General Assembly — seven in the House, one in the Senate — says “the church are the people in the pews.” She dismisses the Maryland Catholic Conference as representing the bishops, and says the Catholic “social justice tradition,” and private convictions of “conscience” lead reasonable Catholics to support gay marriage rights.

In a March 4 e-mail, the MCC notes that faithful Catholics sent 10,000 e-mails and thousands of phone calls to legislators to voice their ob-jections to the bill. The MCC called for 10,000 more e-mails and thousands more phone calls in the week leading up to the failed vote.

The three bishops of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Wilmington, Del., issued a joint call Feb. 28 to Maryland’s 1.2 million Catholics for “continued and urgent action” to defeat the bill; they note that 500 Catholics visited legislators during MCC lobby night Feb. 21.

“The word marriage,” the bishops write, “describes the commitment of a man and a woman to come together for life with the possibility of generating and educating children. This is not to say that some people over the ages have not come together in a variety of ways, physical, financial and social. But these various unions have always had other names because they are not marriage.”

Proponents worked furiously, too, to pass the bill. Mizeur conducted a door-to-door campaign. Even Katie O’Malley, though, could not effectively twist the last arm.

Mrs. O’Malley, a Baltimore District Court judge, lobbied hard in the final hours, the Post reports March 10, to persuade Delegate John Olszewski (D-Baltimore County) to vote for the bill. Rather, Olszewski (a Methodist) undertook a last minute amendment maneuver — rejected by the House, the Post reports March 11 — “to broaden the (bill’s) religious exceptions.”

Olszewski’s pivotal vote apparently depended on deleting restrictive language. He preferred leaving the choice regarding “activities related to ‘the promotion of marriage’” to religious organizations. Catholic adoption agencies do not serve gay couples; and on March 10, the Washington Times reports, Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colo., became the latest Catholic school to forgo enrollment for children of a lesbian couple.

House leaders withdrew the bill March 11. If it had passed, taxpayers would have paid millions for a referendum.

In the Senate, Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery), a proclaimed atheist (and lead sponsor of bills to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland), led floor debate on same-sex marriage. President Mike Miller (a Catholic) voted against it, but warded off a filibuster, to enable the bill to advance to the House.

Last year, gay marriage was a non-starter. This year, the bill sailed through the Senate and advanced dangerously close to passage in the House. Busch says in the March 11 New York Times, “This is a distance run, not a sprint. We’ll come back next year and take a strong look at it.”

Nancy E. Thoerig

Mount Savage