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May 19, 2011
As an LGBT advocacy publication, we seldom find ourselves in agreement with the Catholic Church. But we applaud those faithful who are pressing for an expanded definition of “pro-life” that includes actual living, breathing humans.
Seventy priests, nuns and professors recently took U.S. House Speaker John Boehner to task for what they called an “anti-life budget” that shrugs off the Christian duty of the powerful to care for the powerless. It’s refreshing to see followers of Christ asking, “What would Jesus do?” and realizing it would not be to force people to starve and die in the streets in order to give tax breaks to the insanely wealthy.
And while we’re at it, Fr. Thomas Kelley of Elkhorn deserves recognition for an ad blasting U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget as one that “abandons pro-life values.” Evangelicals joined with Catholics in paying for the ad, in which Kelly says the budget “makes huge, irresponsible cuts (that hurt) families who are struggling to find jobs and put food on the table, but provides big tax breaks for millionaires and large corporations whose profits are soaring.”
Indeed, after going on the offensive over budget deficits since taking control of the U.S. House, Republicans showed their true intentions when Democrats called their bluff by proposing to eliminate subsidies for oil companies, which are reaping record profits. The GOP unanimously voted down the motion on May 5.
Obviously, the deficit is only important to Republicans when they can use it to punish the poor, not when it comes to asking the special interests that fund their campaigns to give up taxpayer dollars they haven’t earned and don’t need.
Now Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki should get in on the act and use the weight of his office to pressure Gov. Scott Walker and his GOP cronies to abandon their plan to cut state tax credits to the poor that function as anti-poverty tools. Walker is trimming the Earned Income Tax Credit tax, which helps offset federal Social Security taxes and encourages work among the lowest-wage earners. In addition, he’s slashing the Homestead Tax Credit, which offsets property taxes for low-income homeowners, many of them elderly.
There is nothing in this plan, which essentially raises taxes on the poor, that’s either pro-life or Christian.
