Hot Type, for the week of August 8, 2003 -- continued Cardinal Hates Gay Head A marriage is three things. First, it's a legal relationship between a man and a woman imposing on each of them certain rights and obligations. But a politician can argue that a gay couple should have an equal right to assume those rights and obligations. Second, it's an explicit public declaration of a man and a woman's unconditional commitment to each other. But a politician can argue that a gay couple should be able to make the same declaration. Third, it's a sacrament. And at this point the politician should shut up. Sacraments are none of the state's business. The opposite side of this coin is that the secular functions of marriage aren't a church's. When a church weighs in on them anyway, putting every last ounce of its muscle behind its viewpoint, it's asking for trouble. Last Sunday Cardinal George preached a sermon in which he announced that he'd written a letter of apology to Pope John Paul II. Why? Because a newspaper in Chicago -- a city the pope always asks of "fondly" and has never thought of "as a center of anti-Catholicism" -- published a "false accusation" on its front page. The previous Friday the Sun-Times had carried an AP story headlined "Pope Launches Global Campaign Vs. Gays." Said George, "The pope, of course, did no such thing." George didn't fault the AP story itself, which reported that the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith had issued a 12-page document in seven languages that "urged Catholics and non-Catholics . . . to unite in campaigning against gay marriages and gay adoptions" and put Catholic politicians on notice that they "have a 'moral duty' to oppose civil laws granting legal rights to gay couples." George explained in his sermon that although Christ raised marriage to a sacrament, marriage springs from "nature itself" and predates both church and government. Marriage is the "lifelong union of a man and a woman who enter into a total sharing of themselves for the sake of family," and government can no more change this than the church can. A government that claims otherwise "becomes totalitarian." Defending marriage, the church is defending not doctrine but nature. Where is the lie in "Pope Launches Global Campaign Vs. Gays"? Apparently it's in the idea that the pope has declared gays his enemies. The same catechism that "teaches the truth about the nature of God's gift of human sexuality," George reminded his audience, "teaches that people of homosexual orientation should be treated with every respect and with compassion." But compassion can be intolerably condescending, and a pronouncement that gay love is unworthy of civil protections and that an orphan is worse off with gay parents than with no parents at all can reasonably be construed as hostile -- especially when Catholic politicians are given marching orders. "The pope is attacked for many reasons," said George, who I would like to think was throwing the Catholic right wing a bone and didn't take his own words completely seriously. "In some Protestant circles he is still regarded as the Antichrist. Among secularists, his teaching office is a threat to human freedom. Among disaffected Catholics, the pope must be discredited so that Catholics will be forced to change their faith. And the headline writers of the Sun-Times? I do not know their motivation." But "a line has been crossed." Maybe the cardinal should have argued that it's self-evident the pope isn't campaigning against anybody because you can't lead a charge from a bunker. At any rate, the Sun-Times stood by its headline and was right to. News Bites • The Sun-Times couldn't hail Lance Armstrong without bashing the French in the same breath. "The French don't like Armstrong any more than they like the nation he represents," said a July 29 editorial after Armstrong won the Tour de France. "Just as the United States goes about its business unconcerned with the muttered jealousies of formerly great nations, so Armstrong, who is after all a Texan, seems his usual unperturbed self in winning the tortuous 23-day, 2,125-mile race. As with America, he is not resting on past glory, but planning to win again next year, going after an unprecedented sixth victory in a row. No wonder the French are not happy. And no wonder we are." Inane Yankee chauvinism on one level, it's the Sun-Times in all its Anglophilic glory on another, going on like a supercilious old lord raised from the cradle to despise the bloody frogs. Of course the Sun-Times is owned by a supercilious old lord, which may have something to do with it. • When Ray Hanania joined the crew in the City Hall pressroom back in 1978, the Tribune's Bob Davis opened a desk drawer and brought out a brass key. It opened a giant TV cabinet that Hanania remembers as an ugly pink. "This is the most important thing in this room," said Davis. "Protect it with your life." That Friday the key came out again, and Davis opened the cabinet. "There must have been 150 bottles of booze in there," says Hanania. "Those were the days when aldermen would come by the pressroom and drop off booze." And no TV? "The TV was pushed in back. I don't even think it was plugged in." Hanania, who covered City Hall for the Southtown Economist back then and later for the Sun-Times, remembers Davis as the "funniest guy in the city of Chicago." Aldermen would wander in, and Davis and the Sun-Times's Harry Golden would tell them stories. Davis would throw out some idea for the general betterment, such as a ban on tinted glass in car windows, and sure enough, the next Wednesday one of those aldermen would be submitting a bill to the council. Davis, 61, died Sunday in his home, four years after he retired. "Bob was like at the back end of the Front Page era," says Hanania. "He was one of the younger guys as those guys were going out. Harry Golden died at the beat. Bob was just as good a reporter, but what's really sad is that Bob died outside the beat, which was a terrible way for a good reporter to go." As Gary Washburn noted in the Tribune, Davis in retirement taught journalism at three different colleges and worked on special projects at the Tribune. Hanania's point was that if Davis had died in the saddle City Hall would have stopped what it was doing to send him off with something close to a state funeral, and Davis deserved it. • Credit where due. To Sun-Times business writer David Roeder for the front-page headline July 31 over pictures of the three-masted HMS Bounty clipping the Lake Shore Drive bridge: "The Ship Hits the Span." Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com Copyright © 2003 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved.