At the risk of appearing to do nothing but talk about the church and gays...here I go again....from the Canadian capital...

A Canadian cardinal who had been considered a possible successor to Pope John Paul says that the children of married same-sex couples cannot be baptized in the Catholic Church. Testifying at a Senate committee hearing into the same-sex marriage bill Marc Cardinal Ouellet said that the Conference of Catholic Bishops has decided that if both parents attempt to sign the certificate of baptism the church will not allow the blessing to take place.

Ouellet said that the decision is one of several that have arisen in the Church as a result of same-sex marriage. Gay marriage is already legal in Quebec - Ouellet is from Quebec City - and all but two provinces and two territories. The bill before the Senate would extend same-sex marriage to those areas of the country where gays cannot currently wed.

"If I take the example of the ceremony of baptism, according to our canon law, we cannot accept the signatures of two fathers or two mothers as parents of an infant," Cardinal Ouellet told the committee.

"With a law that makes these unions official, situations of this will multiply and this threatens to disturb not just the use of our territory, but also our archives and other aspects of the life of our communities."

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To deny baptism in this context, particularly in the context of a faith that officially sees baptism as essential to salvation--and indeed permits emergency baptisms even by non-catholics in life threatening situations--is not simply discriminatory....it is blasphemous and wantonly cruel.