c. 2007 Religion News Service

HIV-positive chaplain sentenced for sexual misconduct

WASHINGTON (RNS) An HIV-positive Navy chaplain was sentenced Thursday (Dec. 6) to two years in a military brig after he pleaded guilty to charges of sexual misconduct with members of the military.

Lt. Cmdr. John Thomas Matthew Lee, a 42-year-old Catholic priest who lives in Burke, Va., pleaded guilty to sodomy, aggravated assault and other charges in a court-martial at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va., the Marine Corps announced.

Lee said he learned that he had the virus that causes AIDS in April 2005, said Lt. Brian Donnelly, a spokesman for the base. Donnelly said military officials are not aware of anyone who has contracted HIV from Lee.

The chaplain was charged with forcible sodomy on a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 2004.

He was charged with aggravated assault in relation to a sexual encounter in December 2006 with a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, to whom he did not disclose that he had HIV.

As part of a pretrial agreement, Lee must provide a list of sexual partners he has had since learning his HIV status to allow medical officials to make contact with people who need to be tested.

A military judge sentenced Lee to 12 years of confinement but he will serve a two-year confinement based on the pretrial agreement. If he should commit another offense within a period of a year after that confinement, he would be required to serve the rest of the original sentence, said Donnelly.

Prior to being stationed at Quantico and the Naval Academy, Lee, who was ordained in 1993, served as a priest in the Archdiocese of Washington for three years.

The Archdiocese for the Military Services, which provides spiritual support to Roman Catholics in the military, and the Washington Archdiocese suspended Lee’s priestly functions in June when he informed the Military Archdiocese that he was being investigated for alleged adult sexual misconduct.

The Washington-based Military Archdiocese said it had “no prior knowledge of the allegations.” It said they were made directly to military authorities and the investigation was solely under the Marine Corps’ jurisdiction.

Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Washington Archdiocese, said her archdiocese welcomes the efforts of the military to alert people who should know of Lee’s HIV status.

“Our concerns start with a priest, an officer in a position of trust, violating that position of trust, and violating it so obviously to also put people’s lives at risk,” she said. “There’s so many levels of bad here.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Civil union opponents sue in Oregon

PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) Opponents of domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to revive a failed petition drive that would have forced a statewide vote on the partnership law.

The suit accuses elections officials of illegally disqualifying signatures that would have qualified the proposal as a referendum for the November 2008 ballot.

State lawmakers earlier this year approved a law that grants domestic partnerships, also known as civil unions, to gays and lesbians with the state benefits of marriage, such as tax breaks and child custody.

Opponents needed 55,179 valid signatures in October to block the law from going into effect Jan. 1. They turned in nearly 63,000 signatures. But after eliminating invalid signatures, elections officials determined that the referendum was 116 short.

The suit claims that elections officials excluded valid signatures, including those of registered voters. Elections officials also failed to use the full 30-day window to follow-up with citizens whose rejected signatures may have been valid, the suit says.

Opponents of domestic partnerships claim they found evidence that signatures were incorrectly rejected, but elections officials refused to listen.

The suit says elections officials disenfranchised referendum supporters in violation of the U.S. and Oregon constitutions.

State officials defended elections workers.

“We are confident that Oregon’s election procedures fully satisfy federal constitutional requirements,” said Stephanie Soden, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Justice.

_ Ashbel S. Green

Pa. capitol prayers come under scrutiny

HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) Twenty-four years after the U.S. Supreme Court gave its blessing to America’s long tradition of opening government meetings with prayer, questions linger about just what kind of prayer is OK.

Those questions now hover over the Pennsylvania Senate, which has opened every session with prayer for years.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State complained last month that prayers in the Senate often use language only a Christian would use. They end, for example, “in Jesus’ name.”

The Washington-based group asked to stop the prayers “in order to make all feel equally welcome at sessions of the Senate.” If prayers continue, they must use no language specific to one religion.

Senate officials countered that their “interfaith opening prayer” has been offered not only by Christian clergy, but by rabbis, a Unitarian pastor and, recently, a Buddhist teacher.

The Senate doesn’t prescribe what belongs in the prayers and what doesn’t, said Drew Crompton, counsel to Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati.

“The question becomes a broader interpretation of interfaith,” Crompton said. “You balance one prayer against the others.”

The dispute highlights continuing unease around civic prayer in a society still mostly Christian but aware of increasingly visible minority groups, not only Jews, Unitarians and Buddhists but Muslims, Hindus, Bahais and Sikhs.

In addition, a growing number of Americans _ about 15 percent, by some polls _ profess no religion.

In 1983, the Supreme Court upheld prayer before government meetings, calling the practice “deeply embedded in the history and tradition of this country.”

Michael Broyde at Emory University’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion said there’s no constitutional problem with praying in Jesus’ name in the Senate as long as non-Christians pray there, too.

“I think all prayers are sectarian. There’s no difference under the Constitution among prayers,” Broyde said. What’s important in a government setting is that “you’re free not to participate and there’s a variety of options.”

A prayer policy like the Senate’s is “probably a pretty safe way to go,” said Charles Haynes of the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to the First Amendment. “But there’s no question people will challenge it.

_ Mary Warner

Quote of the Day: GOP strategist Ralph Reed

(RNS) “We have been conducting doctrinal frisks and theological GI-tract exams of our candidates and we have to remember that these candidates are not running for president of the seminary and they’re not running for pastor in chief. They’re running to be commander in chief at a time of global war on terrorism.”

_ GOP strategist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed.

KRE/RB END RNS