For Western Christians, Catholic and Protestant, the seven days between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday are the most solemn and sacred days of the entire liturgical year. In fact, that week is so sacred that it's been known as Holy Week since the third century and is commemorated by fasting and solemn prayer.
This year, however, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is encouraging Catholics all across the country to add one more activity to that list. In addition to fasting, praying, and preparing for Easter, the bishops are asking their flock to take time out of their Holy Week observances, travel to Washington, D.C., and participate in a march and rally to protest the possibility that loving and committed same-sex couples might be granted the freedom to marry.
The events are scheduled for Tuesday, March 26, the day the Supreme Court will consider Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to Proposition 8. (The Court will hear United States v. Windsor, the challenge to the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act," the following day.) It's being organized by the National Organization for Marriage, a blatantly partisan special interest group which infamously plotted to fragment the Democratic Party coalition by "[driving] a wedge between gays and blacks."
None of this appears to matter to the bishops, though. They're even promoting NOM's march on the USCCB Facebook page:
Using Christianity's most sacred time of the year to promote homophobic bigotry and malicious discrimination? That's utterly contemptible. Every time I think the U.S. Catholic bishops can't possibly sink any lower into the cesspool of anti-gay bigotry, they find a new way to do exactly that.
Jesus wept.