By Ted Bordelon
Wire Managing Editor
Lansdale resident Michael J. Mcmonagle and about 20 other members of the Pro Life Coalition of PA protested Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes’ decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
Despite the claims of those who disagree with him, Michael J. Mcmonagle does not believe he is on the “wrong side of history.”
Indeed, he thinks quite the opposite.
“The truth about homosexual behavior and the truth about marriage will eventually come out,” Mcmonagle said in an interview at his home in Lansdale, where he has lived since 1995. “There’s going to be a lot of heartache and devastation in between, but it will come out.”
Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes’ decision to ignore state law and issue same-sex marriage licenses — which he said put him on the “right side of history and the law” — prompted Mcmonagle’s latest protest, this time on the steps of the County Courthouse two Fridays ago.
Mcmonagle and about 20 other members of the Pro Life Coalition of PA held signs that read “marriage = man & woman” and “stop the war on children.” The state Department of Health is challenging Hanes’ actions, and the Corbett administration has filed paperwork asking a court to issue a cease and desist order against Hanes.
Mcmonagle hasn’t been pleased by the media’s coverage of the protest.
The journalism industry is stacked against his cause, he said, and filled with “sanguine temperaments” who are sympathetic to the emotional plight of same-sex couples seeking marriage. Those same journalists are also ignorant to the faith-based arguments made by him and his fellow protesters.
At 60, Mcmonagle, who heads the pro-life organization, is no stranger to protests. He’s made a living by being a pro-life activist since 1982, shortly after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and spent five years in the Navy.
Mcmonagle said he responded to the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade, “like my parents did to Pearl Harbor.”
Born in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, he’s traveled the country and world over the past 30 years as a crusader for the pro-life lobby.
In 1991, he helped to direct a 46-day protest in Wichita, Kan., with the pro-life organization Operation Rescue, which led to the arrest of 2,700 protesters and his own jailing.
In China in 2008, he was arrested and deported after calling a press conference in Tiananmen Square to criticize the Chinese government’s abortion policies.
Over the years, he’s shown up all over the greater-Philadelphia region, conducting blockades of abortion clinics, often leading to his arrest and jailing.
These are his “war stories,” and he speaks of them with a quick smile of reminiscence that quickly reverts back to a stern but contemplative default.
The veteran activist doesn’t like to indulge in the past.
What he describes as his “commitment to justice” burns as strongly in him now as it did when he first began protesting.
“The case for marriage has to this point been based on … homosexual behavior being ‘yucky,’” Mcmonagle said. “There hasn’t really been a cogent case made for marriage.”
He lives with his wife and has six children, ranging from 17 to 30 years of age.
He said that while young people frequently “get” his pro-life stance, the same-sex marriage issue is a tougher sell. To Mcmonagle, a self-described “not-shy-of-my-faith” Catholic, same sex marriage, abortion and contraception are related.
All three involve “sterilized sex,” he said. All three involve “making your own rules” without a thought toward God’s law. Most important to Mcmonagle, all three are part of the “war on children.”
If you press him on it, though, he’ll tell you that there’s another reason, as well.
“Because no one else would do it,” Mcmonagle said. “Who else is organized to fight the same-sex issue [other] than the pro-lifers?”
Despite describing “homosexual behavior” as “unhealthy, disordered and immoral,” he’s impressed by the gay rights movement.
As he puts it, “You have to be amazed at how they succeeded.”
Mcmonagle is seemingly well-versed on the biblical, cultural and political ins and outs of homosexuality, but he still doesn’t get what gay men and women want to do with marriage.
“Homosexuals have all the civil rights everyone else has, but why do they want the title marriage?” he asked. “They’re way beyond tolerance. They want us to give positive affirmation to their behavior.”
Ted Bordelon can be reached at tbordelon@bsmphilly.com
