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Loading ...Neff: Outing church clergy is wrong
Do you hear church bells ringing at St. Joseph’s?
St. Mary’s?
St. Patrick’s?
Our Lady of Perpetual … Discrimination?
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has threatened the suspension of social service programs in the District of Columbia unless lawmakers there amend a proposal to legalize same-sex marriages to expand a shield for faith-based institutions.The archdiocese is concerned that the proposed legislation would require it to extend medical benefits to the same-sex partners of employees.
“It is our concern that the committee’s narrowing of the religious exemption language will cause the government to discontinue our long partnership with them and open up the agency to litigation and the use of resources to defend our religious beliefs rather than serve the poor,” said Edward Orzechowski, president/CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, which serves about 68,000 people in Washington each year.
The D.C. Council has scheduled a vote on the marriage bill for Dec. 1, which would be followed by a second council vote later in the month and then a congressional review.
Also, last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released a pastoral letter affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman and sex is meant for procreation. To allow same-sex unions, the letter said, will damage the common good and ignores the proper role of husbands and wives.
Now, it’s payback time in the eye-for-an-eye world of Washington, D.C. Activists have launched ChurchOuting.org for the collection of reports on priests, required by Church law to be celibate, who are gay.
“Church.org is a clearing house for reports of priests who are openly gay men in social settings yet professionally closeted in their parishes,” stated a press release from ChurchOuting founder Phil Attey. “The campaign will also accept reports of heterosexual priests who are involved in romantic or sexual relationships, yet support the archbishop’s efforts to harm lesbian and gay families.”
I’m not sure how the outers will know which priests “support the archbishop’s efforts to harm lesbian and gay families.” I don’t see how they can know, but I don’t believe it makes a difference. This is the wrong course of action.
Outing, to me, has always seemed like using sexual orientation as a weapon, like an act of violence.
To out gay priests for an anti-gay Church policy, well, how is that different than outing gay and lesbian servicemembers because Congress adopted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy?
Does anyone honestly think that by outing one or 100 gay priests, the Catholic Church is going to reverse course on same-sex marriage or extending benefits to partners of same-sex employees?
No, if the Church takes any action, it will relocate, reassign or move to oust the priests.
The cold-hearted, close-minded Church leaders who would abandon a mission to shelter or feed the homeless because it has qualms with treating its employees equally will not warm to the legislation because of an outing campaign — unless maybe someone once spotted the pope at any town’s Different Strokes bar.
A better course would be to demonstrate to the Church that there are other institutions and caring people to provide the social services the Church has threatened to abandon, to demonstrate to the Church that a religious institution cannot bully a democratic body into allowing discrimination and injustice to continue, to demonstrate to the Church that it cannot hold poor people as hostages.
And the best course of action in the long run would be to find a way to keep government funding for services for the poor and homeless from going to powerful, wealthy institutions of perpetual discrimination.
Well, it won’t make the church support us, but nothing will. The catholic church as a whole will NEVER support us. Period. So why not destroy it from within by exposing it’s extreme hypocrisy to the world? While outing someone may be morally questionable, preaching one thing while practicing another, especially when the preaching harms other people as badly as the church harms gay people, is most decidedly immoral, and downright evil in this case. Will it make friends? Probably not. But we don’t need anti-gay catholics to be our friends. Those who are already friendly towards us are, and if outing some lying assholes preaching stop the gays at the pulpit and then getting blown by a rentboy in the park makes them mad at us, well then, maybe they aren’t the allies we need for this fight.
Wow, are you a gay columnist? A gay columnist who calls the truth about someone’s sexuality “an act of violence”.
Excuse me, but there are too many -real- acts of violence against us without you inventing new ones.
And, if you don’t know the difference, you shouldn’t be writing here.
Religion is power just as surely as government is; it holds sway over the actions of -billions- . Any priest deviating from the hateful church law imposed by Catholic power is not merely a hypocrite, but worse a traitor to themselves, and to other gay people by supporting the power edifice that oppresses us all. Such a creature deserves no respect, and should be outed.
Yes, outing is a weapon – and weapons are appropriately used in war, especially ‘cultural wars’ such as that openly declared against us by the Catholic (and other) churches.
If we are not willing to fight for ourselves, tooth and claw, then we not only will fail and be consigned to oppression, but we will deserve it.
For our enemies have no shame at all in how low they will stoop; the argument that we are ‘better’ is little comfort when hiding in defeat.
I want no moral victory in this battle of bigotry against us, I want actual and total victory.
Get angry or get out.
We need to do all the damage in the press and internet we can to our oppressor the Catholic Church. They are are making threats so as to not have to pay partner benifits.
We need to dig up all the dirt we can when the same church as the inquistion wants to be in control of public policy.
Remeber they had people killed at one point for saying the world is round and not the center of the universe.
Tom in Long Beach
It’s called, a response to hypocrisy, and however and whomever gets hurt in the process, is just too bad. I will back ANY process that can chip away at the Catholic Church. The author, in my opinion, is just plain wrong. (you can join Church Outing on facebook)
Sorry Lisa. You are wrong. I am sick to death of being Mr Nice Guy and being walked all over by the Catholic Church. Gay priests are not doing any good for gay people in their church or parish. They are hypocrites leeching of the oppression of their own kind. They deserve everything they get. Period.
Lisa, all is fair in love and war, and THIS IS WAR. if it helps you sleep at night, consider we are helping the pope weed out his unwanteds.a favor to his ‘wholelyness’ if you will.
I am an openly gay member of the clergy. While my own denomination is supportive of gay and lesbian people as clergy and supports gay marriage, most don’t. I have no ethical concerns supporting those who out closeted clergy. The hypocrasy of institutional Christianity has led to violence, death, and an overall denial of civil rights to LGBT people. Enough is enough.
I am well aware from my own experience that it is commonly known that gay Roman Catholic priests function to uphold Roman dogma on homosexuality. While I find the level of internalized homophobia to be tragic, it does not help anyone to allow the cycle of psychological abuse to continue. On this matter, my hope is that members of the heirarchy and prominant evangelical leaders are among the first to be outed.
You write: “To out gay priests for an anti-gay Church policy, well, how is that different than outing gay and lesbian servicemembers because Congress adopted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy?”
Gee, did you take a course in logic? You are sadly missing same in this statement, as you compare apples to oranges. Service people do not get outed as a rule; to the contrary, it is their desire to be out which wounds them. Anti-gay priests, on the other hand, so NOT want to be open about their sexuality. Being gay and being anti-gay is hypocritical. Being gay and being forced by circumstances to keep quiet about it is not hypocritical. It’s just practical.
Act of Violence, surely not. Act of Love more like.
As verse 8:32 of the Gospel of John says, “The Truth will set you Free.” Outing hypocrites is HELPING them – even the Bible says so.
Teehee!
Ms. Neff, While I agree that outing people is not the first or preferred method to solving a problem, there comes a time when action must be taken.
Your comparison to DADT is skewed in that the military was not attempting to destroy gay men and women, it simply follows a policy that DADT was a mistaken attempt to derail, and from the time DADT passed the discharge rate for homosexuals tripled and has remained at that heightened level.
The Catholic Church has a millennium long history of abusing its own adherents, priests, parishes in physical, emotional, psychological, and political ways.
They lie to the public, illegally engage in political behavior, spew reckless rhetoric and are actively engaged in trying to drive LGBT communities underground to keep them oppressed.
When a priest, nun, friar or brother joins the catholic church they take a vow to uphold church law. That means celibacy, except for the select few that the Holy See allows to be married and become priests (check out the african catholic churches and now the priests leaving the Church of England).
It also means that priests tacitly support the gay genocide being attempted by the men in the dresses from Rome. This support is often in opposition to their own self interest, and is definitely against the interests of society.
The CC has spent BILLIONS paying off the victims of priestly sexual assault in the last few decades, all the while lobbying for special protection under the law in covering up those crimes.
Children as young as 3 have been molested by priests, children of both sexes that is. Yet the church continues to play hide-the-pervert to avoid acknowledging publicly the events, actions and culpability of the church and its leaders.
The Catholic Church has brought this one themselves by trying to blackmail D.C. into bowing to its whims. They stamped their jeweled slipper and were stunned when the council did not back down like a frightened child. The church is mortally offended that Kennedy put out in public that the ArchBishop “requested” he not take communion 3 years ago. Aghast that his “private” letter containing a tacit understanding that his non-compliance would lead to excommunication for Kennedy, the Church has chosen to whine that the letter was “private” and Kennedy had no business “embarrassing” them that way! How dare he let the public know of their attempts to blackmail him into compliance! After all they are the CHURCH and must be kowtowed too!
Ms. Neff, the Church (and closeted gay priests) is exactly like the closeted gay politician who votes against gay civil rights all the while visiting gay-prostitutes, trolling bathrooms, or prowling backrooms for sex! Both deserve to have their hypocrisy spread across the world in CAPITAL letters.
My advice to you is the same advice I give to those who are against abortion, if you don’t support it, don’t do it.
So Ms. Neff, if you are pro-life then don’t abort a fetus, if your anti-outing, don’t OUT anyone on any ISSUE (not just gay outing but any hypocrisy).
Sit there quietly as the fear mongers and closeted hypocrites steal what little recognition we have.
I for one wont, and while outing them might not change their stance it will certainly label that spade a spade!
So glad to see so many people letting Neff know she is on the wrong side of the battle. My question is – why are you, Neff, trying to protect any priest of any sexuality who is engaged in an organization that perpetually and consistently attacks and harms our community? What makes you feel that outing a priest is so “wrong” a way to handle bigotry and hypocrisy that you think we should instead passively and nicely approach the situation civilly? Have you not seen the results of CA and ME? You have your head buried in the sand if you think DADT is in any way a correlation. All Gay and Lesbian people should do everything in their power to OUT any individual who works against our community. This OUTING can take place in divulging their true glass houses in many ways including the sad fact they may themselves be homosexuals who are so self-loathing that they would work against their own kind. I applaud anyone who works to bring down any religion that works against gays and lesbians, by any means. it is WAR – we are being KILLED every day. Neff, get your head on straight – or rather – wake up and smell reality. You are in Polyanna land if you think outing of priests is somehow “wrong.”
Even the gay priests who do not go out of their way to block our path to equality are, at the very least, culpable as enablers of their hypocritical church. They’re like the bystanders who watch a rape and do nothing. Fuck them!
As cruel as the actions are of the Catholic Church of Washington, inflicting more pain on people is never a good idea.
By outing these priests, we are opening them up to more ostracization by their communities. The same, if not worse, abuse we face. Parents will claim that the clergy will have done terrible things to their children. Other crazy claims will occur. This is essentially going to be the Salem Witch Trials all over again. Sacrificing these people in the name of a cause is going to end up the same way it does every time people sacrifice others in a similar way. Badly.
Not all clergy are as supportive of the “anti-gay marriage” thing as you may think. There are tons who don’t. And they are the kind ones who can help LGBT youth. By allowing them to have faith and their own independence. Institutions, like the church, are ONLY ever changed from people on the inside. External force rarely works, and if it does, it is at a great cost. The Church will never support gays if we take all of the supporters out of it and leave the haters to stay.
By outing them, we are allowing them to gain more internal support and causing ourselves more struggle and others more pain.
Catholic Charities of Washington is hypocritical. They have spent MILLIONS in settleing sexual abuse cases of young children and they dare to threaten the poor and hungry over equality? What a bunch of arrogant self-righteous bigots.