Oh but that was different, wasn’t it. Different people were in charge and they really believed that they were doing the right thing for those poor souls. The church doesn’t do things like that any more, they’ve changed.

Before you listen to the words of a priest like the one in this article, look at the history of his church. A history of 2000 years of corruption, murder and violence that has been well documented in the histories of many nations around the world.

For the record, I have gay friends, and the support goes both ways between me and them.

I can think of several possible explanations as to why they don’t. The most obvious one we might call the Arango Syndrome, according to the current news, or perhaps the Rekers Effect, names after its most famous exponent.

It’s just a case of the deflection of the obvious. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the fraud behind the cassock.A friend of mine, typical for the late sixties early seventies, decided he had a “vocation”, though he truly understood that he was attempting to avoid his sexuality, not all that uncommon for a red-haired irish boy at the time. Imagine his dismay when he entered the seminary, and found more man-on-man heat than he had experienced outside of the seminary when he was actually LOOKING for it.

So you have a church full of closet cases, desperate to punish the sin they so clearly see in themselves. It is hardly an original or novel motivation. But it is an old one in this church. You find it in Boccaccio and chaucer. There is an excellent book by Karen Liebreich entitled “fallen Order”.

She was being kind.

Not a second explanation, but tied to the first, is the old boy club that the Vatican has always been. And no girls allowed– just like Jesus. We’re (claiming to be)god’s (indirectly via St. Peter, the ha-ha first pope) anointed (oooh, magic)in holiness and goddiness. Therefore, we’re his enforcers, his mouthpieces, and really, his super best buddies. “Avoiding scandal in the church”, as if they were actually capable of FEELING scandalized– or irony, or shame– becomes the paramount value. There is a lot of money and power to protect.

Do I sound cynical?

The third explanation, which I think is the most likely, somewhat includes the other two. Back when I was in law enforcement, and age or two ago, one of the prime jobs for the morally lax or the law-enforcement inept was the vice squad. And of course, the opportunities for corruption were immense. But there was a major side benefit: chasing after the queers in the park, busting a gay bar, or anything else were infinitely easier and less dangerous than chasing atfer a burglar who might be armed, and more rewarding.

And perhaps a second possibility– recognizable in the church as well– as providing an opportunity to hide on your own issues while disparaging others with exactly the same issues.

Likewise for the church. It is a lot easier to get the queers than even beginning to make a dent in world hunger. And it is much more fun to have the complete inability to examine one’s cultural prejudices as such without infering that these are God’s will for all eternity.

Deflection, deflection, deflection.

There are more than a few readers and commenters who are not, themselves, LGBT. A few who comment regularly – but who seldom mention their orientation – fall into this category.

A love for justice, mercy, and humanity often draws those who care to where it is being denied, even when they have no personal gain. You might even say that’s definitional.

But while they may not personally be gay, bisexual or transgender, they are full members of this community. We are a community that is united most by those who oppose our equality and dignity. And anyone of any stripe who fights on the side of equality is without question a member of the LGBT community.

And it’s sad.

The Catholic Church does have much good to say and could be a powerful force in the betterment of humanity. Yes there are other voices – some secular, some voices of faith – who do speak out for justice and mercy in the world. But no one is as well situated at the vast institution of the Church.

But their insistence on upholding what has no moral relevance or reflection of modern reality – 100% ban on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, blind protection of priests who abuse their trust – diminishes their authority when confronted with real evil.

Consider for a moment what it would be like if the Catholic Church were obsessed about human trafficing, Eastern European sex slaves, corrupt dictators, or ethnic oppression. A moral church, a church that sas its mission as fulfilling Christ’s hand-on, screw-the-rules-help-the-people, advocacy for the oppressed and weak wouldn’t have to run ads. When you do good – real good – people trust what you say.

Or forget the big global issues, imagine what kind of world this could be if the Catholic Church simply said, “according to our calling to fulfill the commandments of Christ, no one who is able to get to a Catholic Church will go hungry or without a bed tonight.”

Would this newspaper have run an ad as disgusting and slanderous as this one against any other minority? Would they have accepted an ad calling the Catholic Church a pedophile ring and claiming that all priests were pedophiles? If not, considering the fact that they accepted and ran this homophobic ad, WHY NOT?

Continue to exist in defiance of those who do not want us to exist.

As a Protestant minister, I challenge the Catholic interpretation that opposite-gender “matrimony is essential to God’s Plan of Salvation.” I find abosulutely no support for this interpretation in the words of Jesus or the writings of the Apostle Paul.

My church, the United Church of Christ, values marriage greatly, so greatly we support marriage equality for all people. However, we do not believe being married is essential to one’s relationship to God.

Most Protestants, even conservative ones, do not believe marriage is essential.

That view is held by the Roman Catholic Church and the Latter Day Saints Church. It is even more central to LDS theology than to RC theology.