Silence = Sin: Outing Gay Catholic Priests

[FreeState]

http://churchouting.org/

Help End the Cycle of Spiritual Abuse

This site was created to provide you with the opportunity to save LGBT youth from the hypocrisy of priests in the Archdiocese of Washington who are socially, romantically or sexually active gay men, yet stand silent while Archbishop Wuerl and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops increase their dogmatic war against gay families. If you have information that a priest in the Archdiocese is gay (or having a heterosexual affair) please share your story.


Why Church Outing?

For generations, in Catholic churches across the country, LGBT youth are told they should be ashamed of who they are and that they should lead loveless lives as social and religious abominations. The emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse inflicted on them by Catholic priests and our church hierarchy is in reality more damaging than any level of physical or sexual child abuse that one would quickly condemn. Yet to this abuse, few raise their voices and say "ENOUGH!"

It is shameful that in many Catholic churches, this abuse is being supported by men, who are gay themselves, leading closeted lives of self-persecution and quiet desperation.

Even more shameful, is that many of these priests, while remaining silent, actually lead duplicitous lives rich with romantic and sexual relationships -- both homosexual and heterosexual.

This hypocrisy must end.

[RetiredTrotskyite]

1. Wish I Knew a Gay Closeted Roman Catholic Priest...

I would love to out him. This hypocrisy has to end. I am not always in favour of outing, but in this case it is justified. I am sick and tired of seeing GLBTQ youth messed up by closet-case priests and other cloergy.

[David Zephyr]

2. I believe in outing any person who is in a postion of power which is used to harm our community.

They deserved to be exposed as the hypocrites they are.

And their worst fear is that we play that trump card against them.

Believe me, when we out these reactionary homosexuals, they back off from their attacks and they lay low.

We should never take the weapon of outing out of our arsenal.

It is effective and it works.

David Dreier is the quietest homosexual in California these days.

[imdjh]

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[imdjh]

3. Well there is this about Bishop Lynch of Florida

During his first year, Lynch relieved three priests for sexual misconduct, moved to change church policies regarding priest investigations and proposed a code of conduct outlining appropriate priestly behavior. In 1998, the pope chose Lynch to fill in when a Palm Beach bishop admitted sexual child abuse.

But on Friday, Lynch was the one under scrutiny.

Donning a black jacket, slacks and his collar, Lynch seemed unfrazzled by blunt questions at a press conference he called to address allegations that he had sexually harassed a former male employee.

"I have always denied the substance of the harassment allegation and I continue to do so," Lynch read from a prepared statement.


..........................

ST. PETERSBURG -- The Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg paid slightly more than $100,000 to a former employee who claimed he had been harassed by Bishop Robert Lynch.

http://www.sptimes.com/2002/03/23/TampaBay/Church_paid_100_000_t.shtml

[imdjh]

4. I'd like to see Catholic University shut down. I can't believe the students there cover up.

And you know they must. There are lots of gay students at Catholic University and they don't even have a gay student union that I know of. I just can't believe that with the involvement of the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus in anti-gay work, the Imperial Wizard of which is a big shot at Catholic U, that the students haven't shut the place down.

[galaxy21]

6. The problem with this is

Everyone can speculate; say they heard "this story" or there's "gossip about so and so" but it's actually very difficult to prove someone is getting up to something, unless you have concrete proof. And nobody is realistically going around following guys with cameras and risk getting themselves into a ton of trouble. So, all you have is people throwing around second hand stories, or their word against yours. And there's even a chance of a few people lying and making stuff up and ruining an innocent priest's repuation (and, yes, something like this is probably going to be taken advantage of: It's the internet; people lie.)

Also, the language on that site ("liberate a closeted gay or romantically involved heterosexual priest") makes my skin crawl. If you want to make a point about hypocrisy, say so. I don't see the point in pretending you're trying to help anybody.

Additionally, am I wrong in thinking that part of point is for priests to sign up for marriage support equality, thus ensuring they won't be bothered by accusations? Because I'm petty sure that's straight up blackmail.

[closeupready]

7. From what I understand, blackmail requires demand for money. No such demand is in play in your

scenario. So how would that be "blackmail"?

[galaxy21]

8. Dictionary definition.

Extortion of money or something else of value from a person by the threat of exposing a criminal act or discreditable information.
b. Something of value extorted in this manner.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/blackmail


If the idea is that you have to sign the marriage petition otherwise you risk facing accusations or being "outed"...then yeah, that sounds like blackmail to me.

[closeupready]

10. No, not buying that. The term "something else of value" is waaay too ambiguous for purposes here.

Since there are no parameters to the term whatsoever - ANYTHING could be claimed to have value - someone could claim that a kind word or a smile is being "blackmailed" from someone whom you help cross the street.

No, blackmail is for money/cash or something else of SUBSTANTIAL MATERIAL VALUE. Signature to a marriage petition ... lol, no, that has no material value.

Sorry, doesn't work here, obviously in my opinion.

[Fearless]

9. This is one of those non-black and white issues...

And the crux of it lies on whether you believe there are good priests. If the answer is no, then clearly out every single gay priest. If we're talking about child abuse then the answer is always clear, expose their hypocrisy. Yet, if they are priests, Catholic or otherwise, and are gay or straight or whatever and do engage in sex against their vows, to in essence engage in a wholly consensual human activity, then why is it right to out them?


Now, in my opinion, even as an strong atheist who was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools until high school, I do not believe that all gay priests are inherently going to touch children. I'm sure there are gay priests who are really celibate, at the same rate there are straight priests who are celibate. Likewise I'm sure there are gay Catholic priests who aren't celibate the same as I'm sure there are straight priests who aren't celibate. The Church hierarchy may see this as a sin, but I do not. It is not immoral to want to love another person in a physical way. If a priest does nothing to harm GLBTQ youth or adults then there is no reason why they should be outed.

Additionally, outing of anyone is a very controversial topic in that it creates a backlash of negativity towards us from their followers. It hardens their resolve against us and fuels their fire to hate us. We must find ways to disarm all homophobes' words without giving them reason to hate us (outing gay ones or claiming that they all must be gay and repressed, as that is not necessarily the case).

Outing a person, whether it is us on them or them on us comes with a slew of psychological issues (many I'm sure we've experienced first hand, I know I have if I was outed to someone back in the day). The first issue is one of fear and anger. The first reaction to being outed is anger towards the outer and fear of the outing. This is the most dangerous to us. Anger and fear generated can hurt us.

While I understand the mindset of why outing helps us. It does show the average person that the homophobes are hypocrites thus bringing the average person to our side. It does not however end homophobia, invariably it increases the resolve of the homophobe because of the psychological effects I mentioned. What we need to do is find ways to disarm homophobes instead of attacking them. We need to force them to see us for the people we really are and not for the fearful stereotypes they see us as currently. We need to be out to them instead of outing them. We need to make ourselves positive GLBTQ role models. We need to help GLBTQ youth. We need to make sure that every homophobe knows at least one GLBTQ person personally and well. That ends the cycle of backlash against us, defeats homophobic stereotypical arguments, ends ignorance against us, builds role models for our youth, and shows not only the average person that we are good and worth equity but the homophobe as well.