Why would any decent Catholic remain in that church?
The LGBT community is understandably upset about Coney-Barrett’s impending entry onto the Supreme Court.
A well-known Christian/Catholic fanatic, Coney-Barrett will join her fellow haters, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in forming a solid triad that would punish homosexuals and take away all of their hard-earned rights. Nearly as fanatical are Neil Gorsuch (who’s shown signs of having a bit of compassion and sense of justice) and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, who despite a reputation for fairness, wrote a shockingly hateful dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the SCOTUS decision that legalized same-sex marriage. Roberts—a professed Catholic like most of his Republican colleagues—had the gall to write that “government” had a compelling interest in preserving man-woman marriage. He implied that children cannot be reared by same-sex couples, and used the tired old conservative slur of comparing same-sex marriage to “polygamy.”
Well, this is a perfect example of Catholic Justices obeying orders from the Vatican. The Catholic Church continues to peddle their official hate policy in declaring homosexuality “intrinsically immoral.” This, despite the Pope’s remark, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay relationships, and despite the embarrassing and humiliating fact that the same Catholic Church is going bankrupt because it’s had to pay so much money to victims of rapacious pedophile priests. If ever there was an organization that was morally unfit to pronounce on gay issues, it is the Catholic Church.
So the fear is that when the religious fanatic, Coney-Barrett, gets on the Court, one of the first things she’ll do is try to overturn Obergefell, thereby removing a right that has already been granted to Americans. This possibility, or likelihood as the case may be, is causing mounting concern in LGBT circles. People rightfully fear a return to the bad old days of persecution. Will gay people still have the right to marry? Will they be able to adopt children, visit their spouses in the hospital, be included in wills? For that matter, will Coney-Barrett move to remove all protections from gays? Will homophobic employers be able to fire gay people at will simply because they don’t approve of their “lifestyle”? Will landlords be allowed to evict gay people just because they hate them?
These are legitimate questions. It is, of course, useless to try to argue with the likes of Coney-Barrett, Alito and Thomas. They have, not so much “minds” capable of rational analysis, but a hardcore accretion of personal resentments and calcified religious superstitions. There’s nothing more frustrating with arguing with a bible thumper, because they’re convinced that “god” is on their side. It says in the bible that homosexuality is wrong. Never mind that it also says adultery is an abomination (hello, Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr.), that striking one’s parents and violating the Sabbath (as, for instance, by driving a car) deserve the death penalty. These bible thumpers conveniently ignore those shocking stupidities and focus selectively on the bible’s gay injunctions.
Gay people, and the people who love them, must therefore figure out what they’re going to do when and if Coney-Barrett brings her sexual psychopathy to the Court. The first thing that comes to mind is that we’re going to take to the streets in massive numbers, and it can’t be just a one-time “Defend Gay Marriage” march in American cities. That would receive widespread media coverage, but would be forgotten the next day as the avalanche of Trump-related weird news continues unabated. We’re going to have to take to the streets in every town and city in America, especially in conservative parts of the country, and most particularly in the places where evangelicism rules. We’re also going to have to take this to the Catholic Church. Churches are going to have to be picketed on a regular basis, services disrupted, acts of civil disobedience committed. If someone says, “Why are you picketing the church when it was the Supreme Court that made gay marriage illegal?” we answer, “It was fanatical Catholic gay bashers on the Court who made this decision. We’re simply bringing the fight to those who started it, a sclerotic religious cult that has been killing ‘witches’ [read: Lesbians and gay men) for centuries, while their nasty priests feed off little boys.”
It must be super-difficult to be Catholic these days in America. Most Catholics, I would hope and expect, are “liberal” in the sense of understanding that gay people can’t be kept in the closet anymore, that they are entitled to the same rights as straight people. Catholics are split pretty much evenly when it comes to political party affiliation, with about half claiming to be Republican and half to be Democratic. I suppose the Republican Catholics have no problem condemning gay relationships and would be happy to see gay people persecuted the way they used to be. We can write off those conservative Catholics; they’re beyond reasoning with. But what of the 48% of American Catholics who vote Democratic? They must have a conscience. They understand how wrong it is for their church to say gay people are “immoral” simply by virtue of whom they love. And yet they continue to support this overbearing church, tithing their money to it, going to services, having their children baptized. What would it take for millions of these fair-minded Catholics to cut the cord? I know how much they love their church, and the fear of being separated from it must be torment. Still, by remaining part of the Catholic Church, they succor and support an organization only slightly less vicious than the Taliban when it comes to persecuting gays. If I were Catholic, I’d quit the church. I wouldn’t want to be associated with such hatred and hypocrisy, and I think that God would forgive me, since the Catholic Church has nothing to do with God any longer, if it ever did.
