GayAmerican.org

Maybe 4,450 Catholics can be wrong

How many people in this country would listen if Michael Jackson made a stand against marriage equality for Gay Americans?

Here is a man accused of child sexual abuse with suggestions that he also paid off some families to keep quiet about his transgressions. Whether any of this is true is left to be decided by the courts, but the dogged accusations � and Jackson’s own statements about his appreciation of sleeping in the same bedrooms, if not beds, of children in his care � color his credibility on any issue involving moral authority.

So you’d think that anyone with a reputation of pederasty and conspiracy would by default be excluded from the conversation on marriage equality, and the right for Gay Americans to marry.

Yet, here we have the Catholic Church, with convicted priests, evidence of cover ups including payoffs to the abused and their families, claiming the moral authority on the issue of marriage equality for Gay Americans not only in Massachusetts but across the country and around the world.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that 4,450 Catholic clergy have been accused of molestation according to a national survey of church records on sex abuse claims being compiled by the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by American bishops, and conducted by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

What should perhaps be more shocking than the numbers of priests involved, is that the report does not include information on the number of Bishops who knowingly reassigned priests accused of sexual abuse, which has been a key issue in the Catholic church’s history of cover-up.

This same religious organization, that has as of yet not cleaned its own house, has decided to call down politicians who support equality for gay men and lesbians as being “gravely immoral”, an attempt by the Vatican to control the political process in countries even such as ours which elects its representatives in a democratic process, intended to represent the will of the people, not merely a particular sect of the christian religion. As quoted by CNN, the Vatican also denounced gay and lesbian couples adopting children, saying “allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such (homosexual) unions, would actually mean doing violence to these children ...(placing) them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

If anyone knows anything about doing violence to children, it’s the Catholic church. They’ve been doing it for years now. The report covers the past 52 years of recordkeeping of abuse by Catholic churches, and it would be hard to believe that it wasn’t going on before they had started keeping track of their clergy’s practices. Yet for them to take the position they have against gay and lesbian people around the world, is in itself immoral. They are attempting to subvert our political process in this country, by threatening our political leaders who happen to be Catholic with the label of “gravely immoral” should they do anything to support marriage and adoption equality for Gay Americans � a threat not to be taken lightly, as those labeled as “gravely immoral” no doubt would face an accusation of dereliction of their faith, not only by their church, but no doubt by their friends and family as well. That is an extremely powerful ruler being swung at the hands of our political leaders.

So what is to be done? Right now, the Catholic church is rallying its membership against the civil rights of Gay Americans. In Massachussets, the Roman Catholic Boston Archdiocese is leading protests against marriage equality, which include the Archbishop Sean O’Malley himself. Clearly, they are having an impact in this argument, and inexplicably have a seat at the table in this discussion. Yet any organization with such an history as the Catholic church � who claims the moral authority on the issue of our civil rights � needs apparently to be reminded of their proven lack of credibility.

The argument isn’t going to be won with signs attempting to out-shout, or even engage them on the issues. No, educating them is not going to have the hoped for effect, given that their leader, the Pope, is threatening any dissent with the label of “gravely immoral”. The argument, in fact, will be won with one simple number: 4,450 � printed on every sign and t-shirt at every protest and rally that they organize and attend against us.