A Hook Up Site for Gay Priests?

William Donohue of the Catholic League and the Opus Dei crowd - which seeming includes Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli and might explain his bizarre fixation on gays - must be having convulsions and shrieking at this story about a supposed hookup site for gay Catholic priests.  Yes, you read that correctly, a gay chat and hook up site for "HomoSensible Roman Catholic Priests."  Combined with Pope Francis' recent statements about the "gay lobby" at the Vatican the pious folk must be on the verge of hysteria and will no doubt be demanding a witch hunt for gays within the priesthood.  Here are highlights from a "Catholic" blog out of Dallas:

It’s St. Sebastian’s Angels all over again.  But much worse. In Rome!  A gay hookup site specifically tailored for priests and seminarians in ROME!  Good Heavens what is to become of us?:

It is not easy to talk about some things, but  Pope Francis’ statement of a gay lobby in the Catholic Church draws waves. As the Catholic writer, Vittorio Messori made ​​known, there is a page on the Internet called Venerabilis which is run by  a fraternity of Homo-Sensitive Roman Catholic Priests.

The homo Sensitive  priestly society claims to be a loose association of gay and homophile Catholic priests. The website serves as a gay dating site, so that aberrosexual priests can find contact among themselves, or homosexual laity can meet like-minded priests and vice versa. This page offers chat rooms in five languages, including in German, a Twitter service to the Catholic Church and some news from a “homo sensitive” view. The ads are unique. Anyone who registers on the Venerabilis and gives a personal ad or responds to one, seeks homosexual sexual contact………

…….Since the 1st of May  the [homosexual]-brotherhood, which calls itself Fraternitas Sacerdotalis.[Is this a catty shot at the masculinity of FSSP priests?] is a “meeting place” in order to meet “personally” and at “no risk”. And in fact, Rome Feltrinelli bookstore in Largo Argentina  has a “6- 8pm” at the cafeteria or in the department “Philosophy and Religion”. “For the seminarians of the Jesuit university Gregorian University and the Dominican Angelicum from 11 to 12 clock in the same place. ” [So now the great colleges of Rome, erected at great expense by religious orders that shook the world, are now reduced to being hookup sites for sexual deviants. Nice. I wonder how much is taught at these former bastions of orthodoxy and erudition that would challenge these lost souls in their depravity? Anything?]

So, I went tot he site, and while I didn’t find anything pornographic, at least not that I could understand, it’s obvious what the site is about.  It’s about finding sex partners. The homo-mafia in the Church obviously feels sufficiently strong and emboldened to operate almost in the open.  This site is smart in that everyone operates under automatically generated IDs, but people are dumb and have left their personal e-mails all over the place. I bet a decent multi-lingual private investigator could identify dozens of people from the site in an afternoon’s work.

 

It’s a certitude there are more sites like this out there. They just have to be found. And then the hard part. Will competent ecclesiastical authority take any steps to remove those priests found to be partaking in this homosexual hookup site?

Folks, don’t fool yourselves into believing this mafia is made up only of a few scattered bishops and maybe a cardinal or too. It is at least as widespead in the episcopate as it is in the regular clergy, and possibly even more so. Think about for a while.  Lord, have mercy on Your Church!  Please extirpate this foul evil from the midst of Your Body!

As I said, they probably had to call 911 when William Donohue heard this news.  One can only imagine the verbal diarrhea he will be spewing.   As for Ken Cuccinelli, if the gay rumors I keep hearing whispered are true, now he's got a new discrete hook up site he can use.  It certainly beats MegaPhone which former GOP Congressman Ed Schrock used before he got caught or Larry Craig's "wide stance.".

Is Pope Francis Waving a White Flag on Gay Marriage?

The Roman Catholic Church does not have a good track record on accepting new scientific knowledge or dealing well with objective reality.  Over the course of history, the Church has been wrong more often than it has been right.   The Vatican anti-gay jihad is but the latest of many Church efforts to hang on to ignorance and bigotry even as the world at large moves onward.  In a column in Huffington Post Michelangelo Signorile speculates that Pope Francis may be moving towards accepting reality on gay marriage: it is a battle the Church is going to lose and that cutting losses may be the better course of action.  That's not to say Francis will not face major blow back from hysterical bigots like William Donohue of the so-called Catholic League or the self-enriching hate merchants at the National Organization for marriage.  Here are column excerpts:

This week we saw reports about Pope Francis cryptically acknowledging the existence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, about which he supposedly believes something has to be done. But if I were on a crusade against gay marriage, like Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (both devout Catholics), I don't think I'd be very happy with this pope so far. In fact, I'd say he stinks.

Let's put all of this in some perspective. In the time since Francis became pope, France became the largest predominantly Catholic country to pass marriage equality, right in the Vatican's backyard. In the U.S., three states, including Rhode Island, which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the country, passed marriage equality. Predominantly Catholic Mexico continues to move forward on the issue in the courts, and Brazil's National Council of Justice green-lighted gay marriage in that country, which would become the largest country in South America and the largest predominantly Catholic country in the world to allow gay marriage. Another Latin American country near the Argentine pope's old stomping grounds, Uruguay, passed marriage equality in recent months, as did New Zealand.

And Pope Francis had nothing publicly to say about any of it. Zero. Zilch. Nada. He was busy washing the feet of the poor and tweeting about how selflessness is a virtue. Go figure.

Back when Spain passed marriage equality in 2005, Pope Benedict whirled himself into a frenzy, railing against it regularly. He told Catholic officials there that any support of the law would cost them their jobs and told secular public servants who are Catholic to flout the law and refuse to marry gays.


Francis just doesn't seem as if he wants to be out front on this issue. That was even clearer when Francis met this morning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who'd railed against gay marriage in the United Kingdom, which is about to pass marriage equality. According to the Associated Press:

In his remarks to Welby, Francis said he hoped they could collaborate in promoting the sacredness of life "and the stability of families founded on marriage." ...

Significantly, though, Francis didn't specify that marriage should be based on a union between a man and woman, which is how Benedict XVI and John Paul II routinely defined it in a way that made clear their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Vatican officials said Francis' phrasing was a diplomatic attempt to make his point without making a provocative pronouncement....

I'm not saying Francis is anywhere near there (though he did reportedly support civil unions, as I noted in a post a couple of months back). But having harshly railed against gay marriage back when he was in Argentina, only to lose that battle, he may be seeing that the handwriting is on the wall and that he's got better things to do with his time. And that can only be seen as a loss for Maggie Gallagher and other anti-equality advocates who hoped the pope would loudly lead their crusade. 

Click on the images to enlarge.

The Catholic News agency - and perennial blow hard William Donohue who makes a plush living off of manufacturing evidence of supposed anti-Catholic persecution - is big time pissed off at the New York Times for running a full page ad (shown above) asking the very relevant question to Catholics as to when they are going to open their eyes and walk away for the increasingly foul church hierarchy. Among the things the Catholic News Agency got its panties in a wad over are these:

The Madison, Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation ad “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church” ran on March 9 and billed itself as an “open letter to 'liberal' and 'nominal' Catholics.”

“Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages?” it asks. “Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on?”

The ad claims that the church is “an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys club” and derides Catholic teaching that contraception use is sinful. It also blames the Church for causing misery, poverty, unwanted pregnancies and deaths and attacks Catholic teaching on the ordination of women, parochial schools, and the Church’s response to sex abuse.

The ad, which includes an unflattering political cartoon of a Catholic bishop, claims that the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference has made a “declaration of war against women's right to contraception.”

Meanwhile, of course the statements made by the Freedom from Religion Foundation are right on target and true. And to prove the Church's hypocrisy, Pope Benedict XVI just announced another round of anti-gay hatred when he addressed American bishops and stated this:

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday condemned gay marriage in a speech to bishops from the United States after Maryland last week became the eighth US state to legalise same-sex unions.

"Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage," the pope said, warning against "the powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage".

"Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature."

He also said bishops could not overlook "the serious pastoral problem presented by the widespread practice of cohabitation".

"The contemporary crisis of marriage and the family... has led to grave societal problems bearing an immense human and economic cost," he added.

Once again, the sexual abuse and molestation of children and youths seems to be no problem to the Pope except for when media focus ratchets up too high. Then he sheds crocodile tears.

The Growing Stridency of the Anti-Gay Industry

Yesterday, I lay the responsibility for anti-gay bullying and hate crimes where it belongs: at the feet of religious bigots and extremists. In a post on the Huffington Post, activist and opponent of the ex-gay myth, Wayne Besen (Wayne and I worked together to expose ex-gay fraud, Michael Johnston some years ago) , looked at the unequal progress that the movement for LGBT equality is facing even as more and more of the general public is becoming accepting of same sex marriage and gay couple adoption. Wayne rightly describes a so-called anti-gay industry. The term is appropriate because some of the leading hate merchants - NOM's Maggie Gallagher and the unhinged Catholic League's William Donohue are but to examples - are making lucrative six figure incomes. Judas' piece of silver pale in comparison. Meanwhile, the bogey man of the "gay agenda" keeps funds flowing into registered hate groups such as Family Research Council. While it is comforting to know that these groups and individuals are slowly but steadily losing the "culture wars," the slow pace - especially in backward states such as Virginia - is at times maddening. Moreover, as society shifts increasingly against the haters, their viciousness and stridency will likely increase. They are today's equivalent of rabid segregationists and active members of the Klan. In my view, there will be no true freedom of religion in the USA until the toxic hate and religious based discrimination of these people is erased from the nation's laws. Here are highlights from Wayne's post:
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To boil it down, there are two distinct reasons why LGBT people do not have full equality:
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1) Our greatest source of new support are younger Americans who came of age in a Will & Grace world. However, younger voters are the least likely to head to the polls, which extends the fading power of the aging homophobic demographic.
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2) The concentration of anti-gay sentiment among white fundamentalists - who are well-organized and more likely to vote - has created a situation that allows the political climate to lag behind a broader cultural shift.
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Examples of such retrograde politics can be seen in the anti-gay views expressed by virtually every GOP presidential candidate. At the federal level, the Republican Party is enthusiastically defending the (un)constitutionally of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In the states, the Minnesota Senate approved a 2012 ballot measure asking voters whether the Constitution should be amended to "provide that only a union of one man and one woman" be recognized as marriage. However, even before social conservatives could celebrate, a Star Tribune Minnesota poll found that 55 percent of respondents said they oppose adding an amendment while 39 percent favor it. The newspaper said that this is "a sharp reversal of poll results seven years ago."

The surge in acceptance has caused anti-gay activists to become more strident and extreme. . . . Speaking of NOM, the group's former strategist, Louis Marinelli, released a new video this week expressing his support for marriage equality in New York. Equally frustrating for NOM was the recent influx of more than $1 million into the pro-marriage equality campaign by major New York GOP financiers, such as Paul Singer and mayor Michael Bloomberg.
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If this was not troubling enough for the anti-gay industry -- LGBT people are now challenging traditional bastions of homophobia. For example, in the middle of the National Basketball Association playoffs, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts came out of the closet.
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Anti-gay efforts to target African Americans will also be hampered by this week's coming out of CNN anchor Don Lemon. And, most disconcerting for extremists are efforts from within the church, highlighted by a recent New York Times article titled "Even on Religious Campuses, Students Fight for Gay Identity" and the Presbyterian Church USA becoming the fourth mainline Protestant church to approve ordination of gay people.
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If it seems like opponents of equality are increasingly taking the low road, it is because they have clearly lost the high ground of public opinion.

New Lows for Catholic Church Apologists - Others Ask Why Doesn't the Laity Demad Accountability?

William Donohue often single handedly makes the case all on his own as to why anyone with a shred of morality ought to find it unconscionable to remain a practicing Roman Catholic. Donohue - who makes well in to the six figured by finding an anti-Catholic plot under every leaf and bush - has a new apologist propaganda piece out where his basic defense of the Church hierarchy's aiding and abetting of child rapists is more or less a bleat that "everyone is doing it"and he attempts to cite other institutions (e.g., public schools) as being worse than the Church. He conveniently omits, of course, that these other institutions don't hold themselves out as arbiters of morality in the manner in which the Church does, nor do they pontificate about who is "inherently disordered" while failing to take a good look in the mirror. Donohue's drivel makes nasty prostitutes look virtuous. Here are highlights of his ridiculous drivel from Spero News:
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Sexual abuse of minors is unfortunately a social problem that touches virtually every segment of the population where adults and minors interact on a regular basis. Nowhere is this less a problem today than in the Catholic Church.
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We know what's going on: get Catholics so riled up that they will demand the Church adopt the liberal agenda on sexuality. They just don't get it: it was the detour from orthodoxy that allowed the abuse scandal to take hold in the first place.
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No Mr. Donohue. That's not what's going on. The Church has engaged in a worldwide criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice and endanger children and youths while protecting sexual predators. It is way past time that Donohue and those like him got their head out of their ass and open their eyes. They have allowed their lives to be twisted and manipulated by a bunch of bitter old men in dresses who make the Mafia look honorable. The truth is sometimes unpleasant to face. but acting like a whore like sycophant does not solve the problem.

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Fortunately, there remain some Catholics who have (1) figured out that the Church hierarchy is a moral cesspool and (2) are basically asking WTF is wrong with the laity that they are allowing the hierarchy to get away with morally bankrupt and criminal behavior. One such piece is in the National Catholic Reporter. Here are some highlights:
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This past Ash Wednesday, while most Catholics were being told to turn away from sin, the faithful in Philadelphia were informed that the hierarchy had, once again, failed to do so themselves.
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After reading the details of this latest fallout of the church’s sex abuse epidemic, I am starting to wonder if there is anything left to say. For nine years we have heard unceasing, grim revelations about predatory priests and the bishops who protect them. Everyone knows it’s evil, it’s wrong, it’s the greatest stain on the sullied reputation of the Catholic Church.
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Even with so much already said, there is still one question that troubles me. Why are we, the Catholic laity, still letting the hierarchy get away with it?
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[W]hy isn’t everyone speaking out? Why isn’t every church-going Catholic demanding repentance and genuine reform from church authorities?
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[T]he sex abuse crisis is much deeper and darker. It’s about the rape, sodomy, and psychological abuse of children and adolescents by priests. It’s about church authorities going to great lengths to cover-up and to protect predators. The hierarchy cannot use the Bible, Canon Law, or tradition to defend themselves against these crimes.
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Many agree that the only way to get the church to respond in a decent and decisive manner is for the laity to withhold its money.
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Much as I agree that such a tactic would work, am I the only one sickened by the fact that depriving the church of financial support is the only way to shock them into acting with integrity?
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Again, I ask, how is the church still surviving amid such a legacy of sexualized violence? What other institution in the U.S. would still persist amid corruption of this nature? What is it that keeps all Catholics from calling the hierarchy to accountability for the crimes that they have committed against children and adolescents over many decades?
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If we truly believe that the Eucharist we receive is the body of Jesus, we must find the courage to oppose the religious leaders who continue to inflict harm on the body of Christ. So often we lament the lack of integrity in church authorities. But if we continue to remain immobilized by denial, weariness, or complacency, we may leave the next generations asking, where was the integrity of the laity?
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As I have noted many times before, the ONLY THING that will force accountability on the Church hierarchy is a massive defection of members - something that is hard to document given the Church's continued listing of individuals as members even when attendance and financial contributions have ceased absent a formal renunciation of the Church - and a massive decline in financial support. Practicing Catholics who continue to attend mass and to contribute money like mindless sheep are in reality accessories to sexual abuse and the obstruction of justice. Such individuals - including some of my family members - need to seriously open their eyes to reality and vote with their feet.

More Bullsh*t From William Donohue

As noted in prior posts on this blog, the Catholic League is actually a roughly three person operation that nets William Donohue a well into the six figures annual income. Not bad for what's basically a front organization for a non-existent membership. Now, Donohue is trumpeting that "liberal" churches are losing membership within the USA while "conservative churches" such as the Roman Catholic Church are gaining members. Donohue conveniently ignores the fact that without the Hispanic immigrant influx - a group of people Donohue's gay hating conservative allies would deport in a heart beat - the Catholic Church would be DOWN in membership numbers. Oh, and what about the 1 in 3 individuals raised as Catholics who have left the Church as reported by the Pew Form and the Barna Group? As is the norm for Donohue, he cherry picks data and the true facts are irrelevant. Here's what the Pew Form recently found:
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While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration. The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign-born adult population, Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two-to-one margin.
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Major changes in the makeup of American Catholicism also loom on the horizon. Latinos, who already account for roughly one-in-three adult Catholics overall, may account for an even larger share of U.S. Catholics in the future. For while Latinos represent roughly one-in-eight U.S. Catholics age 70 and older (12%), they account for nearly half of all Catholics ages 18-29 (45%).

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Commonweal similarly reported statistics that ought to have the Vatican trembling - not that the current crop of bitter old men in dresses seem to be getting the message:
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[O]ne out of every three adult Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. If these ex-Catholics were to form a single church, they would constitute the second largest church in the nation. . . . . Thomas Reese, SJ, the former editor of America, recently described this loss of one-third of those raised Catholic as “a disaster.” He added, “You wonder if the bishops have noticed.”
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“Catholicism,” the Pew study found, “has lost more people to other religions or to no religion at all than any other single religious group.”
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Catholics becoming unaffiliated stressed disagreement with church teachings, both general teachings and church positions on specific issues like abortion, homosexuality, and treatment of women, and to a lesser extent clerical celibacy. In open-ended questioning, they also stressed hypocrisy and other moral and spiritual failures of church leaders and fellow Catholics.
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The track record is that as populations become more educated and socially assimilated, their church affiliation drops. With the Catholic Church increasingly seeing growth only in newly arrived Hispanic populations, the long term prospects are exactly the the opposite of what Donohue would have Kool-Aid drinking Catholics believe.

Christopher Interviews Anne Rice on Her Decision to Leave Christianity

The last couple of days at work have been insanely busy and somehow I managed to miss this interview on The Advocate. I want to thank the reader that directed me to it. It is excellent and in it Anne Rice lays out many views that match my own including why the Christianists are so viciously anti-gay because normal, loving gays in committed relationships threaten the Christianist house of cards faith tradition. She also correctly describes Catholicism under its current leadership as immoral and sums up the lunacy of William Donohue and his more or less one many operation Catholic League. She likewise notes that some denominations such as the Episcopal Church, the ELCA and United Church of Christ are gay accepting even if they contain continue to retain reactionary elements and fail to challenge the message of hatred that is the predominant message of far too many denominations. The interview is in four separate video clips, but well worth the roughly 20 minutes it takes to watch the full interview.

Catholic League's William Donohue Proves to be Another Self-Enriching Bigot

Even before I left the Catholic Church a decade or more ago, I found William Donohue and the Catholic League to be liars and professional victims. Now, new financial information indicates that Donohue - like Maggie Gallagher and other professional homophobes - is living very high on the hog living off of demonizing gays, claiming that anti-Catholic bigotry exists under every bush, and unquestioningly kissing the asses of the corrupt and disingenuous members of the Church hierarchy. Like his professional Christian cohorts, Donohue makes the tawdriest of hookers look virtuous. According to Catholic United - a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the message of justice and the common good - Catholic League President William Donohue receives $399,156 in annual compensation. Meanwhile, the Catholic League holds some $26 Million in assets. Indeed, Donohue proves himself to be just as arrogant and corrupt as the members of the Church hierarchy to whom he prostitutes himself. Here are highlights from the Catholics United website:
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Controversial Catholic League president William Donohue – whose work has now gained the support of the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – earned a salary of $342,500 in 2009, with an additional $56,656 in fringe benefits. According to annual IRS Form 990 filings, the organization spent more than $2.6 million in 2009, despite the fact that its program work constitutes little more than the issuing of inflammatory press releases.
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The Catholic League masquerades as an official ministry of the Catholic Church while engaging in heavyhanded tactics that many Catholics find distasteful. Donohue recently threatened a media campaign against state governors who didn't display nativity scenes in state capitol buildings.
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Despite this, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, authored a blog post last week expressing support for Donohue and his organization. . . . “Across the country, Catholic dioceses are closing parishes and everyday Catholics are struggling to make ends meet. Bill Donohue is clearly out of touch with this reality,” said Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United. “Now we know why Donohue is so intent on ignoring social justice, concern for the poor, and other actual teachings of Jesus Christ: focusing on these issues is not good for the bottom line.”
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As organizations go, the Catholic League is a “non-profit” in name only. In 2009 it pocketed $943,516 in excess revenue, down from $1.35 million in 2008. As of the most recent filings, the Catholic League reported $26.2 million in net assets.

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The Catholic League's recent 990 filings can be found here.

Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian

I have not commented on the censorship dispute that erupted at the Smithsonian controlled National Portrait Gallery in Washington where a survey of same-sex themes in American portraiture titled “Hide/Seek” is showing. Not surprisingly, fanning the flames of censorship and anti-gay bigotry was the ever opportunistic and professional victim of self-fabricated anti-Catholicism, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League - which seems to have only one member: Donohue. What triggered Donohue's latest batshitery was a video titled “A Fire in My Belly” which features a scene of a crucifix besieged by ants that some art critics say evokes frantic souls scurrying in panic as a seemingly impassive God looked on. Once again, special privileges for the sensibilities of hate mongering Christians won the day and the video was edited to delete the scene. It's amazing how Catholics like Donohue continue to claim to be victims of anti-Catholicism even as the Church spends millions to deprive LGBT citizens of equal civil rights and the Pope continues to describe gays as "inherently disordered" and inclined to "moral evil." Frank Rich has a piece in today's New York Times that takes on the censorship and gay bashing. Here are highlights:
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“Fire in My Belly” was removed from the exhibit by the National Portrait Gallery some 10 days ago with the full approval, if not instigation, of its parent institution, the Smithsonian. (The censored version of “Hide/Seek” is still scheduled to run through Feb. 13.) The incident is chilling because it suggests that even in a time of huge progress in gay civil rights, homophobia remains among the last permissible bigotries in America. “Think anti-gay bullying is just for kids? Ask the Smithsonian,” wrote The Los Angeles Times’s art critic, Christopher Knight, last week. One might add: Think anti-gay bullying is just for small-town America? Look at the nation’s capital.
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The Smithsonian’s behavior and the ensuing silence in official Washington are jarring echoes of those days when American political leaders stood by idly as the [AIDS] epidemic raged on. The incident is also a throwback to the culture wars we thought we were getting past now — most eerily the mother of them all, the cancellation of a Mapplethorpe exhibit (after he died of AIDS) at another Washington museum, the Corcoran, in 1989.
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Like many of its antecedents, the war over Wojnarowicz is a completely manufactured piece of theater. What triggered the abrupt uproar was an incendiary Nov. 29 post on a conservative Web site. The post was immediately and opportunistically seized upon by William Donohue, of the so-called Catholic League, a right-wing publicity mill. . .
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Like many of its antecedents, the war over Wojnarowicz is a completely manufactured piece of theater. What triggered the abrupt uproar was an incendiary Nov. 29 post on a conservative Web site. The post was immediately and opportunistically seized upon by William Donohue, of the so-called Catholic League, a right-wing publicity mill with no official or financial connection to the Catholic Church.
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Donohue is best known for defending Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitism by declaring that “Hollywood is controlled by Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” A perennial critic of all news media except Fox, he has also accused The Times of anti-Catholicism because it investigated the church pedophilia scandal.
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But of course Donohue was just using his “religious” objections as a perfunctory cover for the homophobia actually driving his complaint. The truth popped out of the closet as Donohue expanded his indictment to “pornographic images of gay men.” His Republican Congressional allies got into the act. Eric Cantor called for the entire exhibit to be shut down and threatened to maim the Smithsonian’s taxpayer funding come January. (The exhibit was entirely funded by private donors, but such facts don’t matter in culture wars.)
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The Post’s Gopnik has been heroically relentless in calling out the Smithsonian and the National Portrait Gallery for their capitulation. But few in Washington’s power circles have joined him, including the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents — a gilded assembly of bipartisan cowardice . . .
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Has it gotten better since AIDS decimated a generation of gay men? In San Francisco, certainly. But when America’s signature cultural institution can be so easily bullied by bigots, it’s another indicator that the angels Keith Haring saw on his death bed have not landed in Washington just yet.

Catholic League Blames the Gays Instead of Vatican and Hierarchy

Click image for larger view.

The ever delusional William Donohue of the Catholic League is on another rant blaming gays for the Catholic Church's huge sexual abuse scandal that is becoming increasing a worldwide phenomenon. Now Donohue - who has been well depicted in South Park episodes - has taken out a full page ad in the New York Times (see above) attempting to shift blame from the Pope and Church hierarchy to gays and the New York Times. Never mind that the Vatican operated a worldwide conspiracy of cover ups and shuffling predatory priests from parish to unsuspecting parish. In any other context, such a conspiracy would lead to criminal charges and likely racketeering charges, but somehow in Donohue's crazy world, it's the Vatican and the Church that are the victims.

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The reality is that Donohue cannot come to grips with the reality that the institutional church which he has sought to protect is morally bankrupt and that the Church hierarchy - including the Pope - have played the laity for suckers. This link shows a great animated cartoon from the Washington Post that depicts how the Church deals with messengers of the truth.

Catholic League Has Vapors Over ChurchOuting.Org

Perennial homophobe extraordinaire William Donohue at the Catholic League, who suffers from a bizarre persecution complex as well as homophobia, is in a tizzy over the new website ChurchOuting.org which seeks to out gay priests. It's ironic that Donohue is upset since he was one of the cheerleaders for blaming the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal on gay priests and supported a witch hunt to force gays from the priesthood. Never mind that the Church's own study recently confirmed that sexual orientation had nothing to do with the rampant sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. It seems Donohue only wants a witch hunt when the modern day version of the Inquisition is organizing the hunt. Or is Donohue afraid that the Church will collapse if all of the gay priests are indeed forced out? Here's a sampling of Donohue's screed:

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A new homosexual website, ChurchOuting.org, is intent on publicly disclosing who the gay priests are in the Archdiocese of Washington. The goal of this outing is to intimidate gay priests, as well as heterosexual priests who may be “romantically involved,” into voicing objections to the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage.
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According to one news report, “Attey is going to approach priests he thinks are gay, and warn them that they better stop lobbying against gay people, seeing how gay they are…or…else?”
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The Catholic League is prepared to assist any priest in the Archdiocese of Washington who is the victim of harassment, intimidation or stalking. Whatever resources the priest needs, we will see to it that he is served. If radical gay activists want a showdown with the Catholic League, we will not disappoint them.
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Personally, I support the outing effort and given Donohue's often hysterical homophobia one has to wonder if perhaps he shouldn't be under surveillance. No one is that hysterical unless they secretly want gay sex themselves. but are religiously conflicted about it.

Cardinal Mahony Under Federal Investigation

The other day I wrote about a possible federal investigation of the leadership of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, one of the largest dioceses in the USA based on a Wall Street Journal story. Now, the Los Angeles Times has more information and it is clear that Cardinal Roger Mahoney is one of the targets in the probe. Perhaps my views are colored by the fact that I have three children - and was an altar boy myself for 10 years - but in my view, nothing demonstrates more the moral bankruptcy of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church more than the fact that none of the bishops and cardinals who enabled and/or covered up the sexual abuse of children and youths have been punished. True, Cardinal Law of Boston resigned his position, but then he was rewarded with a plum assignment at the Vatican. Not exactly my idea of punishment. If the Vatican will not take the steps needed to hold bishops and cardinals accountable, then I am all in favor of the civil authorities stepping in a doing the job. Here are some story highlights:

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The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

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The probe, in which U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien is personally involved, is aimed at determining whether Mahony, and possibly other church leaders, committed fraud by failing to adequately deal with priests accused of sexually abusing children, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation.

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Mahony has repeatedly apologized for the church's sex scandal and asked for forgiveness for not acting sooner to remove priests who abused minors. He has declared that the archdiocese handles abuse allegations seriously, notifying police when complaints are made and removing priests from active ministry when allegations are deemed credible. As the Catholic Church's highest-ranking official in Southern California, Mahony has been dogged for years by allegations of covering up the sexual misconduct of priests.

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The cardinal was accused of transferring priests who molested children to other parishes rather than removing them from the priesthood and alerting authorities. One priest, Michael Stephen Baker, told Mahony in 1986 that he had molested children, but he was allowed to remain in active ministry. Mahony sent Baker to a treatment center in New Mexico and later reassigned him to other parishes, where he allegedly victimized children. Prosecutors later filed criminal charges against Baker. He pleaded guilty to molesting two boys and was sentenced in 2007 to more than 10 years in prison.

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Mahony also came under fire for vigorously fighting attempts by prosecutors, victims and the victims' attorneys to gain access to the church's personnel files, which tracked the problems of accused priests and the church hierarchy's reaction to them.

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I will not be surprised to hear next that William Donohoe of the Catholic League is whining about the persecution of Catholics. Meanwhile, Donohue has been utterly silent in terms of demanding that bishops and cardinals involved in the abuse cover ups be held accountable.

Lies in the Name of God

Truth Wins Out, an organization run by my friend Wayne Besen - which has in the past featured a video of yours truly discussing fallen ex-gay, Michael Johnston - is taking out a full-page ad (above - click to enlarge) in the Salt Lake Tribune today in order to counter the Becket Fund's 'No Mob Veto' ad that ran last week in the New York Times. The Becket Fund ad, signed by a group of religious leaders known for their anti-gay views, falsely pretends that the Christianist leaders are friendly towards Mormons and seeks to characterized peaceful protests against Proposition 8 as a form of mob violence against religion. Wayne's comment on the backers of the Becket Fund ad are as follows:

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“These anti-gay activists are crying wolf on the Proposition 8 protests, but they actually are a wolf in sheep’s clothing that preaches religious tolerance while practicing the most defamatory form of religious bigotry. We refuse to permit this orchestrated campaign to rewrite history, nor will we allow some of the most notorious Mormon bashers in America to pose as friends of the Latter-day Saints."