National Coming Out Day: Stigma Against Gay People Can Be Deadly

With my husband in the Windsor Suite of the Greenbrier Resort. 

Today is National Coming Out Day which operates on the concept that one of the most basic forms of activism is to "come out" to family, friends and colleagues and live an authentic life as an openly lesbian or gay person. Stated another way, homophobia thrives in an atmosphere of silence and ignorance, and that once people know that they have loved ones who are lesbian or gay, they are far less likely to maintain homophobic or oppressive views.  I came out roughly 17 years ago and lived through periods when Virginia's sodomy law was still binding law and when same sex couples could not marry. (For the record, I am also the survivor of two serious suicide attempts driven by the adverse consequences of "coming out.")

Obviously, ending homophobia runs directly counter to the efforts of the Trump/Pence regime and the Republican Party to continue to demonize gays and lesbians and to role back LGBT rights.  These efforts are aimed in part to endear the GOP and Trump/Pence to Christofascists who continue to use the bogeyman of LGBT rights as their number one fundraising scare tactic.   Nowhere in the calculus of this vicious agenda is the very real harm done to real people.  A piece in the New York Times by a licensed physician looks at the documented harm such homophobic efforts cause.  I maintain that these "godly Christian" folk care little about "religious freedom" and instead are focused on inflicting cruelty on those who are different, even if such cruelty drives individuals to suicide.  Here are article highlights which look at the harm being done to individuals and often their families:

I’ve never been sure what to expect when meeting someone who’s just tried to take his own life. But I’ve learned to stop expecting anything.

Yesterday, my patient, a 20-something graduate student, swallowed a jumble of unmarked pills, hoping to die, after his father told him never to come home again. Today, he greeted me with a soft smile, his delirium starting to clear, his heart beating normally again.

“Whoops,” he said.   He’d been a happy kid who aimed to please. He once felt so bad for lying about having done his homework before playing video games, he told me, that he’d grounded himself. Sociable but square, he didn’t drink until he was 21, even though he’d gone to a college with a reputation for partying. Deeply religious, he was gay but desperately wanted not to be.

Now his father’s disavowal pushed him over the edge, capping a string of stigmatizing experiences at home, at school and at church. He’d had enough.

For decades, we’ve known that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals experience a range of social, economic and health disparities — often the result of a culture and of laws and policies that treat them as lesser human beings. They’re more likely to struggle with poverty and social isolation. . . . . L.G.B.T. youth are three times as likely to contemplate suicide, and nearly five times as likely to attempt suicide.

Some of these disparities have interpersonal roots: social exclusion, harassment, internalized homophobia. But often they stem from an explicit denial of rights: same-sex marriage bans, employment discrimination, denial of federal benefits.

Sexual minorities living in communities with high levels of prejudice die more than a decade earlier than those in less prejudiced communities.

But civil rights advances and growing public acceptance of L.G.B.T. individuals in recent years are among the more transformative social changes in modern American history. And evidence increasingly suggests this shift has measurably improved health care access and health outcomes for L.G.B.T. populations.

The halting, patchwork nature of L.G.B.T. rights expansions across the country has allowed researchers to study the effects on health and well-being by comparing states that expanded rights to those that failed to introduce protections, or actively curtailed them.

After Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2003, mental health visits dropped significantly for gay men across the state. Other states that followed suit saw a 7 percent reduction in suicide attempts among L.G.B.T. adolescents. Nationwide, legalization of same-sex marriage is linked to increases in the likelihood that gay men have health insurance and a regular doctor to see.

By contrast, in states that passed same-sex marriage bans in 2004 and 2006, L.G.B.T. individuals experienced a marked rise in mental health problems, including anxiety, alcohol use and mood disorders. (No such increase was found in neighboring states that did not pass bans.)

But it’s more than just marriage. L.G.B.T. individuals who live in states where it’s legal for businesses to deny people service based on their sexual orientation have a higher risk for mental health problems. One study found a 46 percent increase in the proportion of sexual minorities reporting depression, anxiety and other emotional problems in states that passed denial-of-service laws. Again, no increase was observed in states without these laws.

But there’s reason to believe progress in L.G.B.T. health may be imperiled by a political and social environment that is growing less friendly toward sexual minorities. More states are trying to pass “religious liberty” laws that allow for discrimination based on gender and sexual identity. Several federal health surveys will no longer include questions about sexual orientation, making it more difficult for researchers to study disparities. And the Trump administration recently established a new division in the Department of Health and Human Services to defend health professionals who refuse to provide care to people or in situations that conflict with their personal beliefs, which could include the right to treat L.G.B.T. individuals. (L.G.B.T. patients already face discrimination at concerning rates.

I think of my young patient in the hospital bed who had attempted to kill himself. I remember the pain that remained even as the toxins he ingested left his body. And I worry that a new wave of anti-L.G.B.T. rhetoric and policy will mean that he — and people who love like him — will end up feeling more stigmatized, in poorer health, or no longer with us at all.

Trump and His Base - Cruelty Is the Point

A dark, but accurate, in my view, piece in The Atlantic looks at Trump and his supporters and the joy of inflicting cruelty on others which binds them together.   The piece starts out with descriptions of photos of grinning whites at the brutal lynchings then fast forwards to Trump and his appeals to white supremacists and Christian extremists who long to bring back the bad old days when blacks were official less than full citizens, gays were forced to remain in the closet and invisible, and women were largely relegated to homemaking and subordinate to men.  For me, I have a hard time understanding how decent, moral people could revel in harm being done to others, yet that seems to be the bond that ties Trump to his cheering base.  Even harder to comprehend is how/why self-respecting, moral  women - including some I know - can support Trump and his misogynistic male cheerleaders.  Are these people/women really so racist and/or homophobic that they applaud inhumanity towards others?  Sadly, "yes" seems to be the only answer.  Here are article highlights:

The Museum of African-American History and Culture is in part a catalogue of cruelty. Amid all the stories of perseverance, tragedy, and unlikely triumph, there are the artifacts of inhumanity and barbarism: the child-size slave shackles, the bright red robes of the wizards of the Ku Klux Klan, the recordings of civil rights protesters being brutalized by police.

The artifacts that persist in my memory, the way a bright flash does when you close your eyes, are the photographs of lynchings. But it’s not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It’s the faces of the white men in the crowd. There’s the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, where a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend. There’s the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, where grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one man is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear. There’s the one of a crowd of white men huddled behind the smoldering corpse of a man burnt to death, one of whom is wearing a smart suit, a fedora hat, and a bright smile.

[P]eople who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to each other.

The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials.

At a rally in Mississippi, a crowd of Trump supporters cheered as [Trump] the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who has said that Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump has nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, attempted to rape her when she was a teenager. “Lock her up!” they shouted.

[M]ocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that they would not be believed, can now look to [Trump] to see their fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are not merely smiling because of what they have done, but because they did it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when [Trump] the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump.

Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

[Trump] The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit decrying “false accusations,” when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech  meet references to Hillary Clinton or mentions of a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of, “Lock her up!” The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only [Trump] the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

Trump’s only true skill is the con, his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. [Trump’s] The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

Truly disturbing and frightening.  I do not recognize what America is becoming. It's as if we are living a parallel to what happened in Germany in the 1930's.

A Damning Image of the Trump/Pence Regime

I continue to be amazed at those who are willing to prostitute themselves and accept positions within the Trump/Pence regime with seemingly no concern for how their reputations may be sullied and the morally bankrupt positions they be pressured to take. Many of these individuals ultimately end up leaving the administration - indeed, the White House staff has become a revolving door - and then belatedly tell the truth about the foul state of affairs that they have witnessed.  These confessions serve two purposes: an effort to regain moral standing and restore their reputations, and secondly, to issue a warning to Americans that things are seriously wrong under this utterly unfit occupant of the White House.  A column in the Washington Post looks at some of these tell all exits.  Here are excerpts:

From an administration’s departures we learn how it conducts itself. Honesty comes easier to those with little left to lose.

In this regard, the Trump administration offers much to analyze. The pace of disillusioned exits is rapid. And what the departing have chosen to emphasize reveals much about daily life in the executive branch.

In the case of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the complaint was an atmosphere toxic with cruelty. President Trump made a habit of undermining his chief diplomat in public. . . . . Tillerson was fired via tweet — a first for the office once held by Thomas Jefferson. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly reportedly told White House staffers that Tillerson received the news of his impending dismissal while on the toilet.

Jobs in the executive branch are hard enough without an added layer of stress caused by constant humiliation. But Trump emphasizes his own importance by diminishing those around him. So creative cruelty is essential to his management style. The result is fear, distrust and resentment — hardly a situation conducive to deliberation.

During his departure, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin made a similar point about civility. He says he was informed of his own firing just hours before a Trump tweet thanking him for his service was posted, and then the administration claimedhe had resigned. “It should not be this hard to serve your country,” he complained in a New York Times op-ed.

But Shulkin also described an atmosphere not just of cruelty but also of attempted corruption. He wrote of a “brutal power struggle” within his department with “political appointees choosing to promote their agendas instead of what’s best for veterans.” Their goal was “to put VA health care in the hands of the private sector.” And the reason for this, as Shulkin describes it, was not only ideological. “They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed,” he said. “That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans.”

To summarize: The departing head of VA has accused swaggering White House appointees of trying to betray the interests of veterans for the financial benefit of favored individuals and businesses. A serious charge. But in the Trump administration’s carnival of corruption, this barely rates as a sideshow.

The departure of Trump’s second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, brought a different sort of indictment. In his final public remarks, he was careful to preserve his ties to the president. But the topic he chose was Russia — particularly Russian cyber­operations against the United States and other NATO countries. And his judgment was harsh: “We have failed to impose sufficient costs” for such actions. The result? “The Kremlin’s confidence is growing as its agents conduct their sustained campaign to undermine our confidence in ourselves and in one another.”

For a national security adviser to make this statement in an administration where the president has been equivocal, even exculpatory, in his language about Russia is the most serious critique of all. 

The composite image of the Trump administration left by these departing officials is damning — a picture of cruelty, attempted corruption and national weakness. Instead of hearing gratitude for the experience of a lifetime, we are getting distress signals.

Be very afraid.

Trump's Dangerous Lack of Empathy and Morality

Well before Election Day in 2016 Americans were warned that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der  Trumpenführer, was a malignant narcissist and how this posed a significant danger were he to win the White House.  Sadly, enough voters in three states were won over by his calls to racism and bigotry, likely with the connivance of Russian social media trolls, to place this unfit individual in the White House.  Sine inauguration day we have seen a cavalcade of callousness, moral bankruptcy, and attacks on the media never witnessed before flowing from the White House.  Sadly, Trump's only compass is his ego and need to self-promote and any feeling for the pain and suffering of others is an unknown experience.  Even George W. Bush - hardly among my favorite presidents or individuals - felt the need to condemn such behavior eloquently without ever naming Trump.  Everyone knew in a heart beat who Bush was referring to without Bush naming him.  Trump is literally that awful.  A piece in The Atlantic and a piece by Kathleen Parker (who has escaped the GOP reservation yet again) in the Washington Post look at Trump's dangerous callousness towards all but himself.  What is telling to me is that evangelical Christians continue to support someone so utterly morally bankrupt. First these highlights from The Atlantic: 

When White House Chief of Staff—and Gold Star parent—John Kelly, on Thursday defended Donald Trump’s call to the newly widowed Myeshia Johnson, he was somber and sincere, which is refreshing. But he was wrong.

Context matters. From another person, at another time, observing that Sergeant La David Johnson “knew what he signed up for” by joining the Army wouldn’t have sparked outrage. But consider what else Representative Frederica Wilson—with the backing of Johnson’s mother—has alleged: that Trump didn’t know Johnson’s name; he repeatedly called him “your guy.” And that Trump’s tone was oddly jovial: “He was almost, like, joking.”

Above all, consider what we know about the way Trump discusses pain and death. This is the man who congratulated Puerto Ricans—whose island had been utterly devastated—for losing only “16” and not “thousands of people.” The man who told a crowd in Corpus Christi on August 29, while 30,000 Texans were displaced, “It’s going well.” And who said after touring the convention center where thousands of Houstonians were taking refuge that, “We saw a lot of happiness.”

Donald Trump minimizes suffering for which he might be held responsible. That’s likely what he was doing in his conversation with Myeshia Johnson. And it’s not just insensitive; it’s dangerous. As the former Missouri Senate candidate, and former Army intelligence officer, Jason Kander observed on Wednesday night on CNN, people say, “He knew what he signed up for” because “they are seeking emotional distance from the situation. People say that because they want to avoid feeling that pain.” That’s worrying, Kander added, because “I want the president, any president … when they’re making a decision about sending people to a dangerous place, I want them to have as one of the things in their mind, the visceral, emotional feeling” that comes from absorbing a widow’s inconsolable grief.

That’s the key point. Trump’s comments bespeak a refusal to face the human costs of violence and war that could have frightening consequences for American foreign policy.

Trump loves discussing violence. He does it often, and almost always in the same way. When committed by terrorists, criminals, or protesters, violence is horrific, and its perpetrators are subhuman. (“Animals,” is a favorite Trump word.) But when committed by Trump’s side, violence is righteous and heroic, evidence of a functioning moral order. Crucially, it is also cost-free. Trump barely ever admits that violence, when deployed by his side, causes suffering that need disturb his sleep.

Another striking example of Trump’s refusal to face the human consequences of the violence he glorifies comes from his discussion of the NFL. The press has been filled in recent years with stories of former football players driven to suicide by the brain injuries they suffered on the field. But to Trump, they knew what they signed up for. In fact, he’s mocked the NFL for trying to minimize their suffering.

Trump’s discussion of war is similar. He said last October that veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder were not “strong.” He yearns for the good old days when American soldiers did not acknowledge pain, and when law, morality, and empathy did not impede their ability to maim and kill. Trump has repeatedly cited a bogus story about General John J. Pershing killing Muslim terrorists with bullets smeared in pigs’ blood as his model for fighting terrorism. He’s called for torture techniques far “stronger” than waterboarding. And he’s called for killing the families of alleged terrorists.

“I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way,” Trump told an Iowa rally in 2015, “But only when we win.” It’s plausible that Trump will avoid war with North Korea because he fears America cannot prevail. It is far less likely that he will avoid war because he can’t bear the human cost. He never bears it.

That’s what Myeshia Johnson—who has a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and is pregnant, and who said she doesn’t know what she’ll do without her “soulmate”—confronted Trump with: the human cost. The human cost that doesn’t exist in professional wrestling. The human cost, which proves that violence and war aren’t always grand, manly spectacles, and that America doesn’t always win. The human cost, for which Trump, as commander in chief, bears responsibility.

He couldn’t handle it. His attacks on Wilson suggest he still can’t. He won’t abandon his decades-old intoxication with pretend violence and pretend war. And that makes him a very dangerous man to be leading the most powerful military on earth.

Kathleen Parker follows up on this theme from a different perspective, but it all comes back to Trump's lack of care or concern for the pain of others and his contempt for the truth when it fails to inflate his insatiable ego.  Here are column excerpts:

George W. Bush’s speech this last week at a forum hosted by his eponymous institute might as well have been titled “Dear Donald.” The 43rd president all but called out the current president by name as he lamented the tone and character of today’s political rhetoric.

“Bigotry seems emboldened,” Bush said . “Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.” Indeed.

Trump likes to label these theories and fabrications “fake news,” but “fake news” is Trump’s own invention — and his greatest fabrication to date. Now the rallying cry for millions of Trump supporters, “fake news” is a deflection, a decoy floated on the human sea of credulity to distract people from coverage he finds unflattering. The truth is, what Trump says and does is so often unflattering without embellishment that adjectives and adverbs needn’t apply.

No stranger to media criticism — crushing criticism — Bush never attacked the fourth estate. He also obviously recognizes that worse than a reporter’s or editor’s error is the undermining of public faith in a free press. Once the government succeeds in eliminating a country’s watchdogs, the government becomes the only source of information. Most people know, or should know, how that ends.

Trump’s “fake news” charge is very much in the vein of propaganda. He has created a false narrative to clear obstacles — such as questioning reporters or the hindrance of accountability — from his path.

Russians are also very good at this. Recent revelations about fake Twitter accounts tied to Russia through which genuinely fake news was posted and distributed to influence the 2016 election remind us of how vulnerable we are to real fake news. Unfortunately, Trump has helped blur the line between propaganda and what is otherwise known simply as news.

In other remarks clearly aimed at Trump, Bush addressed bullying and prejudice in public life that “sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.” And: “We can’t wish globalization away, any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the Industrial Revolution.” . . . . As Bush suggested, globalization is the new age and the old one isn’t coming back.

Will Ordinary Americans Carry out Inhumane Acts for Trump/Pence?

One of the most frightening things about the atrocities perpetrated by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime were the horrors done to people by seemingly otherwise ordinary Germans.  Brutality and inhuman acts that one would never expect in a civilized society were done without flinching. Meanwhile, other Germans claimed to know nothing about the horrors that were being done daily.  A piece from the Baltimore Sun looks at the phenomenon and then looks at some of the inhuman things done by Americans during the first days of Der Trumpenführer - I saw the name on another bog and loved it -  Muslim ban and ask the question that should be haunting decent Americans everywhere: would our friends and neighbors willingly abuse others if they were merely "following orders"?  Add to this the studies that have shown individuals raised in deeply religious fundamentalist homes show far less empathy towards others and we could be facing a nightmare given the ascendancy of the Christofascists and alt-right extremists under Der Trumpenführer.  Here are article highlights:

A week ago, men and women went to work at airports around the United States as they always do. They showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, perhaps dropped off their kids at school. Then they reported to their jobs as federal government employees, where, according to news reports, one of them handcuffed a 5-year-old child, separated him from his mother and detained him alone for several hours at Dulles airport.

At least one other federal employee at Dulles reportedly detained a woman who was traveling with her two children, both U.S. citizens, for 20 hours without food. A relative says the mother was handcuffed (even when she went to the bathroom) and threatened with deportation to Somalia.

At Kennedy Airport, still other federal employees detained and handcuffed a 65-year-old woman traveling from Qatar to visit her son, who is a U.S. citizen and serviceman stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. The woman was held for more than 33 hours, according to the New York Times, and denied use of a wheelchair.

The men and women who work for the federal government completed these and other tasks and then returned to their families, where perhaps they had dinner and read stories to their children before bedtime.

[N]o would-be autocrat can act alone. As a practical matter, he needs subordinates willing to carry out orders. Of course, neither Donald Trump nor Steve Bannon personally detained any of the more than 100 people held at airports over the weekend pursuant to the administration's executive order on immigration, visitation and travel to the United States. They relied on assistance.

What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.

The famous Milgram experiment and subsequent studies suggest that many people will obey instructions from an authority figure, even if it means harming another person. It is also perfectly understandable (which does not mean it is justifiable). How many of us would refuse to follow an instruction from a superior at work? It is natural to want to keep one's job, even if at the price of inflicting cruelty on another human being, even perhaps a child.

It is far easier to do nothing, to trust that, somehow, America's dangerous course will be set right. But this is a dangerous gamble, and in fact an abdication of our responsibility as Americans and indeed as human beings. If we do nothing, that is a choice. It means we accept a government that has demonstrated it is capable of inflicting cruelty on the innocent and defenseless.  What will we do?

Catholic Church Prevents Gay Man from Singing at Grandmother’s Funeral

The gratuitous cruelty of the Roman Catholic Church continues and underscores the foul nature of this made made institution which has aided and abetted child rapist and encouraged it followers to support corrupt "pro-life" politicians - politicians like Donald Trump, a pathological liar, serial adulterer, not to mention thrice married.   The pettiness and simple mean spirited nature of these alleged "men of god" truly seems to know few limits and cares nothing for common decency.  Rather, all is focused on maintaining the cult and the priestly classes power over parishioners.  The latest example of the toxicity of the Church comes from  St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic Church in Decatur, Indiana (the backyard of gay hater extraordinaire, Mike Pence), where a man has been barred from singing at his grandmother's funeral due to his "gay life style."  Irish Central has details. Here are highlights:  

Indiana parishioner Connor Hakes, a music graduate, planned to honor his grandmother by singing at her funeral until he was told by his parish priest that because of his “gay lifestyle” he would no longer be permitted to. Father Bob J. Lengerich found a photo of Hakes and his friends taken at a Gay Pride festival some years back and told the stunned parishioner that he wouldn’t be able to sing at St. Mary’s of the Assumption Catholic Church because he had advocated for gay rights.

Hakes wrote on his Facebook page: “I can no longer sing at my Grandma’s funeral, because I attended a gay pride rally and a picture was posted publicly (years ago). The priest’s reasoning is by attending such event, I am opposing the Catholic Church’s fundamental marriage belief.

"Both my Grandma and Grandpa would be disgusted by their parish. Their compassion and empathy was abundant, no matter who you were. They saw beyond race, religion, sexuality, and social class. They loved everyone. That is what is means to be a Christian. That is what it means to be Catholic. Please SHARE!” 

The hard line letter from father Lengerich lists the main reasons why Hakes was banned from singing at his grandmother’s funeral mass, outlining that “the Catholic Church forbids those who openly defy tenants of our faith to serve in (any official church capacity). This included people who have been divorced or remarried (with the benefit of a declaration of annuity), have openly supported abortion rights and are openly participating in unchaste same-sex relationships.”

As for Fr. Lengerich, I cannot help but wonder how long it we be until we come across a news article reporting on how he (i) molested a child or youth, (ii) aided and abetted a sexual predator priest, (iii) embezzled church funds, or (iv) has a sexual affair with a female parishioner who may or may not have been a minor at the time.  I left Catholicism years ago because I did not want to fell dirty by my mere continued affiliation. None of my siblings remain in the Church.  How do decent, moral people remain in the Church?  Do they simply close their eyes and stick their heads in the sand or are they simply masochists?   In any event, here is Lengerich's letter: