Last week the Metropolitan Community Church of Greater New Orleans was evicted from their home in the Project Lazarus hospice. The hospice is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, which claims it decided to terminate the lease because of MCC's “teachings...on the issues of same-sex marriage” and blessing of same sex-unions.
“This particular group blesses gay unions, which we do not support,” the Rev. William Maestri, a spokesperson for the archdiocese told the Times Picayune newspaper. Maestri said that if the lease were continued it could create the impression that the Catholic church is either indifferent or in support of the teachings of the MCC.
Supporters of the Archdiocese's position went so far in at least one case as to question whether MCC is a Christian church at all:
Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy, defended the archdiocese, saying that since the hospice Lazarus House is their private property, the “church was acting within its legal rights to terminate the arrangement” ...
Crampton was “struck” by MCC's “pretense of being a Christian denomination.” He added: “I would suggest that merely saying it does not make it so, and that in fact, it is nothing of the sort.”
As I read this and other articles I thought I was reading a fake news story. Wait... the Catholic Church threw a bunch of fags out on their ear due to a disagreement over theology? It wasn't because they were homosexuals? It had nothing to do with sex (i.e. fucking)?
And here I was, silly me, all the time thinking that it was not our doctrines and sacraments that offend the Catholic hierarchy, so much as our very existence and visibility in the world. After all, the pope has recently and repeatedly stated that we homosexuals are intrinsically disordered, gravely immoral and seriously depraved. Catholic leaders everywhere have a duty to 'emphatically oppose' the granting of equal civil or human rights to GLBT people. But no, it turns out that the church is just trying to guard against bad doctrine.
This outrageous sophistry must be part of a subtle new twist on the homophobic message of the church. 'We're not against gay people,' the new message goes, 'and after all, look at the wonderful AIDS work we are doing, but we can't let people think we agree with what they're saying.'
Perhaps the hope is that shifting attention to the bogus issue of “teachings”, this will add a veneer of respectability to what is really a hateful, fearful and homophobic moral position.
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