Website Wants Names of Closeted Gay Priests in D.C.

It sounds like BlogActive for the Roman Catholic Church - but where the media-savvy Mike Rogers exposes gay politicians who work against LGBT rights while engaging in sex on the down low, ChurchOuting.org targets Catholic clerics - both homosexual and heterosexual - whose church trashes committed same-sex unions, priests who espouse damaging religious dogma and then break their own vows of chastity.  (It's the hypocrisy, Virginia.)  For now the organization is focusing on the nation's capital, where religious leaders are suing to block implementation of gay marriage in D.C.  But founder Phil Attey says he hopes his efforts will inspire similar campaigns in every archdiocese across the country:  “Their silence is criminal. The increasing anti-gay attacks by the Archbishop and the USCCB not only harm gay and lesbian families seeking civil marriage recognition, but perpetuate the cycle of spiritual and emotional abuse that has harmed countless LGBT Catholic youth for generations...  I expect community response to this campaign to be overwhelming.  The Church hierarchy has crossed the line in diverting the mission of the church from helping the poor and caring for the sick to waging political campaigns to strip LGBT citizens of civil rights protections.  We can no longer remain silent while this happens.  Nor can our parish priests.”  

Blogger Mike Rogers, who has outed such notable public figures as Senator Larry Craig and Rep. Mark Foley, isn't ready to endorse the project:  "I certainly think exposing (Ted) Haggard was a good idea. Applying my thought process on outing political players, I think it's a good thing to expose hypocrisy like this when the clergy are leading the fight against us.  I am not sure where I fall in terms of outing clergy who are merely silent on the issue."

That would be a reasonable concern if the goal of ChurchOuting.org was to ruin the careers of men who have chosen the priesthood as a profession.  But the website says that's not its objective:  Many of these priests, while remaining silent, actually lead duplicitous lives rich with romantic and sexual relationships - both homosexual and heterosexual...   It is not the intention of this site to complicate the lives of closeted gay priests, rather to help them make the difficult choice to stand up against the hateful and harmful new direction the Church hierarchy is taking the Holy Mother Church.  The goal of this site is not to force Catholic priests out of the closet against their will.  The goal of this campaign is to aggregate reports on every gay priest in the Archdiocese, so that we can work with them, one on one, helping them stand up to the church hierarchy's stand on this important issue.

The website is encouraging anyone with knowledge of closeted gay priests to come forward and identify them.  (This doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.  If it was aimed specifically at priests who are actively working to harm the LGBT community, that would be one thing.  But this sounds too much like a witch hunt.) 

Comments

[Bee Girl]

I have no love for Catholic priests but there are probably some good ones who happen to be gay and are having a hard time reconciling their faith to all the crap coming out of the vatican. They don't need to be hounded any more than they are already.

[Trent]

I second that.

[ClintJCL]

They do if they are acting against gay rights.

[Barbara]

Any priest who comes out favoring gay marriage in DC is going to be assumed to be doing so because he was blackmailed He's outed himself. Care to think he remains a priest? So much for Attey's claims of not wanting to harm priests.
Being outed by Attey he gets the sympathy of his parishoners and the hierarchy. He goes into treatment, gets transferred, and remains a priest.
Rogers' tactic hasn't been all that successfu in the secular world with politicians. How many states have voted down gay marriage?

[GwenRO31]

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