David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement site:
According to multiple reports, the two men, 26 and 28-years old [i.e., two gay men who had their faces bashed in on September 11 in Philadelphia], were asked by members of the group, all friends who had attended a local Catholic high school together, if they were a couple. Not in a nice way.
Yet, as Badash also reports, according to multiple sources, members of the gay-bashing group are now claiming that they acted in self-defense — though reports by several eyewitnesses who saw what happened say that the two gay men were minding their own business when they were accosted by the group, who began to shout anti-gay slurs at them. And then the gay-bashing followed.
All friends who had attended a local Catholic high school together.
In fact, one of the participants in the crime, Fran McGlinn, has just been fired by Archbishop Wood Catholic high school, where he was a basketball coach, after his role in the gay-bashing came out. McGlinn is a graduate of Archbishop Wood Catholic high school, and as Jean Ann Esselink reports for The New Civil Rights Movement (see the link I've just provided), several more of those involved in this brutal gay-bashing are also graduates of this Catholic high school.
Can we please talk again about what it means for Catholic institutions that the Catholic church in the U.S. is moving backwards regarding full inclusion of gay people, while all other religious institutions move forwards? Can we talk some more about exactly why people keep reporting in one poll after another that they see the Catholic community as the religious community more hostile to gay folks than any other religious community in the U.S.?
Can we talk some more about the deformation of Catholic consciences and moral thinking by a catechesis that seems to teach people to disregard the most fundamental principles of love, justice, and mercy in their dealings with their fellow human beings who are gay, while teaching them —in the name of fidelity to the magisterium — to focus obsessively on the mote they imagine they see in the eyes of those who are gay, while ignoring the log in their own eyes?
Can we talk honestly about these issues for a change?
