The statement I've underlined from this Washington Post article will be challenged. People will say this is not about punishing schools that hire employees who are not heterosexual. It's about going after gays who don't behave themselves and who publicly dissent from Catholic teaching, they'll maintain.
But it quite certainly is about targeting folks who are not heterosexual, while heterosexual employees of Catholic institutions whose lives don't adhere to Catholic teaching are never singled out in this way.
And this is scandalous in the extreme.
People see. They understand. There's a reason the Catholic church shows up again and again in polls as the church most Americans seen as more hostile to LGBTQ people than any other church.*
And the secular media won't play the let's-make-nice-distinctions game that the Catholic media like to play, covering up the raw homophobia with platitudes. The secular media will not pretend this is not all abut homophobic prejudice and discrimination deliberately singling out LGBTQ human beings.
And folks, especially younger ones, will keep walking away.
* Daniel Cox, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Robert P. Jones, "A Shifting Landscape: A Decade of Change in American Attitudes about Same-Sex Marriage and LGBT Issues," Public Religion Research Institute (26 Feb. 2014):
Majorities of Americans perceive three religious groups to be unfriendly to LGBT people: the Catholic Church (58%), the Mormon church (53%), and evangelical Christian churches (51%).
