The Pope’s Gay Panic

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/bruni-the-popes-gay-panic.html?ref=opinion

I HAVE many questions for and about the “gay lobby” in the Vatican, but I’ll start with this: How can you be so spectacularly ineffective?

You wouldn’t last a minute on K Street; the Karl Roves of the capital would have you for lunch. Despite your presence in, and presumed influence on, the upper reaches of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, church teaching still holds that homosexuality is disordered, and many church leaders still send the preposterously mixed message that while gay and lesbian people shouldn’t be admonished for, or ashamed about, their same-sex attractions, they should nonetheless elect cold showers over warm embraces. Look but don’t touch. Dream but don’t diddle.

“It’s like saying, ‘You’re a bird, but you can’t fly,’ ” cracked Sister Jeannine Gramick, an American nun who has long challenged the church on this issue, when we chatted recently.

“That’s not original,” she quickly confessed, referring to her analogy. “It’s been around awhile.”