Thursday, August 13, 1998
DEAR FATHER MORROW:
I have read with interest your remarks at the Family Research Council's anti-gay conference yesterday here in Washington, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you.
I am a graduate of the Saint Catherine Labouré Elementary School Class of 1970, where I was a straight-A student. I grew up in the parish and received my Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation there. I also attended my mother's funeral there. As you can see, I have extensive ties to your parish...
You will be less happy to learn that two days before my graduation from Villanova University twenty years ago, I came out as a gay man. Since then, in addition to my career as a computer specialist, I have cofounded the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, written and officiated at a gay wedding ceremony, and worked for equal rights as a member of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC, of which I have been president since January, 1996. I am writing to you today to take strong issue with your remarks at the FRC conference.
Referring to the "not negligible" number of people with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" (which makes them sound like loose change that fell behind the sofa cushions), you state, "This inclination, which is not objectively good, constitutes for most of them a trial." This is a reference to the Church's declaration that homosexuality is an objective moral disorder; it is objective only in the sense that an authoritarian religious organization has so declared it. Since there is in fact no objective basis for such an assertion, it is no more objective than any religious dogma. Your citation of First Corinthians 6:10 that homosexual acts are intrinsically wrong is hardly persuasive, since if I took the trouble I could cite Old Testament verses in defense of slavery, among other horrors. It is amazing, and less than inspiring, how otherwise intelligent and decent people make selective use of biblical texts to justify their preexisting prejudices.
I presume that in any case you would agree with another participant in the FRC conference, who stated that of course we would not want to carry out the biblically prescribed death penalty for homosexuals today. While I appreciate such generous sentiments, they help make clear that it is not homosexuality itself which constitutes a trial for homosexual children growing up, but rather all the bigotry and intolerance disguised as religion which they face as they come to terms with their sexuality�often with a frightening degree of isolation. No child is done any favor by a ministering adult who insists that the child's most basic feelings for another person are somehow intrinsically wrong. All this does is add to the disproportionately high suicide rate among gay youth.
The bottom line, in a practical context, is that, whether you and the Roman Catholic Church Magisterium like it or not, a great many people�including self-professed Christians�disagree with your religious views on homosexual sexual acts being intrinsically wrong, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees their right so to do.
You state that "legislation protecting homosexual persons becomes protection of behavior or a point of view. This is quite different from laws which prevent discrimination based on race, sex or age." As a matter of fact, it is rather like religion, since religion is chosen. Your reference to "a point of view" as something not deserving protected status is telling. No doubt the Church, despite the Reformation being four centuries behind us, would like to enforce its point of view on everyone. Indeed, the Archdiocese of Washington does not just defend its views at right-wing conferences, but also lobbies against the equal rights of gay citizens before the DC Council�such as when Cardinal Hickey denounced the District's Domestic Partners law in 1992 as equivalent to marriage (which, unfortunately, it is not), and denounced the District's repeal of its sodomy law in 1993.
Let me tell you something, Father Morrow. When I see my lover asleep beside me, I am as happy as a mortal can be and as sure of the rightness of my love as Monsignor Russell used to be of his reactionary approach to Church discipline [in punishing dissent on birth control]. That you can talk seriously about sharing God's love when you work for an institution that supports laws that would imprison me for my own love, is as hypocritical and perverted as anything can be.
Your remarks at the FRC conference make clear that you oppose the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state, and that you advocate the forcible imposition of your religious beliefs on the rest of the population by the state. This is the case despite your disingenuous protestation that "every sign of unjust discrimination" against us "should be avoided," since you quickly make it clear that you consider legal discrimination against us to be entirely just.
I am quite prepared to participate in a bloody war before I will allow your narrow and intolerant vision of America to prevail, before I will give up my liberty as a gay citizen. But already gay people are gradually winning the cultural war that was declared against us by the sorts of people who attended the FRC conference with you. We are also beginning to win the political war, as demonstrated by the crushing defeat in Congress last week of the attempt to overturn the President's executive order barring anti-gay discrimination in the federal workplace.
In reading about your weekly "support group" for homosexuals, I am thankful that I long ago escaped the repressive clutches of St. Catherine's. I can assure you of this: if any of my nephews or nieces should turn out to be gay, and I should learn that they are in the "loving embrace" of a "support group" that teaches them that they are intrinsically disordered, I will storm into the room and interpose myself bodily between you and them, and any sibling that supports such ministering to flesh and blood of mine will have to leave my body cold and bloody on the floor before I will allow such abuse in the name of love to continue. Not with my family, you don't.
It is appalling that a minister of Christ should fail to recognize the very real harm that your intolerance (however dressed up as pastoral care) can cause to real citizens and real families, such as the loving gay couples and their adopted children that I know�not to mention the gay child that I was when I first arrived at St. Catherine's in September 1962. I owed it to every boy I ever gave a valentine at that school not to let your remarks at the FRC hatefest go unchallenged.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Rosendall
St. Catherine Labouré Class of 1970