Who is the wierd guy standing on the corner of Church street shouting?

Bill Donohue is at it again.  Mr. Donohue is a rabidly conservative, Catholic man who runs what he calls the "Catholic League" defending what he sees as smears and insults to the Catholic Church and its teachings.  This time Mr. Donohue is screeching about the website ChurchOuting.org.  From their website:

For generations, in Catholic churches across the country, LGBT youth are told they should be ashamed of who they are and that they should lead loveless lives as social and religious abominations. The emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse inflicted on them by Catholic priests and our church hierarchy is in reality as damaging as the physical or sexual child abuse anyone would quickly condemn. Yet to this abuse, few raise their voices and say "ENOUGH!"


It is shameful that in many Catholic churches, this abuse is being supported by men, who are gay themselves, leading closeted lives of self-persecution and quiet desperation.

Even more shameful, is that many of these priests, while remaining silent, actually lead duplicitous lives rich with romantic and sexual relationships -- both homosexual and heterosexual.

This hypocrisy must end.

 The website was created partially in response to the Manhattan Declaration.  Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God has the details. 

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LGBT Violence at the Corner of Church and State

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, to remember all of the trans-people who have died over the past year—especially in hate crimes. Transphobia and homophobia are interrelated, and both are influenced by misapplied religion. To help ensure that these crimes are investigated properly and not subject to the biases of local authorities, we passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes act. It adds clauses about sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and the perception of those attributes to the classes established in the Hate Crimes act of 1969.
Those protections are very timely. Two stories have been in the news recently that underscore why this legislation was so badly needed, especially with the gender expression clauses:
Angie Zapata
Jorge Steven López Mercado

Unfortunately, our attackers come from both the Church and State sides of the street.
Coming from the State street side:

There is a Republican Senator in Oklahoma who is considering a bill that would allow states to opt out of the Hate Crimes act because it interferes with State's Rights and the freedoms of religion and speech granted by the US Constitution.

And from the Church side:

A group of preachers came and tried to 'incite a hate crime' in Washington DC by reading bible verses.

Both of these examples are easy to brush off as batshit crazy asshats and bigots. However, while these nutjobs are attempting to take our hard-won protections away, they are also creating an atmosphere of hate that is like waving a match around a fireworks factory. Similar haters are promoting Psalm 109:8 as a 'prayer for the President'… How long is it before someone decides they are being called to do God's work and take out an LGBT person or the President? Sadly, it's already happening.