Homophobia is Ordinary, not Monstrous
By: James Finn
Tags: Education, Mental Health, LGBTQ, Equality, Religion

Here’s a proposition for you about anti-LGBTQ bigotry

Homophobia is real. It’s endemic, systemic, and not restricted to gay closet cases and pedophile priests. Dismissing homophobes as damaged goods dismisses homophobia as a serious social problem. It’s saying that a person is a bigot only because something is mentally wrong with them.

Did I get your attention?

Good, let’s talk about unjust discrimination, social media, religiously driven homophobia, and what it means to be a good ally to oppressed people. I’m thrilled that so many decent and good-hearted people in the world have woken up to LGBTQ realities. I’m joyful every day that straight/cis allies join us in the fight for equality and love.

Sometimes, though, I see things that tell me that a lot of good people aren’t totally tuned in to the injustices and inequalities that make life hard for members of gender and sexual minorities.

I learn a lot about public attitudes when one of my stories goes viral

Thursday, I posted a story about a homophobic Catholic priest. Fr. Jerome Lavigne is in charge of religious instruction and curriculum in the taxpayer-funded Catholic school district in Calgary, Alberta. He’s been in the news because of incendiary sermons he preached against LGBTQ people, sermons that revealed hateful attitudes, and which were then posted on church websites for public consumption.

If the Roman Catholic Church purged every gay priest from its ranks, their homophobic positions would remain as harmful as they already are.

Lots of people asked why the Calgary archdiocese would appoint such a man to an education post and why the taxpayer-funded school board would employ him as a manager and a teacher to year 5 students.

My article focused on homophobia

Anti-LGBTQ bigotry is all too respectable in our society. People like Lavigne are often respectable and respected even as they spout the most defamatory condemnation of LGBTQ people.

Speaking of LGBTQ people, this Calgary priest said:

There’s no such thing as ‘God made me this way,’ and so I can take part in ‘Depraved, Intrinsically and Gravely Disordered Actions.’ That’s a ‘self-taught lie’ that serves to masquerade Evil as a great good to be experienced!”

That’s fiery ideology and hate speech of the highest order. The priest is teaching people that members of gender and sexual minorities are depraved and gravely disordered.

Did I say hate speech? Those are practically fighting words.

Disparaging members of minorities like that ought to be utterly unacceptable among civilized people, yet in the name of religion, Lavigne not only gets away with it, he holds a high-status position in society and is entrusted with educating 11-year-old children.

LGBTQ kids have the human right to grow up healthy.

Research shows that unjust discrimination against LGBTQ people is driven by ideology that emanates from respectable and respected religious people and institutions. Religious teachings CAUSE homophobia. So, I wrote and promoted an article using this priest as an example of the sort of endemic, entrenched bias that LGBTQ people have to live with.

Responses to the story reveal public dissonance

When I posted the story to Twitter, close to four thousand people commented. The responses are really interesting in that they reveal a lot of opposition to homophobia among progressive people, which is encouraging. But the nature of the opposition is odd, and it deserves some analysis and discussion.

I haven’t done a rigorous statistical analysis of the comments, but they break down roughly like this, in order of popularity:

The priest is a pedophile or sexual abuser The priest is gay and closeted The priest is ugly with a creepy smile Religion sucks, down with religion Finally, and VERY rare: Christian belief must not be used to hurt people

The comments discourage me

The top three comments totally miss the target. They misrepresent the problem of homophobia, positioning Fr. Lavigne as an abuser or monster, which by all reports, he is not. He’s a dedicated, popular parish priest whom many people hold in esteem and affectionate respect.

Labeling him as a pedophile or a repressed gay man says nothing about the homophobia he teaches. Pedophile priests aren’t the problem. Smart, capable, caring pastors and priests are the problem. Men and women who are otherwise moral and upright are the problem.

Sure, lots of celibate (or not so celibate) gay men are Catholic priests, but that’s neither here nor there. Gay men can be as homophobic as anyone else. It doesn’t matter if Lavigne (or any homophobic cleric) is gay.

If the Roman Catholic Church purged every gay priest from its ranks, their homophobic positions would remain as harmful as they already are.

Many of the comments take aim at the man’s looks. I hate that my article elicited that kind of personal unkindness, though I suppose I can understand that people are angry. But other comments are all but gleeful. They insist with no evidence that Lavigne is gay, that he’s going to be found out, and that the ensuing scandal will serve him right.

Those comments feel intrinsically homophobic

They imply that repressed gay men are the source of homophobic bigotry and that those repressed gay men deserve to suffer for it. That’s just not true. The Roman Catholic Church is responsible for its own anti-LGBTQ teachings. Individual lay and religious leaders are not responsible for institutional bias.

LGBTQ kids in Calgary aren’t being injected with homophobic toxins because one closeted gay priest is a monstrous homophobe. Queer kids in Calgary are suffering because otherwise good and decent people are supporting an institution dedicated to disparaging members of gender and sexual minorities.

The problem is that homophobia is endemic, systemic, and deeply ingrained in our cultures. The problem is that homophobia is respected and respectable. Jerome Lavigne isn’t a monster. He’s an ordinary Catholic priest teaching ordinary Catholic doctrines. Tragically, those doctrines do tremendous damage to LGBTQ kids. The more kids believe the sorts of doctrines that Lavigne teaches, the more likely they will be to attempt suicide, according to one major study.

LGBTQ advocates and allies need to target homophobia, not closeted gay people

A very few people commented to my story like this: “It’s tragic that the Church is teaching queer kids to hate themselves. That’s religious abuse. Christianity must not be about hurting people. The Church must do better job spreading love.”

Now that’s the kind of sentiment to get behind!

Love one another. Don’t hurt kids. Spread the good news of Jesus’s message, not the stigmatizing judgment of religions that Other and disparage minority human beings.

Religion and faith need to advance the cultivation of loving morality, not inhibit it. At its best, religion brings people together in spiritual joy and fulfillment.

People of good will need to fight for that outcome, need to fight to wipe systemic, endemic, institutional homophobia from the face of the earth.