Church says gays like KKK

Cardinal compares gay pride to KKK. Isn’t Catholic hierarchy more Klan-like?

When Catholic Cardinal Francis George of Chicago compared the city’s gay pride parade to a Ku Klux Klan rally intentionally disrupting church services, he obviously pissed off more than a few people. Some are demanding his resignation.

But what concerns me more than the comparison is that George fails to see the obvious similarities between Catholicism and the Klan. Indeed, the Catholic Church’s legacy is one of genocide and mass murder.

The church was instrumental in the violent colonization of Native Nations in the Americas. The church’s complicit silence and lack of political perspective aided the Nazi party. Indeed, the current pope was a Nazi.

The church’s ongoing denial of the value of condoms promotes the widespread death and sickness of people whose sexual proclivities fall outside of the narrow scope of what the church deems moral.

Ultimately, which is more disruptive—genocide in the Americas, tacitly supporting the holocaust, appointing a former Nazi as your leader and directly aiding the AIDS epidemic for nearly 20 years; or a bunch of singing gays, passing a church and by their presence, somehow disrupting the service?

The hypocrisy the Cardinal demonstrates, to compare a hate mongering group that wills genocide–not unlike the historical Catholic Church—with the LGBTQ community, a fundamentally oppressed group (indeed oppressed by the church itself), demonstrates the ongoing commitment Catholic leadership has to denying their roots, their privilege and the power they secured through mass murder.

Until the Catholic Church atones for its sins and quits committing political violence against oppressed communities, the biggest disruption to its spiritual practice comes from within the church hierarchy.