At What Point Can You Say That The Religious Right Wants LGBT People Dead?

I've always been amazed by the callousness and cruelty of the religious right. No matter how much you bang your head against their wall, just pleading and begging for them to see the humanity of LGBT people, they never get it.

No matter how much evidence you provide that you are driving them to their untimely deaths, they will not care.

So even if they would never admit this, when not even concerns over suicide can make them change, is it really that unfair to say that they want them dead?

This week, I saw a report in the Australian newspaper The Age about Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart and his effort to ensure that anti-LGBT bullying in Catholic schools is not addressed.

Here's what happened:

Victoria's most senior Catholic said he did not want the church's schools to accept and tolerate that some students were gay.

Denis Hart, the Archbishop of Melbourne, made the comments in 2007 after he buried a report designed to address homophobia, discrimination and self-harm in Catholic schools.

Here are the details of the report and the response to it:

The Not So Straight report by Jesuit Social Services was aimed at helping teachers respond to the needs of gay teens in Catholic schools. It highlighted high levels self harm, and even suicide, among same-sex attracted students.

The report's author, former Jesuit priest and now RMIT Professor Peter Norden​, used the material to train Catholic school principals across Australia.

But letters obtained by Fairfax Media reveal that Archbishop Hart prevented the report from being distributed or workshopped with schools in his diocese.

Archbishop Hart said in a 2007 letter to Professor Norden that the report should not be distributed because it could "create a situation whereby it is accepted and tolerated that a proportion of our young people do not have a heterosexual orientation".

In a separate letter he raised concerns about the report's use of the term "natural behaviour" to describe a gay student.

"Both the text of the report and the case studies, either blur the clear position of the church or by the use of terms such as 'natural behaviour' imply a suggestion that alternative sexuality should be accepted as part of the scene," the archbishop said.

In fairness to the Catholic Church, other dioceses accepted the report:

"It concerned me that the archbishop repeatedly refused to meet with me to discuss the report, despite it being warmly received in every diocese in Australia, including Ballarat, Sandhurst and Sale."

Author Peter Norden doesn't equivocate about where these horrible problems come from:

He said same-sex attracted students in the Catholic school sector were particularly at risk because of the "moral overload" that stemmed from the church's messages about "depraved activity".

The principal of another Catholic school notes how the very teachings of the Church make it difficult to address any of these problems:

"Any Catholic educator who is doing work in this area can expect there is a fine line you walk. If someone perceives that if you are doing work in this area, you are seen as promoting a lifestyle."

I'm 18 years old. I go to a Catholic school, but it is a moderate, sensible one. I am same-sex attracted. Most of my friends know that, and have absolutely no problem. Two of my very closest friends are gay. There are, thank God, no problems at our school. But unfortunately, we are lucky. This should not be luck. It should be normal.

What does the Catholic Church say is the number one principle that supersedes all others, that they use to oppose abortion and contraception? Life. So if your stupid, homophobic bullshit is causing people to try to kill themselves, don't you think that means you have to change your teachings so they fit with the most important principle of all? Or are lives only important when they aren't LGBT lives?

This was in 2007. The next year, their blind ideology led them to do something even more ghastly:

When France proposed a resolution seeking all nations to decriminalise homosexuality, the Vatican immediately said it would oppose the resolution. This is despite the fact that up to 70 nations still have legal punishments for gay people including, in some instances, the death penalty. In a number of Islamic countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, homosexual acts are still a capital offence.

The UN resolution is due to be proposed by France later this month on behalf of the 27-nation European Union. But Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination” and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

“If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations,” Migliore said. “For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” Migliore said.

This is the problem with dogma. It leads you to do even the most reprehensible things, because you can never stray from it no matter what (otherwise it's not true dogma).

Yes, the Catholic Church has opposed doing anything about deadly (and often religious) anti-LGBT bullying, because it would go against their teachings (one ostensibly being "life trumps all).

And it opposed calling on nations to stop killing gay people because it might lead to marriage equality.

What does this say about where their priorities are? It says that they would rather see LGBT people be killed than get married or not be bullied.

We can try to persuade them to change their position. That document at the Synod on the Family got a simple majority support, so there is perhaps some hope. But until we reach that day, we must persuade people that the Catholic Church's teachings on this issue are incompatible with basic decency and prevent it from having the influence on social values that it does. When they get their priorities in order, stop handing down death sentences for LGBT youth and start actually talking about something that matters, like Pope Francis' climate change encyclical, then maybe we won't need to anymore.