Protest the pope’s visit
The Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI are not known to be champions for elementary human rights for GLBT people. To understand the faith of GLBT Catholics you must be willing to journey to the very root of our Catholic being. St. Paul said if we do not believe in the resurrected Lord, our faith is more pitiful than any other. Statements after statements from the Vatican and this pope have obsessed with same-sex attractions and have tried to instill fear into GLBT people and make us forget about the message of the risen Lord.

The Rainbow Sash Movement believes there is a need for bridges, not walls, around the issue of human sexuality. A wall divides. It is never the sign of willingness to dialogue or for peace. It signals a desire to impose. Faith can never be the fruit of imposition. It results from respectful and honest dialogue, compromise and agreement. We yearn for the pope to walk in the steps of Jesus. Only by doing so can we have a new millennium of the resurrection.

Unity is necessary, but diversity is legitimate, and abuse of authority only marginalizes and alienates believers. Authority can never be an expression of faith; it must be the result of faith. If our response to abuse is prayerful silence we are enabling the abuses of authority to continue? Silence in the face of homophobia, sexism, the clergy sexual abuse scandal, reproduction issues and the false information surrounding the spread of worldwide AIDS/HIV, especially among the poor, only further provides quicksand for our faith.

The Rainbow Sash Movement constantly seeks ways to make Catholics aware of the decay within our church under the mantle of authority. The message that springs forth from the pope to the victims of clergy sexual abuse is silence, shame and neglect. The members of the Rainbow Sash Movement understand abundantly what it means to be marginalized and feeling afraid and defenseless. Our prayers and support will always be those who were abused sexually by priests and than abused a second time by a hierarchy that put the image of the church above the welfare of innocence. For the pope to come to these shores without reaching out to the victims and their families is the same as Judas betraying Christ.

The Rainbow Sash Movement believes the challenge we face is great, but the horizon we seek is justice. We invite all who believe as we do to join us. Everybody, with no exception, is welcome to join our whistling chorus. We need your help. We have the tools, the ideas, the creativity and a little imagination. But Catholics are the witnesses of this papal tragedy. You are the good news we want to communicate to the Holy Father, a rainbow of Catholics greeting the pope with whistles and ashes.

Are you called to join us April 15-20 in Washington, D.C. or New York? Contact the sashmovement@aol.com or visit www.rainbowsashmovement.com.

Joe Murray
Rainbow Sash Movement
Chicago

Gay soldiers’ sacrifices
After it was confirmed recently that a gay soldier, Maj. Alan Rogers, died in combat in the Iraq War on January 27, the Palm Center has learned that an estimated 64 gay and lesbian service members may have been killed since the war began in 2003. The Pentagon announced that the number of U.S. deaths from the Iraq War passed 4,000 last month, and that 98 of these were women. According to Gary Gates, senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, approximately 1.4 percent of active duty men and 9.3 percent of active duty women are gay. If the deaths among gays and lesbians are proportional to the deaths from the Iraq War of the rest of the military population, that would mean that 55 men and nine women who died in uniform were gay.

The sexual orientation of service members is a private matter. But the nation must recognize that gays and lesbians are among those giving their lives for their country, a fact that can be obscured by the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which bars service members from being truthful about who they are.

Confirmation of the number of gay deaths is not available because of the policy’s strictures on speech about sexual orientation. But the estimates offered by Gates, who is a demographer and statistician who works with census and other data to estimate figures of gays and lesbians in the American population, are the most precise available and are widely viewed as reliable calculations.

Nathaniel Frank
The Michael D. Palm Center
University of California, Santa Barbara