Over the Rainbow: - Wrestling With Angels

Most sexual abuse victims of priests are teenage boys rather than children. One priest
caught in a sex scandal, Reverend Paul R. Shanley, attended the meeting in 1979 that created
the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) (Sears and Osten, 2003:151-152).
NAMBLA , identifying itself as a sexual freedom organization, was founded in the mid 1980’s.
NAMBLA seeks to abolish all age-of-consent laws and other laws that violate the freedom of
young people to control their own lives, and calls for the replacement of age-of-consent laws
with laws empowering children (Burtoft, 1994:65).
AIDS has taken a toll among Catholic priests. By the beginning of the new millennium,
hundreds of Catholic priests had died of AIDS-related illnesses, and hundreds more were living
with HIV. Priests were dying of AIDS at a rate four times that of the general population (Thomas,
2000).
Priestly sexual abuse of children and young teens raises two questions. How many young
boys were drawn into the homosexual lifestyle by early experiences of sexual behaviors with
priests? To what extent has the homosexual challenge to traditional family patterns been
supported and encouraged through these behaviors? These question becomes particularly
relevant in light of the high rate of AIDS among the priesthood.
ENDA and Hate Crimes Challenge Religious Liberty
Since 1994, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has been repeatedly
introduced in Congress. If the bill passes, “sexual orientation” would be added to the list of
federally protected classes under the 1964 act that prohibits job discrimination on the basis of
race, color, religion, sex or national origin. ENDA would make it illegal to make decisions on
hiring, firing, promoting or paying an employee based on sexual orientation. Supporters argue
that ENDA is necessary to protect a minority from discrimination while opponents argue that
religious employers who disagree with the homosexual lifestyle would be discriminated against.
Church related facilities or non-profits could lose their tax-exempt status if they refused to hire
a person on the basis of their sexual orientation. (Riley, 2009).
After a decade of political struggle, President Obama signed the federal hate crime bill into
law on Oct 28 th , 2009, the Matthew Shephard Act . A hate crime is identified as a crime of
violence motivated by the hatred of the group to which the victim belongs. Hate crimes are
usually attacks on strangers that express hatred toward the group to which the victim belongs
with the intent of terrorizing the entire community. The federal hate crime protects against
violence based on the race, color, religion, national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation,
and gender identity of the victim.
Over the Rainbow: The Gay Battle for Social Reorganization of America. 2010
Dr. M. L. Coppock
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