HomoQuotable - Lisa Neff

"Outing, to me, has always seemed like using sexual orientation as a weapon, like an act of violence. To out gay priests for an anti-gay Church policy, well, how is that different than outing gay and lesbian servicemembers because Congress adopted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy?

"Does anyone honestly think that by outing one or 100 gay priests, the Catholic Church is going to reverse course on same-sex marriage or extending benefits to partners of same-sex employees? No, if the Church takes any action, it will relocate, reassign or move to oust the priests. The cold-hearted, close-minded Church leaders who would abandon a mission to shelter or feed the homeless because it has qualms with treating its employees equally will not warm to the legislation because of an outing campaign — unless maybe someone once spotted the pope at any town’s Different Strokes bar.

"A better course would be to demonstrate to the Church that there are other institutions and caring people to provide the social services the Church has threatened to abandon, to demonstrate to the Church that a religious institution cannot bully a democratic body into allowing discrimination and injustice to continue, to demonstrate to the Church that it cannot hold poor people as hostages. And the best course of action in the long run would be to find a way to keep government funding for services for the poor and homeless from going to powerful, wealthy institutions of perpetual discrimination." - 365Gay.com columnist Lisa Neff, expressing opposition to ChurchOuting.org, which was launched last week.