Catholic colleges discuss making school a good place for gays

[kweerwolf]

SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 40 Catholic colleges were represented on Saturday at a conference that was billed as the nation's first on how gays and lesbians fit in at universities guided by a faith that says their sexual orientation is wrong.

But rather than lamenting the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality, the two-day "Out There" conference at Santa Clara University showed that plenty of gay-related scholarship and student affairs planning is going on in Catholic higher education, said co-organizer Linda Garber.

"It's important and interesting to know there are Catholic universities that have offices and staff people specifically geared toward LGBT concerns," said Garber, director of the women's and gender studies program at Santa Clara. "There are a lot of people out there who are teaching (LGBT) studies without a national professional organization, a newsletter or anything."

The conference drew about 150 people, most of them faculty and administrators who deal with gay subject matter or students. Topics included "Curriculum and Same-Sex Marriage in a Jesuit University" and "Can I Be Gay and Catholic?"

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/10/30/special_reports/religion/20_19_1910_29_05.txt

[Catfight]

1. The Jesuit's are intelligent, not bigots. This is truly a 'christian'

value. Inclusion instead of exclusion any day for me.

[I Have A Dream]

2. In Pittsburgh, Duquesne University is starting to discuss this issue.

Duquesne University panel to study gay issue

Should school back gay-straight alliance?

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

By Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Seven months after a Duquesne University sophomore said he was rebuffed in efforts to form a gay student organization on the Catholic campus, the institution's president is asking a special panel to study the idea.

A committee of administrators, faculty, students and members of Duquesne's founding religious order is weighing the impact of a group that, while not unprecedented at a Catholic university, poses uncomfortable issues nevertheless. The church's position is clearly against homosexual sex, but the church also teaches that gay people, like all individuals, must be treated with respect, campus officials said.

"This is an issue that is potentially polarizing, and that's why it's important for us to be deliberative about it," Duquesne President Charles Dougherty said in an interview.

In the weeks after Matthew Pratter said his attempt to form a gay/straight student alliance had been turned down by campus authorities he would not identify, about 120 faculty and staff signed petitions urging the administration to reconsider. But Duquesne leaders insisted as those petitions circulated in April that they could not have evaluated the idea, much less rejected it, because neither Mr. Pratter nor anyone else had formally proposed such a group.

<continued at link below>

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05291/590377.stm

[IndianaGreen]

3. "Can I Be Gay and Catholic?" Vatican: NO!

Watching Catholic LGBTs suffer under the homophobia of the church they still love so much is as painful for me to watch as it was the documentary "Trembling Before G-d" which deals with LGBT Orthodox Jews and their own struggle to cope with the intolerance they find in the faith they love so much.

There is a lot of hurt out there and our job is to support our brothers and sisters of faith that are battling intolerance and bigotry.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. It is repulsive that making schools safe is a matter for "discussion." n/t

[IndianaGreen]

5. LGBTs are the Jews of the 21st century

It is okay to openly discriminate, abuse, beat up, and kill LGBTs, all with the blessings of the Xtian Taliban.

[xchrom]

6. oh they've always done those things to us -- but now

they can put it in print!