Bigotry is Bigotry

I would like to respond to the editorial written by Ray Sigler titled “Not bigotry, just facts” in the Saturday April 17, 2010 edition of the Belleville News-Democrat.


As a person who studies gay rights issues I found that most of what Mr. Sigler wrote was pretty standard boilerplate in the anti-gay mindset - that gays aren’t happy, gay equals adultery and of course the ever classic example of the selective biblical literalism, that gays are an abomination like eating shellfish or wearing two different types of cloth at the same time. And the ever popular unbiblical axiom, “love the sinner, hate the sin”. A phrase, mind you, that is mentioned nowhere in the Bible.

But it was the last paragraph that sounded familiar. In it he writes that if we allow gays to serve openly in the military; “It can and will cause problems if a radical homosexual is trolling among those who do not want to practice deviant behavior.” Ignoring the fact that gay people are serving secretly right now in the military. The idea that sexually rapacious homosexuals might force themselves on their unwilling heterosexual comrades in arms rang familiar. It reminded of the racist myth of a century ago of sexually out of control black men who wanted to rape white women.

If Mr. Sigler doesn’t want to be called a bigot maybe he shouldn’t use the language of bigotry. Replacing the word black with the word gay doesn’t make it any less bigoted.

The Cover-Up Worse Than The Scandal

I would like to respond to the editorial cartoon of Glenn McCoy on April 10, 2010. This cartoon’s first panel shows a woman bearing a sign saying “Down with Gay Pedophiles” while another person with press written on them exclaims “You Can’t Say That!!” In the second panel that same person crosses out the “Gay Pedophiles” and replaces it with “The Catholic Church” and then he says “That’s better”.


The first error is that the first panel implies that there is a link between gayness and pedophilia. It has been proven for decades that sexual orientation alone plays no part in whether a person becomes a pedophile. If Mr. McCoy had done any research he would have found this out. It’s merely a cynical distraction from the larger issue; the scandal of priests sexually abusing children and the Church covering it up. Instead of directly addressing this scandal the Church scapegoats the media and homosexuals hoping this will pass without them really fixing the problem.

The second panel implies that the press has a pro-gay bias and is anti-Catholic. All the press did was report on the scandal and the systematic cover-up that had been going on for a century - maybe more. This was all the Church’s fault. They believed that their organization was more important than the people in it and are now paying the price for that conceit. If the Vatican learned anything from Watergate it is that the cover-up is worse than the crime