Protest Called Off After Apology From Cardinal
CHICAGO (STMW) - Though they found Francis Cardinal George's apology for linking gay rights activists to the KKK "woefully inadequate," a group that had planned to protest outside Holy Name Cathedral Sunday has canceled the protest.
The Gay Liberation Network was one of the group's that was going to take part in a protest Sunday outside Holy Name, in response to George's comments last month when he talked about the annual gay pride parade, which has been rerouted to go past a Catholic church in the Lakeview neighborhood. In a television interview he warned of the "gay liberation movement" morphing into "something like the KKK."
After the church raised objections about the Sunday parade preventing churchgoers from getting to the church for services, parade organizers moved the time of the parade.
Following protests raised after George's comments, LBGT groups had scheduled a protest outside Holy Name for Sunday. After he apologized on Friday for his comments, those groups, with the exception of the Gay Liberation Network, canceled their part in the protest.
On Saturday afternoon the Gay Liberation Network announced they also had canceled their protest. The group, in a press release, said, George's apology was "woefully inadequate," but "we nevertheless agree to call off the protest."
The group says it is not "anti-Catholic. Our disagreement is with (George) and other church leaders, not with the Catholic laity which, in poll after poll, backs equal rights for gays and lesbians."
The group also said, "No one was challenging the church's 'liberty,' unless by this George means something like the right of the Catholic Church hierarchy to be free from frank and open criticism for its advocacy of discrimination against women and gays.
"George's anti-gay animus did not begin by his comparison of gay activists to the KKK," the release said. "When the Catholic Church leadership, including George, ceases doing everything it can to oppose our equal participation in society, then we can accept an apology from that leadership."
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