By John McKee, Commentator and freelance journalist,
"SCOTLAND’S Shame” has become nomenclature for the sectarian strife that has blighted Glasgow since Irish immigrants touched shore in the 1840s. It found itself manifest last month as Orange Order marchers spat at a priest, in an annual parade that most Scots have come to disdain. It is a damned spot that will not out.
I grew up in a Catholic community, which makes it all the sadder to see the Catholic Church in Scotland so blind to its own prejudices. The week after these knuckle-draggers harassed a priest another group paraded through Glasgow, though this time they did not carry a banner of one unitary conquering colour, but a rainbow flag of diversity. Barely had the spittle dried from Canon White’s eye than another priest was holding a service for the “gross offence to God” of Glasgow Pride.
Mhairi Black this month called for a debate on the future of state-funded Catholic schools, “the damage that was done to me in an LGBT sense, growing up, it’s something that I wouldn’t want any other child to ever have to suffer ever again”. There will barely be an LGBT+ adult who has gone through the denominational system in Scotland that will not hear in this the thud of familiarity.
The church remains the greatest opponent of LGBT rights. It opposed same-sex-marriage, Cardinal O’Brien comparing same-sex relationships to “slavery” (before he was sacked for allegedly abusing his own junior priests). It opposed civil partnerships. It opposed the repeal of Clause 28, a vicious law which forbade even the mention of homosexuality in class.
The reality is that the opt-outs – which allow the church sovereignty over what pupils are told about the most intimate aspects of their lives – have permitted a “continuity Clause 28” to persist in Scotland’s denominational sector. I went through my entire education without a solitary positive mention of homosexuality. Little did I know that Wilfred Owen’s poems were directed towards a man, or that Alan Turing was betrayed by his country for whom he loved. Worse still, LGBT pupils are often given no specific sexual education on how to protect themselves from sexual diseases like HIV/Aids.
Of course, a distinction must be drawn between the ordinary Catholic who is no less tolerant than anyone else, and the ossifying hierarchy of the church. Indeed, some of the most progressive countries on LGBT rights are deeply Catholic nations; Spain, Brazil, Malta. In Scotland there are brave priests such as Father Morton, of St Bride’s Parish Church, who stand with the LGBT+ community.
With the Curia bitterly resisting Pope Francis’s reforms one can sympathise with his decision to visit Ireland this weekend, after all if seeking to flee a nest of vipers where better than St Patrick’s Isle? Yet he flies in to a row as it is reported that the church “did not have room” for the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics in its vast conference hall. As the church continues to treat its LGBT flock like lepers it seems that the hierarchy resembles more Pharisees and less the humble carpenter who readily accepted the oppressed as friends.
If the church does not sign up to the objectives of the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign in bringing inclusive education into its classrooms, then it will have abdicated responsibility for its flock. We can not let another pupil go through the educational negligence that Ms Black and I have suffered at the hands of pious men.
It’s a tragedy to see those who were once targeted with crude signs “No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish” now hold signs of their own: “No Gays”.
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