'Gay' priest raps Catholic sex doctrine

PITTSBURGH (4) A Roman Catholic priest, who is a self-admitted homosexual, has written a book attacking church doctrine on sex.

The Rev. Richard Ginder, 61, who was a leading Catholic crusader against smut until his arrest on morals charges here in 1969, said he seeks to dismantle Catholic arguments against birth control, divorce, homosexuality, and

premarital sex in his book, “Bind With Briars: Sex and Sin in the Catholic Church."

“The church has always considered sex, all sex, pretty much of a dirty business, despite all of its apologists to the contrary," Father Ginder said at the Vincentian Home in nearby McCandless Township, where he has been living for several months,

Father Ginder was arrested in 1969 after detectives entered his apartment and found dozens of photographs of teen-age youths in homosexual acts and diaries covering three previous years.

Police filed 52 morals charges against the priest and he pleaded guilty to several of them. He then spent six

years under psychiatric care and hospitalization in church facilities.

Before his arrest, Father Ginder was founder and worked for 24 years as editor of "The Priest," a national journal for the Catholic clergy. He was also associate editor of the weekly "Our Sunday Visitor," a journal with more than 1 million subscribers, and for a time was the official censor of the Pittsburgh Diocese.

The book will be published by Prentice-Hall Sept. 29.