APRIL 7, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

COMMUNITY FORUM

Catholic group smears Disney film about gay priest

by Mubarak S. Dahir

Catholics of this great nation: Beware!

Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and all those other Walt Disney characters from your childhood you once loved and so naively thought were cute, clean family fun have been exposed. They are not the benign cartoon entertainment you once thought they

were.

In fact, they are (gasp!) instruments of a liberal, gay, feminist conspiracy to brainwash you and your kids, and subvert the Catholic church. (I was always suspicious of that Minnie, myself.)

Death to Disney! Death to Disney! (Come

on, chant with me, everyone.) Death to Disney.

This has been the tone of a recent crusade by a New York-based organization which ironically calls itself the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The League is having a hissy-fit about the movie Priest, which opens nationally April 19.

The movie was produced by a Disney subsidiary, Miramax Films.

In the film, a handsome young priest, fresh out of seminary school, travels to a working-class and highly troubled Liverpool, England, on his first appointment. There, the conventional and conservative clergyman is forced to confront his rigid interpretation of

COMMUNITY FORUM

Continued from previous page

transitioning, or losing all rights as a parent. Physical assault is also a risk many face just by being out within our communities. The transgender community seeks to fight against many of the things that the gay-lesbian-bisexual community has historically fought for, the right to live our lives as we see fit.

To the transgendered community: While I personally have not met a homophobic transgendered person, I am aware that some transgendered people do not want anything to do with the gay-lesbian-bisexual community. To this I say that to remain apart from them will limit our chances of attaining any kind of societal change. The voice you hear telling you that you should not interact with homosexuals is also the voice that is keeping

you hidden and silent. We cannot allow fear to keep us separated from those groups with whom we have the most in common.

To everyone: By remaining separate we only play into the hands of both our enemies. Whether call them the religious right you or not, what is true is that there are people who do not want homosexuals or transgendered people to have the same rights as everyone else. We should be spending our time and resources fighting against those people instead of fighting among ourselves. We have much more to gain by joining forces than by remaining apart. In the end it's us against them.

Emilio/a Lombardi Paradise Club

Out Voice Fairness Federation ChernobylR@aol.com

good and bad when his training and beliefs collide head-on with the real world he and his parishioners inhabit.

The issues the wide-eyed priest must face include a parish pastor who has openly renounced celibacy and is getting nookie from his live-in maid; a commitment to the vow of confessional secrecy which leaves him powerless to help a teenage

agree with the League's narrow vision of good and evil.

I am not a Catholic, and God knows, I have plenty of political differences with traditional Catholic teachings. But so do a lot of people I know who are Catholics, and faithful ones at that.

I long ago ceased to be surprised, for example, every time I found out about a very devout Catholic fam-

girl being raped by her But to wage a smear father; and his own

yearnings for the flesh campaign, based simply on the fact that the movie

of young men.

ily supporting their

gay or lesbian child. However, I've never

Masquerading as a deviates from the squeakyceased to be delighted

watchdog group against

bias and Catholic-bashclean, church-sanctioned ing, the Catholic League fairy tale of all priests as

has stooped to every-

thing from name-calling angel-faced saints, is akin to bullying to adopting to religious McCarthyism.

the victim mentality in a pitiful attempt to keep

believers from seeing the movie.

In its effort to stifle ideas it finds frightening, the League is trying to twist the debate into one of alleged prejudice against Catholics.

Such a transparent course of action is not only silly, but insulting. Especially to Catholics.

It's no secret that for some time there has been a growing debate about how the Catholic church should address modern problems. Most of that debate has, appropriately, come from Catholics themselves. This film deals with some of the very issues the Catholic League would rather avoid.

But I guess what I resent most about the League's smear campaign is how it has set the debate up as one between "us vs. them," with the them, of course, being gays and feminists, and just about anyone who doesn't

by this.

People of good will can disagree with one another without turning their opponents into one-dimensional caricatures of evil.

If the Catholic League believes the movie is unfair, it has the right to say so. But to wage a smear campaign against it, based simply on the fact that the movie deviates from the squeaky-clean, church-sanctioned fairy tale of all priests as angel-faced saints, is akin to religious McCarthyism.

My advice is to go see the movie for yourself whether you're Catholic or not, gay or straight, or hell, even if you're a feminist-and debate it on its merits.

Or you could spend the money on one of those T-shirts that reads: WHY THINK FOR MYSELF WHEN THE CHURCH CAN DO IT FOR ME?

Mubarak Dahir is a regular columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and is the Philadelphia reporter for Time magazine.

August 8-13, 1995

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