COLUMN: Vatican Gay-Baiting Is Bigotry That Shames the Church

As in American politics, where every campaign season sees a revival of Republican race baiting, every twist and turn of the long-running Catholic sex abuse scandal brings another round of gay baiting. High churchmen and their supporters note that most victims are male, like the offending priests, and hastily conclude that the problem is homosexuality. Of course this claim ignores the fact that gay men are no more likely to abuse that heterosexual men, and avoids the fact that abuse is not about sexual relations but about criminal behavior enabled by the church itself.