Catholic Schools Keep Kids Away From Lesbian Astronaut

Teaching kids that homophobia is A OK

Anne McClain at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Public domain photo by NASA/Elizabeth Weissinger on Wikimedia Commons

Respected religious institutions drive homophobia in the United States. They teach it in both churches and schools. Three Catholic schools in the Spokane area just handed kids a vivid object lesson in how to stigmatize LGBTQ people. While diocese leaders are being publicly coy, teachers, parents, and students all know that a trip to see NASA astronaut Anne McClain was cancelled because she’s married to a woman.

Roman Catholic teachings gravely insult LGBTQ people

When you’re an LGBTQ kid at a Catholic school, you get injected with a lot of vicious LGBTQ toxins. Schools instruct students from the official Catechism that members of gender and sexual minorities are ‘gravely depraved’, ‘intrinsically disordered’, and ‘morally evil’. Not only is this kind of teaching deeply toxic to queer kids, it encourages other students to look down on and stigmatize their minority peers.

Recent news coverage of McClain’s marriage is “not in accord with Catholic Church teaching on the nature of marriage” and would not prove appropriate for elementary-aged children.

Doesn’t the Church teach respect and oppose discrimination?

Church officials sometimes cite other parts of the Catechism to defend teaching LGBTQ kids that they’re ‘depraved’. For example, they’ll point to the passage that says that, “The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual (sic) tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

Calls FOR respect and AGAINST discrimination probably don’t mean what you think they mean

Forgetting for a moment the obvious falsehood that “most” LGBTQ people experience their identity as a “trial,” that Catechism passage sounds pretty nice. The trouble is that Church leaders interpret it so loosely that it’s meaningless. For example, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island infamously tweeted this past June that LGBTQ pride is “harmful for children.”

By citing harm to kids, Tobin was being neither sensitive nor respectful. How did he square his statement? He claims he has an “obligation before God” to teach the faith clearly on “sensitive issues,” and that he will continue doing so. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that being closeted causes severe mental health issues in LGBTQ people, and that zero evidence shows that children raised in LGBTQ households or around LGBTQ people suffer any harm.

So much for respect and sensitivity. How about discrimination?

Tobin’s tweet is just one example of disrespect. Catholic leaders say horrible things about LGBTQ people all the time. Clearly,they don’t define “respect and sensitivity” like ordinary people do. They define “discrimination” oddly also.

Actually, the key word is “unjust.”

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States spends tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying against LGBTQ equality — on state and federal levels. The US College of Catholic Bishops opposes the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people across key areas of life like employment, housing, credit, education, public services, federally funded programs, and jury service.

It’s too bad that Catholic officials are teaching queer kids to hate themselves and their peers to believe that disrespect is ordinary and acceptable.

Catholic leaders routinely argue that anti-LGBTQ discrimination is actually “just” discrimination, rendering the guidance of the Catechism rather more than moot.

Actions speak louder than words

When Catholic school kids don’t get to go see a famous astronaut because she’s a lesbian, the lessons they learn sink deep. That just happened. The nation’s first openly gay astronaut recently spoke to students at Gonzaga High School in Spokane about her six months aboard the International Space Station.

Three Catholic schools backed out

Catholic students all over Spokane had been excited, because Anne McClain was one of them. She’d attended the Catholic Gonzaga Prep, and before that Cataldo Catholic. Earlier this year, Cataldo students even participated in a video chat with McClain while she was aboard the International Space Station, before her marriage to another woman became public.

School administrators tell parents why they cancelled

But the Catalda school backed out after initially planing to attend the event, as did two other local Catholic schools. According to The Spokesman-Review, administrators told parents that if they wanted their kids to see the astronaut, they’d need to take them out of class themselves — something that left many parents upset; they believe the decision was made because McClain is a lesbian.

“I was not happy when I heard about the school not being allowed to go, and I wanted to find out why,” explained Emma Owen, who has two daughters at Cataldo. She says school staff told her the cancellation was due to McClain’s sexual orientation.

She’s upset because in her own words, “It’s not about [McClain’s] lifestyle (sic). It’s about her coming from Spokane, being an alumnus of Cataldo, being an alumnus of Prep, and she’s an astronaut. She’s going to speak about her experiences. She’s not going to speak about being gay.”

Higher authorities spell out the homophobic bigotry

The Spokesman-Review reached out to school and district officials and learned that the Cataldo decision was made by the school’s Board of Governors, “composed of the Rev. Darrin Connall, vicar general of the Spokane Diocese; the Rev. Kevin Codd of Sacred Heart Parish; and the Rev. Brian Mee of St. Augustine Parish.”

Mee told a reporter that, “I think school kids should be in the classroom. To spend half a day going to see some speaker … some parents might like that. Other parents paying tuition might want their children in school.”

When pressed to explain why the school had gone back on prior plans and when asked if McClain’s sexual orientation played a role, Mee said only, “No comment.”

That “no comment” speaks volumes

The Board of Governors later released a statement noting that recent news coverage of McClain’s marriage is “not in accord with Catholic Church teaching on the nature of marriage” and “would not prove appropriate for elementary-aged children.”

Combining Mee’s “no comment” with the Governors’ statement and parents’ assertions that school officials told them the trip was cancelled because McClain is a lesbian, the truth is apparent:

Students were taught that lesbians are bad role models, regardless of their accomplishments

The Catholic Church is showing students first hand what ‘respect’ and ‘sensitivity’ really mean. They’re showing kids that highly accomplished achievers like astronauts are shameful and worthy of stigma if they aren’t straight. They’re teaching kids to scorn LGBTQ people. They’re teaching queer kids to hate themselves.

Church officials are wrong

Elementary school children have zero problem understanding that adults who love one another sometimes get married. They have zero problem understanding that same-sex marriage is legal in the United States and that the US is a secular, plural society in which people of all faiths and no faith mingle and cooperate.

Honoring a married, lesbian astronaut is not in the least inappropriate, no matter how young the child. Teaching children that same-sex couples are bad role models is, however, deeply inappropriate and dysfunctional. Americans don’t live in a theocracy ruled by Catholic bishops. Pretending to young children that we do isn’t just inappropriate, it’s actively harmful.

Some children heard an inspiring message anyway

Regardless of the controversy, McClain delivered her presentation at Gonzaga Prep. According to KXLY-TV, she gave an inspirational speech about achieving dreams and stepping out of comfort zones, telling kids that nothing is impossible.

Twenty years ago, I was on the same starting line as you are. I was no different than any of you, I hadn’t done anything special that would make anyone think I was destined for any high achievement. I was Anne McClain, Gonzaga Prep, Class of 1997.

Then she told the students about a powerful mantra she clutched when she needed to remember that she could do great things.

“I am loved. I am proud of myself. I am brave. I can do hard things.”

What a great message for kids to internalize. It’s too bad that Catholic officials at three Spokane schools have decided that being a lesbian disqualifies McClain from delivering that message.