There’s allegedly a secretive “gay lobby” that wields massive behind-the-scenes influence at the Vatican. Pope Francis himself appears to have confirmed it, during what was intented to be a private conversation with a delegation of Latin American religious orders. His words somehow got leaked, and although his visitors apologised, his press office hasn’t denied that the quote is genuine. Francis was discussing the difficulties he faced reforming the Vatican’s notoriously inefficient and scandal-ridden bureaucracy, the Curia.
“There are holy people,” he said, “But there is also a stream of corruption. The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true it is there! We need to see what we can do.”
My first thought was that if there is indeed a “gay lobby” at the Vatican it must be doing a singularly ineffective job. The Catholic Church continues to teach that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered”, that same-sex marriage is a sin against God and man (and even, according to the retired pontiff, against the environment) and that men with “deep-seated” gay inclinations should be barred from the priesthood, even if they manage to remain celibate. If I belonged to the Vatican gay lobby I’d be hanging my head in shame, or at least ringing up Stonewall for some pointers about how to run an effective lobbying operation.
But of course “gay lobby” here doesn’t mean a campaign group, but rather something furtive and distinctly sinister: not so much a gay lobby as a gay mafia, a gay cabal, a gay conspiracy even. The “gay lobby” has even been held responsible for Pope Benedict’s resignation. Back in February, La Repubblica claimed to have details of a secret report Benedict had commissioned into the “Vatileaks” scandal which saw former papal butler Paolo Gabriele convicted of passing confidential documents to a journalist. The leak described the existence of “a cross-party network united by sexual orientation.” The Pope was so shattered by the revelation, the report claimed, that he made up his mind then and there to step down.
That some Catholic priests are gay and sometimes actively so is well known and hardly surprising. The celibate priesthood has long attracted gay men unable to express their sexuality openly and not wanting to live a lie; in former decades it was a respectable, even praised, alternative to marriage and children. Given the severity and inflexibility of the church’s teaching, however, gay priests could scarcely be open about their orientation. And some priests, straight or gay, break their vows. In recent years, there have been several lurid exposés in the Italian press featuring gay clerics based in the Vatican.
But the existence of gay priests is not the same thing as a “gay lobby”, a highly dubious concept that draws on a number of age-old homophobic tropes.
Firstly, there’s the idea that homosexuals form a hidden network of influence and patronage, advancing each other’s careers as well as some unspoken agenda.
A related fear is that because they’re unable to be open about their sexuality gay people are uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. A purge of thousands of gay men and lesbians from government positions formed part of the McCarthy process in 1950s America, even though investigations failed to find evidence of any gay civil servants ever being blackmailed into revealing state secrets. That gay people were a security risk was simply assumed, as it was in Britain where homosexuals were notoriously barred from membership of the security services or, where discovered, assumed to be Soviet spies. Likewise, the concept of a secret gay network at the heart of the Vatican leads inevitably to suggestions of blackmail and fraud.
Finally and most insidiously, some people continue to make a link between gay clergy and the perpetration and covering-up of child abuse. One especially hateful article written last year by a Polish theologian described attraction to pubescent boys as “a typical deviation related to homosexuality”. The author claimed that the cover-ups were in large part orchestrated by highly placed members of the “homomafia” including cardinals and bishops – men who, suffering from an “internal wound” (i.e. being gay) tend to become Macchiavellian careerists with an overwhelming desire to protect and promote people like them, even if they’re found to be child abusers. Needless to say, there’s no evidence for any of this.
So is Pope Francis, who until now has won plaudits for his down-to-earth approach and gently modernising moves, about to launch an anti-gay witchhunt in the Vatican? While the respected Vatican-watcher John Allen sees no evidence that he will, the pontiff’s quoted words do appear to link the existence of a “gay lobby” with “corruption” and suggest that some sort of action may be forthcoming. At the very least, the Pope’s words imply that he’s sympathetic to the underlying idea: that gay people are an inherent threat, spreading their tentacles of improper influence even in the sacred precincts of St Peter’s. Nor is it reassuring that the offensiveness of the concept has gone almost unremarked in media coverage of the Pope’s words.
There’s ultimately only one cure for this type of phantom gay lobby, and that’s a real gay lobby.
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