We never thought gay people were not made in God's image

I was checking out Mark Shea’s Facebook page and saw this post from yesterday.

“The panic among the Greatest Catholics of All Time is that Leo might expand the vision of the Church to recognize that LGBTQ people are human beings with human dignity.” Wait — is Mark Shea’s belief that the Catholic Church does not already recognize the dignity of all human beings? If so, he should review CCC 1700:

To be honest, I think that his real claim is that conservatives — which he terms “The MAGA cult” — do not believe gays have dignity. But I have never heard this from any conservative. Gay people have been at my house and I have worked with them without any trouble. I was stalked by a gay dude who left me a note propositioning me, and while I was freaked out at first, I soon got over it and started to just feel bad for him.

I do not know anyone who worries about Pope Leo changing the Catholic teachings about sex, let alone anyone who “panics” about it. Pope Leo has already contraindicated Pope Francis’s gay blessing initiative and the whole “welcoming” obsession does not seem to be something he shares with his predecessor.

This is one of the main reasons that people do not take Mark Shea seriously as some type of wannabe Catholic influencer. He tells conservative Christians what they think and what they believe, as if he knows and they do not. This is not a good way to promote your own policy positions, but it comports with what other people have noticed about progressive cry-bullies. They need their opponents to be terrible because their own positions are weak.

I think it probably bothers Mr. Shea that there are homosexuals who are conservative like Scott Pressler and Dave Rubin. The fact that Bishop Barron might talk with David Rubin is especially annoying because Catholic liberals seem to need Barron to resemble a reflexive bigot since he serves on the White House’s religious freedom board. Maybe Shea wants Barron to take a cue from the late Pope Francis and complain of the frociaggine in the seminaries. Ironically, far-right haters have claimed that Bishop Barron himself is a homosexual. Maybe he is—who am I to judge?