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Published: June 19, 2009

“Poisonous tenor”

San Francisco ‘gay pride’ group votes to dishonor archbishop at behest of Most Holy Redeemer parishioner

At the urging of a member of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, the San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee has voted to dishonor Archbishop George Niederauer with a “Pink Brick” award for causing “significant harm to the LGBT community.”

The decision was spurred by Matt Dorsey, a member of the Parish Council at San Francisco's ‘gay friendly’ Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church. In an opinion piece written for the homosexual-oriented newspaper Bay Area Reporter, Dorsey objected to the original decision by the Pride Celebration Committee to award the Pink Brick to dethroned Miss California, Carrie Prejean. Dorsey said “we need not have looked beyond our own city limits: San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer” in a column published under the headline “Niederauer deserves Pink Brick.”

The Pride Celebration Committee announced on June 15 that its members had reconsidered their decision and decided to award a second Pink Brick to the archbishop. “The Pink Brick is given each year to a person or institution that has caused significant harm to the LGBT community,” said the Bay Area Reporter.

Archbishop Niederauer was singled out for his support last year of Proposition 8, the successful initiative constitutional amendment adopted by voters restricting marriage to between one man and one woman and later upheld by the California Supreme Court. "We hope that with this Pink Brick, we can educate the community about Archbishop Niederauer's work to deny LGBT couples equal protection under the law,” Mikayla Connell, president of the Pride Celebration Committee told the Reporter. “Archbishop Niederauer's support of Proposition 8, which is not representative of all faith communities or even of all Catholics, has only served to harm LGBT families, many of whom are Catholic themselves."

Connell’s comments echoed sentiments expressed by Dorsey in his column urging the Pride Committee to single out the archbishop. “Having served for 11 years as the Catholic bishop of Salt Lake City prior to coming to San Francisco, Niederauer leveraged his close ties to national Mormon leaders last June when he wrote to officials of the Church of Latter-day Saints, urging them to play an active role in the fight to pass Prop 8,” wrote Dorsey. “And play an active role they did: by most estimates, Mormons accounted for more than half of the $40 million spent in support of the anti-gay amendment.”

Dorsey also attacked the Archdiocese of San Francisco for “the poisonous tenor” of campaign materials provided under the auspices of the archdiocese in support of Proposition 8. “Clearly, no one expected Archbishop Niederauer to break with the Vatican on the issue of marriage equality,” wrote Dorsey. “But few were prepared for the spiritual leader of 400,000 Bay Area Catholics to offer the imprimatur of our church to such dishonest, divisive and deliberately hurtful rhetoric.”

According to the web site of Most Holy Redeemer Church, Dorsey is a member of the nine-person Parish Pastoral Council, charged with “responding to the needs of parishioners by proposing pastoral initiatives, policies, and programs, or themes in cooperation with the Pastor, pastoral staff and relevant archdiocesan resources and ministries.” The council also meets twice a year with the Parish Finance Committee “to review the financial condition of the parish and consult regarding the annual budget.”

According to a biography posted on the Most Holy Redeemer web site, Dorsey has been a parishioner since 2004. His past activities have included organizing the parish’s contingent to annual ‘gay pride’ parades, and arranging a parish presence at the annual Castro Street Fair. Dorsey is employed as communications director for San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

Most Holy Redeemer, located in the city’s Castro District, has repeatedly made news over the years for its homosexual-friendly activities: it is the parish where Archbishop Niederauer gave Communion to two transvestites dressed as nuns in 2007 (the archbishop later apologized), the parish where the same group of transvestite “nuns” – the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – once held bingo games to raise money until they were kicked out on orders of the chancery in 2006, and the parish that regularly sends a contingent to San Francisco “gay pride” parade until ordered by the archdiocese to stop participating in the event. According Jesuit Fr. Donal Godfrey, currently director of university ministry at the University of San Francisco, the parish is where the so-called “rainbow flag,” the banner of the homosexual-rights movement, was invented.

In early January, vandals spray-painted swastikas and the message “Niederauer, Ratzinger – where is the love” on the front walls of Most Holy Redeemer. Fr. Steve Meriwether, the pastor at Most Holy Redeemer, told KCBS news at the time that his parishioners “actually share the vandals' sentiment against Prop 8.”

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