Amid controversy over the Vatican’s views on same-sex couples, a new report claims that a leading group of Catholic bishops lobbied against a suicide hotline for offering support to LGBTQ+ callers.
According to the National Catholic Reporter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (UCCB) fought to prevent the passage of S. 2661, a Congressional bill establishing 988 as a national three-digit code for individuals experiencing mental health crises. The number connects callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which offers individualized resources for queer and trans people on its website, including a directory to find local therapists or affirming support groups.
Spearheaded by senators Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), the proposal was signed into law by former President Donald Trump last year. At the time of the legislation’s passage, the advocacy group Trevor Project said in a statement that S. 2661 was the first “explicitly LGBTQ-inclusive bill to ever pass Congress unanimously.”
Despite bipartisan support for the effort, the news publication claimed in a Wednesday report that the religious organization, which represents virtually all Catholic leadership in the U.S., opposed the bill because it “contained special funding for LGBTQ support.”
That statement refers to a provision of S. 2661 that directed the Department of Health and Human Services to put forward a proposal to “increase competency in serving high-risk populations,” such as LGBTQ+ youth, within 180 days of the law’s enactment. The legislation further noted that queer and trans young people “are more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers.”
But the suicide hotline bill isn’t the only piece of pro-LGBTQ+ legislation that USCCB has opposed in recent years. As detailed by the National Catholic Reporter, the powerful lobby group has also fought against the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Equality Act — the former of which sought to ban anti-LGBTQ+ bias in workplace settings, while the latter applies to virtually all areas of public life.
In a backgrounder on LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections published in 2013, USCCB claimed that ENDA did “not represent an authentic step forward in the pursuit of justice in the workplace,” while referring to health coverage for the same-sex spouses of queer employees as “fringe benefits.”
“While the Church is opposed to unjust discrimination on any grounds, including those related to same-sex attraction, she teaches that all sexual acts outside of the marriage of one man and one woman are morally wrong and do not serve the good of the person or society,” it said, while adding that “opposition to same-sex sexual conduct by the Church… is not unjust discrimination and should not be treated as such by the law.”
The group has also opposed LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Violence Against Women Act, which offers support for survivors of abuse and domestic violence, on similar grounds. It claimed in a 2013 statement that terms like sexual orientation and gender identity have been “unjustly exploited for purposes of marriage redefinition.”
These revelations are poorly timed for the Catholic Church following international outcry regarding the Vatican’s refusal to bless same-sex couples. In a daily news bulletin released by the Holy See earlier this month, church leadership referred to queer relationships as “sin” and said “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.”
The statement elicited widespread condemnation from LGBTQ+ celebrities like Billy Eichner, Dan Levy, and Elton John, the latter of whom noted that the Vatican had no issue investing in his 2019 biopic Rocketman. But the comments have also been decried from prominent individuals within the Catholic faith, including 230 German theological professors.
“We distance ourselves firmly from this position,” wrote a group of signatories in a Monday letter cited by the Associated Press. “We believe that the life and love of same-sex couples are not worth less before God than the life and love of any other couple.”
The Vatican’s views on LGBTQ+ relationships also break strongly with the majority of members of the faith. According to a 2019 report from the Pew Research Center, 61% of U.S. Catholics are in favor of same-sex marriage. That marks a sharp increase from 2001, when just 40% of respondents backed full relationship recognition for same-sex couples, but a slight dip from 2017, when 67% of Catholic believers expressed support for the freedom to marry.
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