Gay Catholic Leaders Weigh In On Use Of NYPD To Bar Gay Catholics From St. Pat’s Cathedral
New Yorkers and Catholics around the nation are responding to the use on Sunday of the New York Police Department to bar gay and allied Catholics from entering New York City’s historic St. Patrick’s Cathedral. St. Pat’s is the home of the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who represents the Vatican in America.
READ: Cardinal Dolan Uses NYPD To Bar Gay Catholics From Sunday Worship In St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Ten Catholics, responding to Cardinal Dolan’s April 25 blog post, “All Are Welcome!,â€Â which tells gay people who wish to participate in the Catholic faith, you must first “wash your hands!,” rubbed charcoal on their hands, and before they even approached the hallowed cathedral, were headed off by eight police officers and told if they attempted entry into St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they would be barred — and arrested.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s director of communications reportedly issued a statement yesterday that Dolan was “on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France,” on Sunday, implying he had nothing to do with the arrest threats by NYPD officers, although it is hard to believe that the Cardinal doesn’t have access to email or a telephone.
The event, labeled by organizer Joseph Amodeo as a “vigil,” did not result in any arrests, nor were the activists disruptive or intent on being so. They merely wanted to make a quiet statement, no louder than the wearing of a lapel button, in response to the leader of the Catholic Church in America’s patriarchal and offensive statement that gay people are unclean and must “wash their hands” before their church will recognize their right to be at the table.
“For Cardinal Dolan to imply that LGBT people are tainted with ‘dirty hands’ is for him to utterly fail to understand God’s creation,” Ross Murray, GLAAD’s Director of News and Faith Initiatives noted shortly after Sunday’s vigil. “There is no dress code to experience the love of God. Threatening worshipers with arrest displays no grace nor pastoral care. The action clearly tells LGBT people that they are not welcome. For someone who wants to ‘do better’ at reaching out to LGBT people, Dolan is failing miserably.”
GLAAD certainly isn’t the only one who thinks Cardinal Dolan is failing.
“I applaud faithful Catholics for confronting Cardinal Dolan on his duplicitous public stands regarding social justice for God’s LGBT children,” Phil Attey, former executive director of Catholics for Equality told The New Civil Rights Movement in an email conversation:
On Easter Sunday, Cardinal Dolan went on several Sunday morning political programs, advancing the idea that he and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) must “forge a new relationship with the LGBT community.” But it’s clear from his subsequent public statements about LGBT Catholics that he had no such intentions.
Kudos to Joseph Amodeo and faithful Catholics in New York for publicly calling Cardinal Dolan on his lies. Jesus stands with them and all who stand up for social justice and for honesty.
Timmian Massie, an adjunct professor of religious studies at Marist College, told The New Civil Rights Movement also via an email conversation that the “security detail at St. Patrick’s Cathedral used the fear of arrest to stop a call for social justice, something the Catholic Church used to care about more that it apparently does now.”
“However, that response really showed the fear the Church hierarchy has in allowing members to use their gifts of intelligence, rational thinking and free will to expose the hypocrisy of the Cardinal’s statement that in the Catholic Church, ‘All are welcome.’ Obviously, LGBTQ Catholics are not welcome because the hierarchy, not necessarily its members, want LGBTQ people to be less than who we are,” says Massie, who studied theology at the North American College in Vatican City and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and taught a course in Rome on the Vatican.
“The Church does not actively and continually discriminate against any other group in its membership. The protesters had planned to receive Communion on the tongue, not in their hands, as a sign of respect for Catholic belief that the Eucharist is the Body of Christ. I have seen many people with ‘dirty hands’ approach a priest or Eucharistic Minister for Communion, but never be turned away.
“What the Cardinal and his staff at St. Patrick’s don’t realize is that they helped this small group of less than a dozen faithful LGBTQ Catholics and allies gain even more attention for the cause of equality than if they had simply allowed them to enter the cathedral in silence. In reality, the group’s witness was effective and not a failure, though being turned away at the door of one’s spiritual home may have caused pain for those involved. Jesus, who pointed out the hypocrisy of religious leaders of his day, would have approved of this simple act undertaken by people who wish nothing more than to be treated as equals in the eyes of the men who lead the Church. I believe the LGBTQ community is already seen as equal in the eyes of God.”
On Sunday evening, GLAAD noted that “Nicholas Coppola also participated in the witness.” GLAAD’s Ross Murray writes:
Coppola is the man who was stripped of all his parish duties after marrying his husband. Coppola presented 18,600 signatures with GLAAD to his bishop, asking him to be reinstated, which the bishop returned by mail with a cover letter that read simply, “FROM YOUR FAITHFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP.” Coppola now has a Change.org petition, asking to meet and dine with Cardinal Dolan. So far that petition has over 22,000 signatures.
Cardinal Dolan has yet to reply.
Joseph Ward III, Director of Believe Out Loud, an online network that empowers Christians to work for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, told The New Civil Rights Movement via email, “Nobody should ever be denied entry into God’s house on the basis of their gender identity or sexual orientation. These Catholics sent a powerful message that they and all LGBT people are wonderfully made in the image of God, and should be treated with dignity.”
Finally, the words of Joseph Amodeo, the event’s organizer, via his Facebook page yesterday:
I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me over the past 24 hours; your support means a lot. To be honest, I’m still trying to digest and understand how we were treated at St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday. There is one thing that I am sure of, the Holy Spirit was with us. The prayers, embraces, and tears that we shared were a powerful expression of the feelings we all had standing in front of the Cathedral. Pax et bonum.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
