LGBT News Germany: 125 employees of Catholic organizations come out, demand change

Thought you all would find this interesting.

Original article in German:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/leben/outinchurch-katholische-kirche-queer-diskriminierung-1.5513780

And here is a machine translation:

Catholic church employees come out as queer
Jan 24, 2022

The 125 employees are risking their jobs by doing so. In the joint manifesto, they demand an end to the discrimination.

In an unprecedented action, 125 employees of the Catholic Church have come out as queer and demanded an end to their discrimination. Among them are priests, parish and pastoral ministers, religious education teachers, but also employees from the church administration.

Queer refers to non-heterosexual people or people who do not identify with the traditional role model of man and woman or other social norms around gender and sexuality.

They are calling for a change in church labor law so that sexual orientation and gender identity are no longer grounds for dismissal in the future. In addition, defamatory statements about gender and sexuality should be removed from church teachings. Access to the Catholic sacraments and to all professional fields of the church should no longer be withheld from them. Last March, the Vatican had once again made it clear that homosexual partnerships were not in accordance with God's plans.

Pastor Bernd Mönkebüscher from Hamm, who had already co-initiated nationwide blessing services for homosexual couples in 2021, said the action was inspired by the coming out - that is, making public one's sexual orientation or identity - of 185 actors and actresses last year. The signatories at the time, including Ulrich Matthes and Ulrike Folkerts, had criticized the fact that many could not openly admit to being queer without fearing professional disadvantages.

Who comes out, loses his job

Of course, this applies to the Catholic Church to a much greater extent, Mönkebüscher said: "The parish worker who wants to marry her girlfriend loses her job." Monika Schmelter, 65, from Lüdinghausen in Münsterland, Germany, confirms this. She hid her relationship with her current wife for 40 years because she herself worked at Caritas and her partner was a religion teacher. They both accepted long journeys to their work in order not to be discovered, says Schmelter. When the relationship became known at some point and she confided in her boss, he told her: "If I continue to keep this a secret, then I can keep my job. But if I had made it public at my place of employment, it would have led to my termination."

The initiative that now wants to mobilize the public against such pressure from the church is called "#OutInChurch. For a church without fear." The network is calling on all LGBTIQ+ people who work full-time or volunteer for the Catholic Church to join the initiative. An appeal goes out to bishops to publicly declare their support for the manifesto. LGBTIQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, inter and queer, with the plus sign representing other identities and genders.

The manifesto says, among other things, that the church's derogatory statements about same-sex relationships, for example, are no longer tenable or acceptable in light of scientific findings. "Such discrimination is a betrayal of the Gospel." Rather, he said, the church must express "that LGBTIQ+ persons, whether living alone or in relationship, are blessed by God."

The Maria 2.0 reform movement expressed solidarity with the initiative. It said a reform of the church's labor laws and a revision of church doctrine are "absolutely necessary, since the Catholic Church, with its discriminatory attitude toward queer people worldwide, is acting irresponsibly in terms of human rights." The fact that in 2022 in Germany you still need courage to profess to be queer is a scandal, he said.

In the ARD documentary "Wie Gott uns schuf" (How God created us), some participants of the initiative will appear in front of the camera for the first time on Monday evening. They report on a game of hide-and-seek that often lasts for years and the fear of coming out.