Op-Ed: I Was Raised Catholic in Cleveland. The Diocese's Anti-LGBTQ Policies Are a Huge Mistake

Earlier this month, the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland issued a statement making it clear that it is no friend to the LGBTQ community.

For those of us Clevelanders who grew up attending Catholic school or mass at our neighborhood parishes, the policy isn’t new. But before, the policy was whispered. Before, the policy was implied.

Now, it has been stated outright, officially, by the big guy, Bishop Malesic, and published on the Diocese’s website for all to see — expressions of queerness are unwelcome and must be snuffed out entirely.

The policy is a mistake and will have real ramifications in the lives of congregants. I should know.

I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic school K–12, assisted with mass as an altar server, and was confirmed when I turned 16. Catholicism is the throughline of all my earliest memories: My grandfather fingering Rosary beads. A priest marking my forehead with an ash cross.

My parents always prayed that I would meet a nice boy from a Catholic family, get married, and settle down — and that happened in 2016. But it didn’t stay that way, because it couldn’t. In 2020, my then-husband came out to me as trans and nonbinary and began using they/them pronouns and a new name, Jade.

All the sex education I had in my Catholic upbringing suddenly felt like a giant farce. Catholicism had convinced me that LGBTQ people were misguided and bad. But Jade was not misguided. They were honestly trying to reconcile their lived experience with the few tools the church had given them.

When Jade came out, I felt overwhelmed and unmoored. How could I not, having received virtually zero education on concepts like sexual preference and gender identity? But once I did some listening and learning, those feelings passed.

The feeling that remained was anger: Anger that the adults in our life didn’t equip us with the tools to recognize one of us was gender divergent before we tied the knot. This was one of the biggest decisions we ever made, and we had not been given the knowledge or vocabulary to make it.

I know I’m not the only person who’s experienced something like this, and it will continue happening if we don’t give people the tools to recognize queer people and accept that they exist.

Catholics can’t deny there are LGBTQ people among them. Go to any parish or school, and you will hear the whispers: The teachers with butch haircuts who hang out together. The Ignatius boy who won’t like you back (because he also is into boys). The adorable youth minister who is single and has remained single, for some unfathomable reason, for decades.

LGBTQ folks are there — but their queerness can only be a rumor in an institution where it isn’t allowed to be visible or exist. When someone isn’t allowed to exist, it is so easy to speak for — and vilify — them.

When you don’t give people the space to exist, they either hide in plain sight, or they leave and they take their loved ones with them. And the people who stay carry on with their cruel narratives that hurt and exclude the people who left.

It takes way too long for people to have a change of heart (like I did), and in the meantime, some people become traumatized.

My teachers wanted so desperately to not have to contend with the questions and complexities that sexual minorities bring to the religion conversation, but guess what: Pretending those people don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. It just prolongs the inevitable. It means they have to deal with it later in life.

A final thought about logistics: Who is going to be implementing this policy, and how?

My dad volunteers a seemingly unending number of hours to keep our tiny parish afloat. Say my dad is volunteering as a lector one morning and bumps into Father in the sacristy. Say Father John asks my dad, “Hey Joe, what did you do last weekend?”

Should my dad say, “Oh, I was over visiting my daughter and her spouse, Jade?” Or will he need to say “husband” and use the deadname if he doesn’t want to get rapped on the knuckles?

Does my dad have to keep his daughter’s they/them-using spouse a secret in order to keep up appearances? Do we have to hide the pictures if (heaven forbid) a priest drops by our house?

What about our grandparents, our siblings, our cousins, and our friends who are Catholic, who are now, after all these years, learning about gender divergence, dysphoria, and transitioning?

Our family has been doing an amazing job playing catch up, especially with the new pronouns — but now the Diocese is making them feel like they have to choose between being “good Catholics” and doing the decent thing, which is supporting and loving my spouse for who they are.

Certainly this isn’t happening in just my family. This is happening in families across the Diocese. Every holiday, every gathering, every baptism and funeral, we are thinking about this and wondering, “Can we come? Can we be part of the family, just as we are?”

Does Bishop Malesic care? Because he doesn’t seem to.

When I was a little girl, there was this hymn that used to chill me to the bone — Bernadette Farrell’s “All That Is Hidden.” It went:

All that is hidden will be made clear. All that is dark now will be revealed.

What you have heard in the dark, proclaim in the light.

What you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.

I remember laying in bed one night, too frightened to move, wondering “What could that song possibly be about?” and imagining monsters.

But sometimes, it turns out, the monsters they warn you about aren’t the real monsters. And sometimes the real monsters aren’t the ones hiding. Sometimes they’re standing in plain sight.

I find comfort in the hymn now, in the unstoppability of a truth so big, nothing can hide it — not hateful laws, not policies issued by clergy who haven’t had a day of comprehensive sex education in their lives.

People will find the words they need to describe themselves and accept others. And if they can’t find those words in the church, they will find them somewhere else.

Bishop Malesic should care about that.

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