A Gay Employee at a Catholic Church Is Resigning After Threats to His Family
By Hemant Mehta, October 23, 2018

Aaron Bianco is a married gay man who also happens to be a devout Catholic. I have plenty of questions I’d love to ask him — all of which he’s surely been asked a million times before — but the point is he’s attempting to create change from the inside rather than abandon the Church altogether. I don’t think that’s possible, but more power to him for his unwarranted optimism.

The problem is that plenty of conservatives are furious that he’s involved with the Church at all. Bianco serves as a “pastoral associate” at St. John the Evangelist Parish in San Diego, California. Unlike a priest, Bianco’s same-sex marriage is permitted in his role, but that doesn’t mean everyone accepts it, and the backlash recently went from frustrating to dangerous.

Last week, someone spray-painted the phrase “no fags” on the inside of the building on an office wall. It happened after conservative Christian websites began going after him:

… The Rev. James Martin, a Catholic priest who is a friend of Bianco’s and has worked for LGBTQ inclusion in the church, detailed some of the actions in a Tuesday Facebook post.

“Aaron’s tires have been slashed; he has received threatening emails (some 60 over the last two months), including death threats; letters on his car have been left, one saying, ‘Sodomites not welcome in the church.’ One man physically attacked him at the end of Mass, and had to be prevented by other parishioners from hurting him. This is what hate does, especially the kind of hate whipped up online.”

Martin blamed right-wing websites such as Church Militant and LifeSite News for encouraging homophobia. One Church Militant article, for example, accused Bianco and the San Diego diocese of promoting an “LBGT agenda.” Another said “faithful Catholics” at Bianco’s parish “are suffering persecution by a homosexualist cabal” and that the church is being corrupted. LifeSite News has urged readers to sign a petition calling for Bianco’s firing. A far-right Catholic group called the Lepanto Institute has also objected to the parish’s employment of Bianco and called Bianco’s husband his “sodomitical partner.”