Mercy’s same-sex prom date ban intrinsically disordered

I decided to wait. It’s been a couple of weeks since the firestorm broke over Mercy High School’s refusal to allow two girls to attend the prom as a couple. While the publicity may have died down, the issue hasn’t gone away and it won’t.

At first, I was angered. I still am, but the anger is more philosophical and, I hope, more reasoned than it would have been had I written when the iron was white-hot.

The world has changed. The progress that LGBT citizens have made is astounding. But as Mercy showed, there is still a long way to go before full equality is achieved.

I get that the Mercy administration is between a rock and hard place. There is little doubt that the Diocese of Norwich gave Mercy any wiggle room. Yet Mercy, the diocese and the American Catholic Church find themselves increasingly isolated from the American mainstream of social thought.

Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. It is on exactly the same legal standing as oppositesex marriage. It has been so since the Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 2015, that LGBT citizens are entitled to the same equal protection under the law when it comes to the issue of marriage.

Survey after survey shows that a majority of Americans — and enormous majorities in the Northeast — support same-sex marriage and equal rights for all citizens, including LGBT Americans.

There is no reason to think that the vast majority of Mercy students — and Xavier students, Middletown High students, Coginchaug students, et al., — think otherwise.

My goodness, if any public school did what Mercy did, it would instantly be in stupendous legal trouble.

Simply put, what Mercy did was counter to the current ethos of American society. Therein, of course, lies the rub.

The American Catholic Church, the faith in which I was raised, on this issue finds itself separated from what society believes. History teaches us that institutions — social, political, economic or religious — cannot long survive when that institution holds views that are contrary to the prevailing society’s views.

So often those institutions attempt to justify their actions with convoluted rationales, arguments that often cannot stand up to the most cursory of examinations.

The Mercy response said, among other things, that the position it took was based on “tradition.” Yet, in the school’s published argument, it revealed that same-sex groups — couples, perhaps? — had attended Mercy dances in the past, albeit the students were all from Mercy.

Perhaps the point of most concern was that sentence that apparently put a condition on a student receiving the love, prayers and support of students, and that condition was acceptance of church teaching on homosexuality.

I may not be an expert on Catholic theology, but I do know the Gospel says that Jesus Christ’s great admonition of “Love one another” does not contain preconditions.

More than that, the Catholic teaching in the Catechism, authored in large measure by the not-very-lamented ex-Pope Benedict, called homosexuality “intrinsically disordered.”

I would offer that moms and dads of LGBT kids at Mercy, Xavier, Portland, Middletown and whatever high school do not regard their children as intrinsically disordered.

The gay high school athletes I interviewed for a story a few years ago are not intrinsically disordered. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin is not intrinsically disordered. The Christian pastor of First Church is not intrinsically disordered. State Comptroller Kevin Lembo and his husband are not intrinsically disordered.

I am not intrinsically disordered.

When someone says not to “flaunt” one’s LGBT status, that instantly marginalizes that person.

The message is clear in each of those cases: you aren’t good enough, there is something wrong with you, you are inferior. Is it possible to harm a kid more?

I would hope that Mercy High would rethink its stand. Sometimes it takes an act of great courage to do what’s right. Mercy should let the kids dance.