"To think they preached about respect for all, we are all children of God and that we not judge people..." said another student. "I personally feel that they are wrong to be teaching something that they are not practicing."

Charlene Genther was fired from her post of Campus Safety Officer at Marian High School, a Catholic high school, in Detroit, Michigan. She had recently published a book where she detailed the harassment she faced for being a lesbian on the Detroit police force. She spent nearly 15 years on the force, and was one of the first women assigned to patrol duty.

Michigan law does not protect discrimination based on sexual orientation, so Genther has little legal recourse. Jeffrey Montgomery, executive director of Triangle Foundation, a Michigan LGBT rights organization, said, "Unfortunately, Charlene is facing a second round of discrimination. It's a horrible lesson to be teaching these girls: that being honest will cost you your job. It's also hypocritical, because even the Church says job discrimination against gays and lesbians is wrong. She was a role model and mentor and they cast her out."

Anecdotally, I know a large number of lay Catholics disagree with their church hierarchy on issues such as sexual orientation and contraception. To their credit, the Catholic hierarchy has not forced people to abandon their intellects at the church door; they have accepted such well-founded scientific theories as evolution, unlike fundamentalist Protestants. However, issues like sexual orientation, the Catholic hierarchy is blind, perhaps wilfully blind. Pope Benedict has started trying to remove all the gay people from their seminaries - this in response to the child abuse scandals. It galls me to no end when people try to pass off their own prejudices as God's will.

Hundreds of former and present Marian students have started a petition to bring Genther back. The quote in the header is from a student. Their are hundreds of LGBT Catholics with immense gifts to bring to the church. There is no way to put it kindly - the Catholic Church does not love them, despite claims to the contrary. It won't let them leave, either, claiming that it is the one true church, and that to leave is damnation. These are the actions of an abusive spouse, not God's supposedly one true church. And the Catholic Church is not alone in its abuse of its LGBT members.

It is easy to see why many LGBT folk leave Christianity and never look back. It may seem hard to understand why there are affirming groups in every Christian denominations from the Mormons and the Southern Baptists to the Episcopalians and the UCC. But God's love us is stronger than anyone's hatred.