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12 - Sex and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Steve Bruce
Steve Bruce
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen, UK
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Summary

In February 2013 Cardinal Keith O'Brien resigned. Three priests and one former priest had accused him of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ in the 1980s. Although he initially denied the charges, the Vatican pushed him to quit a few months before his due retirement at seventy-five. In some ways O'Brien was progressive. He was in favour of priests being allowed to marry. When Steve Gilhooley published his account of having been abused at a seminary in Cumbria, O'Brien defended him against Vatican officials who seemed more concerned about Gilhooley than about what he revealed. But O'Brien had also been such a vocal opponent of gay marriage that in 2012 the gay rights campaigning organisation Stonewall had made him its Bigot of the Year.

Two of O'Brien's colleagues could have made Stonewall's short list. Philip Tartaglia, Archbishop-elect of Glasgow, told a conference on religious freedom at Oxford University:

If what I have heard is true about the relationship between the physical and mental health of gay men, then society is being very quiet about it. Recently in Scotland, there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body just shut down at that age. Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody. But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won't address it.

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Scottish Gods
Religion in Modern Scotland 1900–2012
 , pp. 214 - 233
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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