Congress.org - News : Priest who led gay rights fight dies

Priest who led gay rights fight dies

Carter helped start national advocacy group.

By Ambreen Ali

Robert Carter, one of the first Catholic priests to openly declare his homosexuality, has died at 82.

Carter became an activist in the 1970s. He marched in gay rights parades with his clerical collar and led Mass for gays rejected by the Church.

He also helped start the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, currently one of the largest advocacy groups on the issue.

The New York Times writes:

For him, there was no contradiction between homosexuality and Christianity.

In his memoir, Father Carter wrote: “Since Jesus had table fellowship with social outcasts and sinners, those rejected by the religious establishment of his time, I consider myself to have been most fully a Jesuit, a ‘companion of Jesus,’ when I came out publicly as a gay man, one of the social rejects of my time. It was only by our coming out that society’s negative stereotypes would be overcome and we would gain social acceptance.”

-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org

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