Considering Marquette is a Catholic University, my response almost borders on an obvious, “Duh!” but the study suggests that Marquette takes a perverse pride in being anti-gay.
“We’d like to at least have a safe campus,” said Margaret Steele, a graduate student in Marquette’s philosophy department and an LGBT ally. Steele said she’s familiar with Sanlo’s report and can attest to the hostile climate it documents.
Steele said she attended Marquette hoping to find a values-based educational environment that promotes the Jesuit tradition of social justice. But she said she’s been disappointed to find herself engulfed in a culture that seems to elevate “a couple of ambiguous statements about sexuality” over “the hundreds of scriptural injunctions about helping the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised.”
“For me, Marquette is not Catholic enough,” Steele said. “They use their Catholic identity as window dressing to attract a certain customer base. But they don’t show a true commitment to Christianity or Catholicism at is best. They talk up Catholicism when they want to defend something they’re doing to appease their conservative customers and donors.
The Catholic Church has proven time and again they use homophobic teachings to divert attention from their child rape problem. They are also guilty of trying to appeal to extremist conservative parishioners they haven’t lost to all their pedophilia scandals. Marquette seems to pride itself in taking a hard line, while other Jesuit Catholic Universities including Loyola University Chicago, Loyola Marymount, Georgetown University and Seattle University are moderating their policies.
