For us queer people, the Archbishop of Canterbury is so relevant!

To us queer people, Justin Welby has long been almost the personification itself of evil and hatred.

We gasped in shock when he disinvited the same-sex spouses of North American bishops from the Lambeth conference.

We gasped in rage went at the conclusion of that conference he announced that homosexuality is and always will be considered a sin in the Anglican Communion.

We were further outraged when at the conclusion of a many-years-long process to approve same-sex marriage in the Church of England, Welby and his fellow bishops definitively shut that reform down.

When Justin Welby flew with Pope Francis to Africa together last year, both of them announced that homosexuality is sinful. They discouraged violence against gay people, even as they SIMULTANEOUSLY supported the rationale people use to encourage such violence.

(That was before Pope Francis savagely attacked gay men — instructing fellow priests and bishops not to admit gay men to seminary to train for the priesthood, because there's "already too much fagotry in the Vatican." Contrary to what some media sources have reported, the Italian word the Pope chose that translates to fagotry in English is every bit as stigmatizing and hateful in Italian as in English.)

All this to say that at least we queer people recognize Welby's evil streak. We see him ignoring Jesus's example of love and hospitality, instead choosing to demonize and other us. To treat us his second class and unworthy of full inclusion.

Is it much of a leap to presume somebody evil in those ways would be evil in many other ways?

Not to us queer people. If Welby is willing to treat us like so much shit under his shoes (and he is!) we know for sure he's no one to look to for moral guidance or leadership.

We're hoping others will connect those dots too.