So I published a story a little while ago about how the US Conference of Catholic Bishops maneuvered behind the scenes last fall to get Congress to drop LGBTQ people from being included in a suicide hotline that was getting bipartisan support.

Let me say that again. The leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States tried to stop Congress from getting help to suicidal LGBTQ youth.

Catholic press broke the story. (To their credit, the Catholic journalists seemed barely able to contain their fury at the bishops' conduct.) Sources were impeccable. This shit happened.

It’s probably the most appalling story I’ve written in years. In the story itself, I call the process of writing it agonizing, because it was. Just knowing that leaders of the Catholic Church hate us so much they’d rather see us die of suicide than help us is … words fail me here.

Sure, I got plenty of great response to the story. Tons of people reached out with support, and tons of lay Catholics expressed their disgust at the hierarchy. Dozens of Catholics wrote to tell me the Church would never see another dime from them.

But I also received a constant stream (it hasn’t stopped yet) of bitter complaints from Catholics and other Christians accusing me of being anti-Catholic, being anti-Christian, and fomenting hate against Christian people.

The comments are astonishing to me. All I can think is that those people value loyalty to some sort of institution or ideology over adherence to Jesus’s message of love and charity. Over basic human decency.

The commenters so busy being angry at me, they’re blind to the fact that the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States are actively working to make LGBTQ people die.

The commenters are too busy being loyal Christians to suppose decency and basic morality matter much.