SPIRIT: Cardinal Compares Gay Rights Movement to KKK?

Gay rights groups in Chicago are criticizing the city's Catholic cardinal for drawing a comparison between the gay rights movement and the Ku Klux Klan, reports the Chicago Tribune. Weighing in on a dispute between a local pastor complaining about the timing of a gay pride parade, Cardinal Francis George told MyFox Chicago he sided with the pastor: "You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism."

Pressed by the interviewer, he didn't walk it back: “The rhetoric of the KKK and the rhetoric of some of the gay liberation people—who is the enemy? The Catholic Church,” he said. A Catholic coalition that works toward LGBT rights called Francis' choice of words "crude" and "further evidence of just how insensitive and out of touch the hierarchy is." A diocesan spokesman said the remarks were taken out of context.