LGBT People Killed on 9/11/2001
See also September 11, 2001 and LGBT History
Alphabetical list of LGBT people known to have died as a result of the terrorist attack of 9/11/2001. Please provide reliable documentation of LGBT orientation.
Judge, Mychal F, Order of Friars Minor (Franciscan) (born Robert Emmet Judge on May 11, 1933; died September 11, 2001) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, Chaplain of the Fire Department of New York, and the first certified fatality of the September 11, 2001 attacks.[1]
Following his death a few of his friends and associates revealed that Father Mychal Judge was gay — as a matter of orientation rather than practice, as he was a celibate priest.[2]
According to fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen: "I actually knew about his homosexuality when I was in the Uniformed Firefighters Association. I kept the secret, but then he told me when I became commissioner five years ago. He and I often laughed about it, because we knew how difficult it would have been for the other firemen to accept it as easily as I had. I just thought he was a phenomenal, warm, sincere man, and the fact that he was gay just had nothing to do with anything."[3][39]
Judge was a long-term member of Dignity, a Catholic LGBT activist organization that advocates for change in the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality.[4]
On October 1, 1986, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an encyclical, On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, which declared homosexuality to be a "strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil".[5] In response, many bishops, including John Cardinal O'Connor, banned Dignity from diocesan churches under their control. Father Judge then welcomed Dignity's AIDS ministry to the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, which is under the control of the Franciscan friars, thereby partially circumventing the cardinal's ban of Dignity.[6]
Judge disagreed with official Roman Catholic teaching regarding homosexuality,[47] though by all accounts he remained celibate. Judge often asked, "Is there so much love in the world that we can afford to discriminate against any kind of love?"[7]
The revelations about Judge's sexual orientation were contested by Dennis Lynch, a lawyer who wrote an article about Judge that appeared on the website catholic.org. Lynch claimed that the priest was not gay and that any attempt to define him as gay was due to "homosexual activists" who wanted to "attack the Catholic Church" and turn the priest into "a homosexual icon".[8]
Others refuted Lynch’s claims with evidence that Judge did, in fact, identify himself as gay, both to others and in his personal journals.[9]
Notes
- ↑ Adapted from Wikipedia, accessed September 8, 2011.
- ↑ Dahir, Mubarak (October 23, 2001), "Our Heroes", The Advocate, October 23, 2001. Cassels, Peter "Tributes keep flowing for NYC Fire Dept. chaplain Mychal Judge, one of those who died in the World Trade Center attacks", Bay Windows, September 27, 2001.
- ↑ Senior, Jennifer, "The Firemen's Friar", New York Magazine, November 12, 2001.
- ↑ Newman, Andy, "Admirers of Fallen 9/11 Hero Disdain the Vatican's Likely Plan to Bar Gays as Priests", New York Times, September 25, 2005. What is Dignity?
- ↑ "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons" <CITATION NEEDED>
- ↑ Ford, Michael, Father Mychal Judge: An Authentic American Hero (Paulist Press, 2002), pp. 119-120
- ↑ Ford, Michael, Ibid (2002), p. 124.
- ↑ That statement was posted on Catholic.org, but it as of September 8, 2011 it is no longer on the site.
- ↑ Daly, Michael, Ibid (2008), pp. 86, 301-302. Kelley, John, "A Gay Saint in Fact". Accessed September 8, 2001.
