There is and long has been a dysfunctional tendency in some Catholic circles, notably liberal-progressive ones, to play LGBTQ interests against women's interests — with the implication that to mention LGBTQ critiques is to marginalize feminist ones. /1

I met this constantly as an academic in the Catholic academy, where the ground rules forbade me even to speak of myself as gay while women, most of them affluent, white, heterosexually married, who had great freedom to talk about feminist issues, /2

would sometimes lecture me on how LGBTQ oppression in the Catholic /3

This kind of bias does persist in Catholic circles, where if you speak of LGBTQ oppression, people — including many liberal ones — want to ask, "What about women?"

As if by speaking from a gay perspective about LGBTQ issues, you are ignoring the question of women's treatment. /4

As someone who has long been convinced that homophobia is rooted in misogyny, and who has written about this, I surely do not see things that way, and think it's ludicrous for queer people and women not to make common cause in challenging injustice. /5

Still, I have to say that this kind of nasty bias does persist in some Catholic circles, including liberal ones, and that it does not help affluent white women to examine the ways in which their gender and class give them more than a little privilege. /6