125 Employees Of Germany's Catholic Church Admit To Being Queer

A total of 125 employees of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany - including priests, teachers, and church administrators - have outed themselves as queer and called for discrimination against them to end, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

Photo Insert: Priests, teachers, and church administrators are among the employees of the Catholic Church in Germany who have outed themselves as queer.

The unprecedented initiative is called "#OutInChurch. For a Church without fear." The activists want to be able to live and work openly as LGBTIQ+ persons in the church without fear. The 125 people who outed themselves are demanding a change in church labor law so that sexual orientation and gender identity are no longer grounds for dismissal.

In addition, they are calling for defamatory statements on gender and sexuality to be removed from church teaching and want "full access to all fields of activity and occupation in the Church without discrimination."

Such "outdated statements of church doctrine" on sexuality and gender need to be revised "on the basis of theological and human-scientific findings," according to OutInChurch.

Last March, the Vatican once again made it clear that in its view, homosexual partnerships do not correspond to God's designs. OutInChurch is calling on all LGBTIQ+ people who work full-time or on a voluntary basis for the Catholic Church to join the initiative.

It is appealing to bishops to publicly declare their support for the manifesto. LGBTIQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer, the plus sign stands for minority identities and genders.

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