By Cliff Dunn

Photo: Cardinal Francis George (Courtesy: CNS/Nancy Wiechec)

Gay rights groups in and around Chicago are condemning the city’s Roman Catholic leader for what they say is comparing the LGBT rights movement to the Ku Klux Klan.

The offending remarks from Cardinal Francis George were said during an interview on December 21 with Fox Chicago. Asked for his opinion about a local pastor’s complaints that the annual gay pride parade was forcing his parish to cancel its morning mass, George said he supported the priest’s position.

Said George: “You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,” an apparent reference to attempts by members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party of America to march in nearby Skokie, Illinois in the late 1970s.

When pressed by the reporter, George admitted that his words were provocative, but repeated the acknowledged that it was a strong analogy, but stood by his reasoning. “The rhetoric of the KKK and the rhetoric of some of the gay liberation people — Who is the enemy? The Catholic Church,” George reiterated.

Organizers of Chicago’s annual pride parade agreed on December 21 to begin the event at a later start time after officials with Our Lady of Mt.

Carmel Catholic Church said that to the proposed route blocked access to their parish’s Sunday Masses.

Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholic groups that advocate LGBT rights, said that Cardinal George’s remarks were “crude” and “demagogic.” In a statement, the group wrote: “Cardinal George’s offensive comments are further evidence of just how insensitive and out of touch the hierarchy is, and why opposition to its views is necessary.”

The embattled cardinal seemed to backtrack from his comments during a subsequent interview on Christmas Day, telling ABC in Chicago that “obviously, it’s absurd to say the gay and lesbian community are the Ku Klux Klan. But if you organize a parade that looks like parades that we’ve had in our past because it stops us from worshiping God, well then that’s the comparison. But it’s not with people and people – it’s parade-parade.”

Meanwhile, LGBT rights group Truth Wins Out called for George to step down from his pastoral duties in a full page ad that ran in The Chicago Tribune on New Year’s Day.