An update on the story about Timothy J. Kane, a math teacher in a New Britain, Connecticut, middle school who was arrested after sending a threatening email to gay Connecticut legislators Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor on 10 March (here and here and here).On 27 March, Kane was arraigned in Hartford Community Court (here). At the arraignment, police released an affidavit dated 11 March that contains the text of the email Kane sent to McDonald and Lawlor.
As my previous postings about this incident have noted, McDonald and Lawlor are openly gay, and found themselves under fire when Bridgeport Catholic Bishop William Lori and Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput played the anti-gay card in a battle to turn back legislation that would have given lay parishioners oversight of the finances of Catholic parishes. Kane sent his email the night before a demonstration of 4,000 Catholics at the Connecticut state capitol in response to Lori’s encouragement of Catholics to protest the legislation.
According to the police affidavit (which is linked to a CT News Junkie article by Christine Stuart re: the arraignment here), Kane’s email states:
Hey McDonald and Lawlor, your bill has NO shot at passing tomorrow, and you’re cowards for canceling the public hearing. Gay marriage is a farce, as are your careers and your support of the twisted, despicable act that is homosexuality. The first amendment outlaws this bill, and if needed, the US Supreme court would overwhelmingly outlaw SB 1098. You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the Church. F--k off. God hates gay sex.
You better hope that myself and other Catholics don’t find out where you live cause there’s hell to pay for your attack on the Church: as Andrew McDonald has noted, Bishop Lori’s claim that McDonald and Lawlor were promoting the parish finance legislation as payback for the church’s opposition to gay marriage cannot be separated from the vile anti-gay rhetoric that spewed forth in many quarters after Bishop Lori made this claim. McDonald states: “[I]t [i.e., Bishop Lori’s charge] was dangerous, because it engendered deep feelings of hostility and stirred homophobic responses from many people that resulted in very serious threats” (here).
As I’ve also noted, this story has a curious twist: Timothy Kane’s father Joseph Kane is, it’s being reported, a Catholic deacon (see here). When this fact was made public, it was also reported that Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, indicated that Joseph Kane was a former deacon whom he had once known, but Culhane had no recollection of the parish in which Joseph Kane had served.
Attempts of reporters to locate the “former” deacon in the week of March 16 apparently led to dead ends. Yet, according to a reader of Bilgrimage, Joseph Kane is actually a practicing deacon rather than a former deacon. The reader tells me that Joseph Kane is a deacon in the Archdiocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, at St. Peter’s parish in Provincetown.
And, when I check the website of that parish, I do, indeed, find a Deacon Joseph Kane listed there as the parish’s Permanent Deacon (here). His name is right below the pastor’s name.
As I’ve stated before, it seems very strange to me that Deacon Joseph Kane has somehow been misplaced by officials of the Bridgeport Catholic diocese. If it’s being correctly reported that Michael Culhane, executive director of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, believes Deacon Joseph Kane to be a “former” deacon when Deacon Kane is actually serving a parish in a nearby diocese, then the story seems curioser and curioser.
Surely, when Catholic bishops use homophobic tactics in political battles, and when threats of violence ensue, and when one of those threats of violence can be tracked to the son of a Catholic deacon, it’s important to locate that deacon. Especially when he paid bond for his son when his son was arrested (here).
