[See also other articles by Gustavo Arellano.]
We and supporters of sex-abuse victims celebrated loudly when Bishop Jaime Soto left the Diocese of Orange to become the eventual head bishop of the Diocese of Sacramento. Soto, while a staunch defender of immigrant rights, was an active member of the Orange diocese sex-abuse scandal cover-up. To quote just a small part of a previous Ex Cathedra post:


Soto's role, compared to other heavyweights in Orange, seems small. In 1986, he wrote a letter in support of Andrew Christian Anderson, one of only two Orange County Catholic priests ever convicted of sex-abuse crimes. Soto was also the poor sap in charge of trying to fish back Eleuterio Ramos from Tijuana after a Ramos victim filed a lawsuit against the Orange diocese's most notorious pedophile. Of course, there's always the sin of silence, but we'll put that aside for the meanwhile. Actually, let's bring it back. Soto is someone so suffocated in the Catholic bubble he can't see the hell it's become for sex-abuse victims and Catholics with any sense of morality.

On that note, it's nice to know that Soto has a bigger problem with homosexuals than he does pedophile priests.

On Sept. 18 in Long Beach, Soto addressed the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference, a lay organization seeking to comfort gay and lesbian Catholics from their idiot superiors. Soto had previously expressed sympathy for gays and lesbians, a stance that got him in trouble with crazy Catholics. But in his Sept. 18 speech, Soto made sure to say the words that will endear him to the conservatives in his church forever and offend those of us with a brain and heart:

Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful. Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression.

Soto also came out in favor of Proposition 8, which seeks to limit marriage between a man and a woman in California, and urged chastity for gays and lesbians.

Funny, that Soto. While in Orange County, the pendejo never used such strong words to denounce his fellow pedo-priests or the diocesan hierarchy that protected them-instead, he offered hollow apologies while fighting victims tooth and nail while they sought justice. Instead Soto likes to rail against the easy stuff--raunchy Spanish-language television, fags, modern-day culture, and other things that require no courage to opine. Pendejo-o, my apologies. To properly give Bishop Soto the proper respect, His Pendejo-ness.

E-mail: GARELLANO@OCWEEKLY.COM