Diocese's Oops on Email Shows Real Reason It Refuses to Sell to Gay Couple

By Lucas Grindley
The Advocate
July 26, 2012

http://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2012/07/26/catholic-diocese-email-oops-shows-real-reason-it-refuses-sell-house-gay

Oakhurst

Email can be tricky, as one Catholic Diocese in Massachusetts is learning.

The diocese was apparently trying to come up with some legal reason it refuses to sell a 44-bedroom mansion in Worcester to a gay couple who wanted to renovate it. But the back-and-forth over email was still appended to the bottom of the bogus explanation that eventually made its way to the couple, according to Worcester Telegram columnist Dianne Williamson.

"If you're going to discriminate, you should cover your tracks," Williamson wrote in jest in a column today, noting that what actually unfolded could be illegal.

A real estate broker for the diocese said in an email she sent to the couple, James Fairbanks and Alain Beret, that it had suddenly found "other plans" for the property.

But at the bottom of the email was this note from Monsignor Thomas Sullivan:

"I just went down the hall and discussed it with the bishop," Sullivan wrote to the broker, according to the Telegram. "Because of the potentiality of gay marriages there, something you shared with us yesterday, we are not interested in going forward with these buyers. I think they're shaky anyway. So, just tell them that we will not accept their revised plan and the Diocese is making new plans for the property. You find the language."