As far as hertics go, Marc Hall is as unlikely as they come. The seventeen year-old Oshawa high school student is tall, thin, polite and soft-spoken. Just the kind of well-behaved kid that parents nag their own children to emulate.

Yet, in the past few weeks, Hall has become the centre of a civil rights battle that has galvanized activists across the country. Hall wants to bring his twenty-one year-old boyfriend to his senior prom at Monsignor John Pereyma Secondary School in Oshawa. His principal refused, as did the Durham Catholic District School Board.

“It was decided that this would be interpreted as behaviour associated with a homosexual lifestyle and not consistent with church teachings and our values as a Catholic school system,” said Grant Andrews, the board’s education director.

Letters to Hall’s web site, and to The Toronto Star, from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have been overwhelmingly supportive of the gay teenager. By digging in its heels, the board has shown itself to be petty, intolerant and out of touch with the values and sensibilities of many of its constituents.

Coinciding with the Oshawa prom imbroglio was a report in an Italian newspaper revealing that the Vatican is considering psychological tests for seminarians to reveal whether they are gay. The announcement was met with outrage and criticism by a sizeable number of Catholic clergy and laypeople.

The Vatican’s antagonism toward gay priests has erupted in the midst of a scandal in the U.S. church over the sexual abuse of boys by priests, with the Vatican none-too-subtly implying a connection between homosexuality and abuse — a suggestion that is as false and as ugly as claiming that the sexual abuse of girls by men is a normal part of heterosexuality.

Catholicism’s strictures against homosexuality have little Biblical support. The oft-cited Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah is inevitably misinterpreted as a parable about the punishment of gay sex. A closer reading reveals a heterosexual family so dysfunctional it wouldn’t be out of place on The Jerry Springer Show: a father who offers up his two virgin daughters to be raped, a mother who turns into salt, and a pair of daughters who get their father drunk and have sex with him.

As for Leviticus’ famed prohibitions of homosexuality, that same book also requires the death penalty for children who curse their parents and for people who commit adultery.

In the New Testament, in all the sermons, parables and teachings of Jesus, he never once commented on homosexuality, concerning himself instead with speaking out against religious hypocrisy, intolerance and injustice.

In its homophobic fog, the Catholic Church has twisted the Bible for its own purposes, ignoring its teachings of tolerance and love, and in the process, neglecting millions of gay, or gay-positive, Catholics.

Some of those people count themselves in the ranks of Marc Hall’s supporters — they include many of his classmates, his parents, and the parents of his classmates.

Some of these people include members of my family. My maternal grandmother went to Mass each week without fail and decorated her house in full-out Catholic kitsch — complete with crucifixes over every bed, a Virgin Mary lawn ornament, a ceramic praying-hands wall decoration and a set of Pope John Paul II commemorative plates. When she found out I was a lesbian, this deeply religious woman hugged me, told me she loved me and insisted upon meeting my “friend” and stuffing her full of her best food.

Then there’s my girlfriend’s father and his wife; observant, churchgoing Catholics, who accept our relationship with great joy, who proudly sat us in the front pew at their wedding, and who beam at us with love, kindness and respect.

These people represent the best of their faith, just as the homophobic actions of the church represent some of the worst. The Durham Catholic District School Board has said it will not capitulate. Hall, a gay young man, can attend the prom; he just can’t bring his date.

While he puzzles through this glaring hypocrisy, might Hall find some comfort in the words of another outcast, a man who was born to an unwed, homeless, teenaged, Jewish mother and who grew up to be a great friend to prostitutes and sinners.

“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.”