Catholic U. of America Cancels Milk Screening, Calls It 'Advocacy' Event

The screening and related activities to kick off LGBT Awareness Month amounted to taking a position contrary to Catholic teaching, administrators said.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

October 03 2014 4:00 AM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., this week canceled a screening of Milk as a kickoff to LGBT Awareness Month, with administrators saying the event amounted to endorsing a position contrary to Catholic teaching, The Boston Globe's Crux blog reports.

School officials had approved the screening of the Oscar-winning Harvey Milk biopic last month, organizers said, but the university rescinded the approval on the grounds that advertising for the film and related activities "called into question whether the event had changed in nature from one of education to one of advocacy," according to a statement the school issued to Crux. The statement also said that earlier, "there had been no indications that the program would be a kickoff to LGBT Awareness Month."

The event, which was to take place Wednesday night but was canceled the same day, was to be hosted by the College Democrats. It was scheduled to include talks by university professor John White and Kevin Walling, a gay Catholic University alumnus who chairs the Democratic Central Committee for Montgomery County, Md., regarding gay rights and the Democratic Party as well as the film screening.

"I thought [the cancellation] was an incredibly asinine decision that the school made," College Democrats member Jackson Tovar told Crux. Both the College Democrats and school spokesmen, however, said they are working on rescheduling the event.