At The Benilde St. Margaret's School in Minnesota, the student newspaper wrote an editorial protesting the fact that their Catholic Archdiocese had sent out a DVD opposing gay marriage. What! Censor that, at once! That eloquent writing is anti-Catholic!

Yes, the Catholic school's administration played their role perfectly by pulling the students' editorial (and an accompanying piece titled "Life as a Gay Teenager") and replacing it with a statement explaining that "The online comments regarding the editorial and the opinion piece in question were creating a disrespectful environment as well as confusion about the teachings of the Catholic Church; therefore, the administration exercised its prerogative to have the material removed from the website." Here's a sample of the outrageous and misleading editorial, which was republished on Braublog:

The DVD also aimed to reject the notion that the issue of gay marriage is an issue of civil rights. They did this in the most subtle way imaginable: by having a black man quote Martin Luther King Jr. The quote in question was from "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and stated that for a law to be just it must be in line with natural law.

What the speaker fails to address is the very next line of the letter that states, "Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statues are unjust because segregation distorts the soul."

Using Martin Luther King, Jr's words to support an assertion that same-sex marriage leaves men "fundamentally dehumanized": fine. Pointing out that that is bullshit, in a remarkably eloquent and fair editorial: unfair. Even more brilliant: use the fact that assholes were leaving disrespectful comments on a story as an excuse to pull the entire story! Good work, zealous Catholics! This'll teach those gay-accepters to speak out of turn, or ever!

[Braublog via Romenesko]