LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Leader Reflects on His Catholic Faith

Greg Bourke, a gay Catholic who has become a leader in the world of  LGBTQ+ equality, says his life’s aspirations weren’t geared to such activity, and he “didn’t expect to be any kind of an activist.” 

Greg Bourke and his husband, Michael DeLeon

In a new interview with Queer Kentucky. Bourke said he would have been happy living in the suburbs of Louisville with his spouse and children, he says. “All I wanted to do was live my life quietly here in Louisville. But when you have a family, life gets complicated. Then you also realize you have an obligation to your children, and to the next generation.”

Instead, Bourke became a leader for LGBTQ+ equalityn 2012 when he sued the Boy Scouts of America after he was dismissed as a troop leader for being openly gay. His journey continued when he and his spouse joined as plaintiffs in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized marriage equality for same-gender couples.  Although both experiences thrust him in the public eye, Bourke says that it was balancing his Catholic faith with his identity that was the harder challenge. He explained:

“Trying to raise a family as a gay couple in the Catholic Church was probably one of the hardest things that we did. The Supreme Court case played itself out over a little more than two years. But when you have a family, it’s a lifetime commitment.”

Bourke spoke at length about his identity as a gay Catholic in the interview, and why he feels compelled to stay in the church, both as a place of community and to help make it better, even though he admits that’s a more difficult possibility. He said:

“Sometimes the easier thing to do is just to pack your bags, shake the dust off your feet, and walk away and say, ‘I’m not welcome here; I’m leaving.’ I never really felt that. I’ve never had a break with the Catholic Church. I’ve never had that moment where I said, ‘I can’t go back, or they don’t want me to come back.’ So I’ve been able to sustain that over a period of my whole lifetime. And it’s so important that I had that continuity in my life to be able to just have it going and going and going. I get frustrated with the church but never to the point where I get really angry or want to leave.

“As my husband says all the time, ‘If we leave, they win.’ If everybody just walks away, then the bullies are gonna win, the injustice is gonna remain, and nothing’s gonna get changed. But if you stay, and you’re reasonable and you explain why you should be included, why this shouldn’t have happened, why it should change, you know, people kinda have to listen to you. I mean, they can tune you out to a certain extent, but if you get enough people together—and you’re putting the messages out there in the right way—they have to acknowledge that and deal with it.”

 Bourke tied his identity as an American with his identity as a Catholic. While both are important parts of who he is, he doesn’t always agree with all the ideas encompassed in each institution:

“I get frustrated with the Catholic Church, but I also know it’s my home. And I don’t know who I would be without my experience in the church. It’s been so integral to my whole life—from baptism to right now. I’ve always been active in the church.

“It’s the same way I can’t envision not being an American. I know people who expatriate and retire and move to other places. But I can’t imagine not being an American. It’s still my church, the same way that this is still my country—with all its flaws.

“I don’t like what’s going on with the country, but I’m not gonna disown my country, and I’m not gonna disown my church. They’re just too important to me, so I will take those to the grave with me and do it gladly.”

But Bourke acknowledges that his Catholic identity is, in fact, what inspired him to be in a relationship:

“My faith has driven so much of what I have done in life. The fact that I wanted to get involved in sustaining a relationship over a long period of time—like my parents who were married for 67 years when my father passed—I wanted to have that relationship. I wanted to have a family at some point. I don’t think either of those things are outrageous asks. There are so many millions of Americans who seek and achieve the same thing.”

And he has hope the future, ending the interview with optimisim:

“. . . [S]ome people don’t want to change. They learned something when they were very young, and it’s really hard to change the way they think, the way they feel, and what they believe when they learned it so early in life. They got it time and time again, and it’s been reinforced for so long.”

“Our only hope is the next generation that comes up after is gonna be a little more open. I think that’s proving to be the case.”

–Elsie Carson-Holt, New Ways Ministry, July 2, 2025

For previous Bondings 2.0 posts about Greg Bourke, including his memoir Gay, Catholic, and American (published by the University of Notre Dame Press), click here.