On the website of St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Buffalo, N.Y., is the following statement, made last Easter by the Very Reverend Allen Farabee, dean of the Cathedral:

Two weeks ago the only gay bathhouse in Buffalo was shut down. For nearly 50 years, it was hidden in plain sight, at 653 Main St., not all that far from this Cathedral, an alcove of safety in a hostile and threatening world. More than 3,000 members paid annual dues and visitors came from all over the world. The information network of safe places alerted men who might be coming to Buffalo: Go to 653 Main St. you will find a place of hospitality and welcome, a place where you can be yourself, a resting place for body and soul.

Episcopal investigative reporter David Virtue reported this astounding pulpit endorsement of a homosexual bathhouse, and added the following editorial comment:

One wonders if the dean has not totally lost his mind. Does Farabee know how many of those 3,000 men are still alive today, and not lying in graves, their bodies wasted by AIDS, all because they falsely believed they could find a "safe place" for the outworking of their sexual desires at 653 Main St.?

I reached Dean Farabee by telephone. He verified what he said from the pulpit on Easter and added: "It was a safe place to stop for gays, just as blacks used to have safe places to stop during the national struggle for civil rights."

The dean also compared this homosexual bathhouse to the upper room where Christ's apostles gathered behind a closed door.

I asked the dean if he had ever been inside this gay bathhouse. He replied that he had not – which should be a relief to his parishioners.

I asked him if he had any evidence that anyone who had ever visited that gay bathhouse went there for refuge and rest alone – and not to engage in the promiscuous homosexual sex which is the nation's leading distributor of AIDS.

No, he had no such evidence.

I am hoping that Dean Farabee's future sermons will not contain comparisons of blacks to sodomists.