Prop. 8 Priestess Wrote Screeds Against Gays & Vatican

By Steven Mikulan Thu., May 28 2009 at 1:50 PM

Categories: Media

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Brenda Lee, the self-described "Catholic priestess" from Anaheim, had press credentials to be in the presidential media area near Air Force One today. She had come to present a letter to President Obama urging him to take a stand for traditional marriage. She could have saved herself the time and trouble of being dragged away kicking and screaming by Secret Service agents by merely emailing the president links to her columns in the Georgia Informer. The

Nick Ut/AP

Macon-based paper targets that state's African American population and has a circulation of about 44,000. A search of the paper's archives reveals only four, undated Brenda Lee columns, but what they lack in numbers they make up for in apocalyptic anger.

"GOD'S mercy is not everlasting," Lee wrote last year. "That is why there is death and hell. Californians will vote Yes on Proposition 8 to establish marriage between a man and woman or they will go down for their wickedness."

One thread that runs throughout Lee's columns is an apparent belief that natural disasters are both harbingers of divine punishment and punishment itself.

"The Catholic Church, and powerful Californians who perverted the people had two months to enjoy their freedom," she once wrote of a period preceding the outbreak of wildfires. "There was no talk of disasters and destruction. Everything was calm until the fires broke out. The Churches in Boulder, Colorado are in no better shape than the ones in California. Homosexuality is an acceptable life style. People are more concerned about the color of a person's skin than the righteousness or sinfulness of a person's life style."

Other Lee passages take on a rambling, Plan 9 From Outer Space tone, like this one written during the Bush administration:

"Last week a dentist used a ray gun to dry a filling; it sent shockwaves through the body. Now there are headaches and pains that shoot from one side of the head to the other from time to time. It is the hope of some cowardly person or persons that these things will bring about a retreat. Not so!"

Perhaps not surprisingly, Reverend Lee is partial to conspiracy theories, as when she found the hand of the Vatican behind a smear campaign aimed at the Albanian-born Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

"Mother Teresa was a female and a person of color. Because she overshadowed Pope John Paul II for sainthood, her reputation had to be destroyed."

It will be interesting to see if and how Rev. Lee writes about her own recent experience on the LAX tarmac -- and if she becomes a Joe the Plumber for faith-based conservatives.

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