In the wake of Pope Benedict's resignation announcement Feb. 11, gay and lesbian Catholics reacted with relief and cautious optimism for a pope willing to engage in dialogue.

In a collective statement, leaders of Equally Blessed, a coalition of Catholics that works for equality for gay people, called upon the cardinals to select a pontiff who will realize that "in promoting discrimination against LGBT people, the church inflicts pain on marginalized people, alienates the faithful and lends moral credibility to reactionary political movements across the globe."

The coalition, which includes Call to Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry, said the church now has the opportunity to turn away from Benedict's "oppressive policies toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Catholics, and their families and friends."

There are growing movements within the religious community in support of gay marriage. There are religious groups who look at this as a matter of equality and justice. Jewish groups have been—Reform and Conservative Jews have been very supportive of gay marriage. Orthodox—not in the Jewish community; in the Christian community a little more complicated. Certainly while the Roman Catholic Church at the hierarchy is opposed, you have grass-roots groups, like there’s a group called Equally Blessed that says you can be a faithful Catholic and still support this on an equality issue. And then a lot of the mainline denominations really torn over the issue. United Church of Christ and Unitarians support gay marriage, but a lot of the other ones still define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The pope pressed his opposition to gay marriage Friday, denouncing what he described as people eschewing their God-given gender identities to suit their sexual choices – and destroying the very "essence of the human creature" in the process.

Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the U.S. and Europe and efforts to legalize gay marriage in places like France and Britain

 "Increasingly Catholics in the United States and around the world see what we see. Catholics, following their own well-formed consciences, are voting to support equal rights for LGBT people because in their churches and communities they see a far healthier, godly and realistic vision of the human family than the one offered by the pope," according to a statement from the groups Call To Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry.

 
The Knights of Columbus, a wealthy and influential Catholic charitable organization, is a leading funder in the push to make same-sex marriage illegal in four states that have ballot measures on the issue this fall, a coalition of gay rights groups announced Thursday (Oct. 18).
 
"Carl Anderson is using the good name that the Knights have developed over generations as cover while pursuing policies and making alliances that many Catholics find deeply troubling when they learn about them,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, an organization of gay Catholics that was part of the coalition behind the report. 
 
The report, which culled information largely from the Knights’ Internal Revenue Service filings, found that the Knights donated $6.25 million to fight same-sex marriage initiatives between 2005-2012. Close to $2 million of those funds went directly to NOM.