PHOTOS: Equality Activists Protest Cardinal George Outside Chicago Cathedral

PHOTOS: As Illinois lawmakers consider a marriage-equality bill, members of the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) and the Rainbow Sash Movement demonstrated outside Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago on Sunday, in protest of Cardinal Francis George’s attacks on same-sex marriage and LGBT rights.

“When church leaders attempt to shore up that discrimination in civil law, imposing their backward beliefs and strictures on Catholics and non-Catholics alike, they especially become a target of protest and ridicule,” the GLC said in a statement.

As head of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal George spent thousands of dollars to support California’s Prop 8 an anti-gay referendum in Maine. He’s compared gays and lesbians to the KKK and, in a recent op-ed, whined that he and the Church we being labeled as homophobes: “Those who know the difference between marriage and same-sex arrangements will be regarded as bigots.”

On February 20, the Illinois Catholic Conference is planning a lobbying day to convince state legislators not to approve marriage equality.