"Christian" Peacemakers

Private life kept hidden for hostage's protection

COLIN FREEZE

With reports from Hayley Mick in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., and Michael Den Tandt in Ottawa

Those who worked for four months to secure the release of Canadian peace activist Jim Loney worked equally hard to conceal details of his private life, fearing his Iraqi kidnappers would harm him if they knew he was involved in a long-standing relationship with another man.

"They [hostages] are already in a vulnerable condition and anything that would make them more vulnerable would be a real concern," said Doug Pritchard, a co-director of Christian Peacemaker Teams, the Toronto-based group for which Mr. Loney and three others were working when they were grabbed on a Baghdad street in November.

"Unfortunately in the world today, being gay or lesbian makes you more vulnerable," Mr. Pritchard said yesterday.

He said that while news media around the world chronicled the hostages' story, the CPT, friends and family and Canadian government officials agreed they would refrain from publicly discussing Mr. Loney's relationship with fellow Christian activist Dan Hunt.

Mr. Loney told reporters at Pearson Airport on Sunday that he planned to disappear for a while and reacquaint himself with Mr. Hunt.

"It was very painful for him," Mr. Pritchard said of Mr. Hunt's enforced silence during the hostage ordeal. "I think it felt a lot like being pushed back in the closet."

In private, Mr. Hunt was calling Foreign Affairs to be kept abreast of all developments, but in public he was identified in some news photographs as a random "protester" waving placards against the hostages' continued captivity.

Yet any public mention of sexual orientation could have imperilled Mr. Loney, whom kidnappers had threatened to kill for being one of four "spies working for the occupying forces." The kidnappers, who called themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, made this assessment simply because the CPT captives were Western Christians working in Iraq.

Canadian diplomats working on the case were aware Mr. Loney was gay, and recognized that it was a detail that might have inflamed the men who took him hostage. It was information they wouldn't have released anyway, but they took special care to keep it quiet during his ordeal.

"Throughout the Arab world, laws are based on sharia, which prescribes death for same-sex relationships," said Michael Battista, a Toronto immigration lawyer who has worked with Amnesty International. "I expect he would have been much more harshly dealt with had they known about his sexual orientation. The level of intolerance is so high, the issue [of gay rights] isn't even within public discourse."

Christian Peacemakers was so concerned that they called Toronto's Now Magazine and asked the editors to pull an article, archived on-line for years, in which Mr. Loney acknowledged that he was gay. The weekly news magazine immediately agreed.

"It was one of these no-brainers," said Ellie Kirzner, a senior news editor. While she said it is extremely rare for Now to pull an article, "the safety issue was huge."

Mr. Hunt and Mr. Loney are not talking to reporters, as the former hostage says he needs to disappear into an "abyss" before he can tell his story.

Since the early 1990s, the two men have been instrumental in building the Toronto chapter of the Catholic Worker movement, an organization that tilts toward socialism, and is gay-positive. Mr. Loney's family attends a Roman Catholic church in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

Catholic Worker was founded in the 1930s by Dorothy Day, a journalist-turned-activist, who espoused pacifism and opened hospitality houses for the indigent in New York City.

"Unfortunately, most Catholics have never heard of Dorothy Day and that's a real shame because she is a real inspiration," a 27-year-old Mr. Hunt told the Toronto Star 14 years ago. At the time, he and his co-founders were described as young Christians in their 20s who had "seriously considered studying for the priesthood."

Mr. Loney was one of those co-founders and working at the time as a youth minister in Toronto. The Catholic Workers invited poor people to live in their own hospitality house, named after Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector in Jericho whom Jesus befriended.

Today the Catholic Workers run a network of six houses in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood, offering free dinners and up to 10 beds in each house. They make a particular point of being gay-friendly and offering sanctuary to military deserters from the United States.

The group has been involved in protests with far-left groups such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and the Homes not Bombs campaign, and Mr. Loney's pacifist leanings have also firmly ensconced him in the Christian Peacemaker Teams. The CPT is also gay-friendly, aligning itself with other left-leaning Christian groups.

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