Perhaps I'm just being misled by your tendency to embrace lost causes, but...
Recently visited my teeny-tiny hometown of X_____ (pop. 5,600). 

Discovered that the parish priest has been driven from his duties by an accusation of child abuse that supposedly took place 35 years ago. 

His parishioners believe Father XYZ is innocent. Fr. XYZ has passed a lie detector test. Fr. XYZ's supporters believe, as I do, that the claimant in this case is just looking for a payoff, with full knowledge that the Church will not defend accused priests. 

Perhaps this subject doesn't interest you. Seems to me that the gay persecution hysteria is sort of the flip side of the Catholic sexual abuse biz. I lived in gay communities in SF and NYC. Pedophilia and male gaydom do go together. I believe my lying eyes. 

This hysteria over accusations of homosexual predation in the Church seems, to me, to be a barely concealed parallel to the common practice of homosexual predation upon minors so common to gay men. 

In other words, ghosts are rattling around in our collective psyche.

The crowd psychology is complex, but it sounds worth considering. Gay Is Good so the altar boy fondling scandals coming out of the Catholic Church must be driven by pedophilia, not homosexual. And the assumption of just how severe most of these cases are gets blown out of proportion. We need witches to hunt.

Consider the very literal witch hunts of the 1980s-1990s Satanic Ritual Abuse in Nursery Schools delusion as an example of how people's strong feelings in one area can manifest themselves as obsessions in others.