LGBTQ news and entertainment
Media Matters has compiled much of the response from conservative pundits who have taken umbrage at the idea that Pope Francis has espoused actual Christian teachings.
It’s interesting because the right wing usually presumes to take ownership of the idea of being “Christian” and “religious.” But these folks don’t sound all that “Christian” to me.
Take a look.
In case you missed it this morning, here’s the full video of President Obama welcoming Pope Francis to the United States at the White House this morning.
Delivering remarks in english, Pope Francis spoke in support of President Obama regarding issues of current political note, including climate change, relations with Cuba and immigration.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee tells Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that the President inviting openly gay folks to the White House to meet the Pope is like holding an open bar at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
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Continuing to surprise, Pope Francis met with and had lunch with LGBT prison inmates in Naples, Italy, on Sunday.
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The Pope is coming! The Pope is coming!
The Hill is reporting today that the pope is planning to come to Washington on Sept. 22, and will address a joint session of Congress during that time.
Francis will visit the White House on Sept. 23 and celebrate Mass at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception later that same day, Auza added.
“And we might say really the highlight of the Washington visit might be his speech to the joint-meeting of Congress, so the Senate and the House of Representatives,” Auza told CNA.
“But these are just proposals. At the end of February there will be the first organizational visit (from a Vatican delegation), and then we will see what we could really fill in,” the archbishop added, according to CNA.
The U.S. trip will include visits to New York City and Philadelphia.
Speaker of the House John Boehner extended the invitation to address Congress last March.
The Advocate has chosen Pope Francis as their 2013 “Person of the Year”:
Edie Windsor is a hero, one well worth recording in history books that retell the story of DOMA’s demise. But she is not the Person of the Year. She couldn’t possibly be, not for The Advocate, where we celebrate the work of so many who contributed to that landmark Supreme Court victory. The most influential person of 2013 doesn’t come from our ongoing legal conflict but instead from our spiritual one — successes from which are harder to define. There has not been any vote cast or ruling issued, and still a significant and unprecedented shift took place this year in how LGBT people are considered by one of the world’s largest faith communities.
Pope Francis is leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics all over the world. There are three times as many Catholics in the world than there are citizens in the United States. Like it or not, what he says makes a difference. Sure, we all know Catholics who fudge on the religion’s rules about morality. There’s a lot of disagreement, about the role of women, about contraception, and more. But none of that should lead us to underestimate any pope’s capacity for persuading hearts and minds in opening to LGBT people, and not only in the U.S. but globally.
Finalists included Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Macklemore and Edie Windsor.
What do you think? Is Pope Francis the LGBT “most influential Person of the Year?”
CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Catholic League President Bill Donohue duel over the Pope’s recent comments that said that the Roman Catholic Church has become unduly obsessed with condemning abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. The church, he said, should emphasize compassion and mercy instead of “small-minded rules.”
Bill Donohue is not having any of it.
Cuomo: You have bashed on these issues for years and years. Most infamously, recently, saying that the Church had a homosexual problem, not a pedophile problem. I mean really incendiary, flagrant, divisive stuff…. You’re saying you won’t do that anymore?
Donohue: Oh no, I will always tell the truth…
Cuomo: Well, that wasn’t the truth.
Donohue: If 81% of the victims are male and 100% of the victimizers are male, and if 78% of the victims are post-pubescent, the word in the English language is not pedophilia, it’s called homosexuality.
When Donohue asked Cuomo if he thinks he “made up those figures,” Cuomo replied, “I think you’re parsing them, I think you’re cherry-picking them and I think that the most important part is your motivation. You just heard what the Pope said. Why wouldn’t you try to move past this parsing rhetoric and try to be what your church is supposed to be about?”
Cuomo told Donohue that he thinks the Pope is giving a message of love and understanding, adding that the Pope may think – ‘Jesus wasn’t about what you’re doing right now.’
“So you think the nuns on the bus that are bringing everybody together by going out there in favor of Obamacare against what the Bishops want. They’re the ones who are divisive, typically on the left, but not exclusively,” Donahue said.
Cuomo responded, “I’m thinking what he wants is for you to spend less time bashing nuns….”
(via CNN)
In yet another in a series of uncharacteristically tolerant statements regarding gays and lesbians on behalf of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis said today that the church should not interfere in the lives of the LGBT community:
“Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people,” Francis told Jesuit Roman journal La Civilta Cattolica in an interview published Thursday and previewed by CNN. “But God in creation set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”
The Human Rights Campaign’s Chad Griffin hailed the comments as a “reset” for the Catholic Church’s treatment of gays and lesbians:
“With these latest comments, Pope Francis has pressed the reset button on the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of LGBT people, rolling back a years-long campaign at the highest levels of the Church to oppose any measure of dignity or equality.
“Now, it’s time for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to catch up and drop their opposition to even the most basic protections for LGBT people. Otherwise, they risk being left far behind by American Catholics and this remarkable Pope.
“At a moment when Pope Francis is re-dedicating the Church to tirelessly helping the poor, it’s unacceptable for American bishops to continue wasting millions of parishioner dollars on harmful anti-LGBT political campaigns that target members of their own flock. For the sake of LGBT Catholics, it’s essential that Pope Francis’ inspiring words lead to transformative change throughout the Church hierarchy.”
Pope Francis today refused to condemn gay people during a conversation with reporters on his return flight from Brazil.
From Associated Press:
Pope Francis reached out to gays on Monday, saying he wouldn’t judge priests for their sexual orientation in a remarkably open and wide-ranging news conference as he returned from his first foreign trip.
“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis asked.
While stressing Catholic social teaching that calls for homosexuals to be treated with dignity and not marginalized, Francis said it was something else entirely to conspire to use private information for blackmail or to exert pressure.
Francis was responding to reports that a trusted aide was involved in an alleged gay tryst a decade ago. He said he investigated the allegations according to canon law and found nothing to back them up. But he took journalists to task for reporting on the matter, saying the allegations concerned matters of sin, not crimes like sexually abusing children.