Thursday, September 2, 2010

SAS plans first same-sex wedding in the air



SAS is looking for the ideal same-sex couple so they can be married while flying on one of the Swedish airlines' planes.


Photograph by: Daniel Kfouri, AFP/Getty Images

By Belinda Goldsmith, Reuters September 2, 2010

LOS ANGELES - Scandinavian airline SAS is planning the world's first same-sex wedding in the air.


SAS, which is co-owned by the governments of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, said it hopes to host the wedding aboard an Airbus A340 between Stockholm and New York on Dec. 6.

To find the couple, the airline has launched a social media campaign called "Love is in the air" (www.flysas.com/love (http://www.flysas.com/love)) encouraging couples to set up a profile and compete for votes.

"Airlines, including SAS, have organized weddings onboard flights for decades, but we would be the first in the world to organize a same-sex wedding in the air," Robin Kamark, Chief Commercial Officer, SAS, said in a statement.

"SAS is the national airline of three of the world's most liberal and progressive countries in the world, especially when it comes to LGBT rights, so we feel this is a natural celebration of love."

The winning couple will receive business class return flights with SAS to New York, three nights' accommodation in New York, flights to Los Angeles, and three nights' accommodation in West Hollywood.

SAS said it was also running a U.S. version of the competition where one couple will win a wedding and honeymoon package to Sweden.

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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Catholic priest reveals active GAY sex life

"I suspect that anywhere up to 50 percent of Catholic priests are not celibate."

Thursday 26th August 2010 | 3:29 PM
http://www.seekingmedia.com.au/news.php?newsid=1127&g=1

A gay Catholic priest has revealed that up to half of priests, both gay and straight, are sexually active.

"I have not been able to keep my vow of celibacy," the priest says, speaking exclusively to DNA Magazine's Nick Cook in the current issue.

"Sometimes I need to be held and cared for - and I enjoy the sex.

"I know that for a large part of the world it means I'm not a good priest, but without it I'd be a worse one."

To protect the priest's identity he is known in the story as ‘James'.

James says he strongly opposes the Church's stance towards homosexuality.

"I'm speaking out because far too many people have suffered under the Church's teaching on homosexuality. I just can't accept it and I haven't for years," he says.

When asked if he thinks he's the only sexually active priest James says, "I know I'm not.

"I suspect that anywhere up to, if not more than, 50 percent of Catholic priests are not, or have not always been, celibate.

"I know of priests who have had long-term relationships with women.

"Celibacy is for some people but it's not everybody. That's why I think celibacy imposed is wrong whether you're gay or heterosexual."

James is out to a number of other priests and his bishop knows that he is both gay and sexually active.

"My bishop is a good man. He himself would have issues with the Church teaching on this."

As part of the story DNA went to a Mass for gays at St Joseph's Church in the Sydney suburb of Newtown and spoke to Father Peter Maher, who happily hands out communion to gay men despite the Church ruling that those who are sexually active are living in mortal sin and should not receive it.

When told about James' circumstance Father Peter simply shrugs. "Whether a priest is gay or not makes no difference to me," he says, stating that he knows a number of gay priests.

He adds: "There are plenty of priests who have failed to live celibate... That would not change my opinion of the priest at all."

Former Bush campaign chief tells magazine he's gay

Ex-GOP chair says he will advocate for gay marriage, regrets not coming out earlier

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38857056/ns/politics-more_politics/?GT1=43001

updated 8/25/2010 8:34:43 PM ET

Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay, The Atlantic magazine's politics editor reported Wednesday.

Marc Ambinder, who is also chief political consultant to CBS news, said in an online post that Mehlman told him in an interview that he concluded he was gay fairly recently and now wants to be an advocate for gay marriage.

Mehlman told The Atlantic that he anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group that supported the legal challenge to California's ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," Mehlman, now an executive vice president with the New York City-based private equity firm KKR told The Atlantic. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."

Behind-the-scenes advocacy

The Atlantic said that in off-the-record conversations, Mehlman previously voiced support for civil unions and beat back Republican officials' efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that Bush "was no homophobe," The Atlantic said. He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called "the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now."

Mehlman told The Atlantic that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus as it stepped up anti-gay initiatives. He said he was aware that Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategic adviser, worked to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.

Mehlman, The Atlantic said, acknowledged that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.

He told the magazine he regrets not taking the party message to the gay community.

While in office, Mehlman dodged media efforts to confirm rumors and stories about his sexuality, he told The Atlantic. Republicans close to Mehlman either said they did not know, or that it did not matter, or that the question was offensive.



Ken Mehlman, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" during a Nov. 13, 2005, taping, now says he's gay.

Party principles 'consistent'

In advocating for same-sex marriage, Mehlman told the magazine he would appeal to Republican principles.

"I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights."

Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman and longtime friend of Mehlman, told The Atlantic that "it is significant that a former chairman of the Republican National Committee is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage." Gillespie told the magazine he opposes gay marriage, but stalwarts like former Vice President Dick Cheney and strategist Mary Matalin advocate for gay rights.

But, Gillespie told the magazine, he does not envision the party platform changing anytime soon.

© 2010 msnbc.com Reprints

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Judge overturns California gay marriage ban



Opponents of Proposition 8 cheer outside U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Wednesday after hearing of the judge's ruling overturning California's same-sex marriage ban.

SAN FRANCISCO — In a major victory for gay rights advocates, a federal judge on Wednesday struck down a California ban on same-sex marriage.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the voter-approved ban, known as Proposition 8, violates due process and equal-protection rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The ruling met immediate criticism from Mormon and Catholic church leaders and cheers from gay-rights advocates.

"Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples," Walker wrote.

The judge added in the conclusion of the 136-page opinion: "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license."

His ruling came in response to a lawsuit brought by two same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco seeking to invalidate the law as an unlawful infringement on the civil rights of gay men and lesbians. The landmark case is expected to be appealed and could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco, a cheer went up among a group of about 70 same-sex marriage supporters carrying small U.S. flags, as a large rainbow-striped flag — the symbol of the gay rights movement — waved overhead.

Read the judge's ruling (.PDF) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38560562/ns/us_news-life?GT1=43001

Prop. 8 foes laud ruling

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who both refused to back Prop 8 in court, praised Walker's decision.

"For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves," Schwarzenegger said. "At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future, and our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity."

"In striking down Proposition 8, Judge Walker came to the same conclusion I did when I declined to defend it," Brown said. "Proposition 8 violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution by taking away the right of same-sex couples to marry, without a sufficient governmental interest."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the ruling encouraging.

"We must continue to fight against discriminatory marriage amendments and work toward the day when all American families are treated equally," Pelosi said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the ruling was an "enormous victory" and anticipated a Supreme Court hearing.

"The journey is not over, but today is a day to celebrate this historic victory for equal marriage rights," Feinstein said.

Prop. 8 backers outraged

Opponents of same-sex marriage derided the ruling.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which urged its top leaders to in California congregations top ask members to vote for Proposition 8, issued a statement on the ruling Wednesday, saying it "regrets today's decision."

"California voters have twice been given the opportunity to vote on the definition of marriage in their state and both times have determined that marriage should be recognized as only between a man and a woman," spokesman Michael Purdy said. "We agree. Marriage between a man and woman is the bedrock of society.

"We recognize that this decision represents only the opening of a vigorous debate in the courts over the rights of the people to define and protect this most fundamental institution — marriage."

The Catholic church also criticized the ruling.

Cardinal Francis George of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also criticized the ruling: "Marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any society," he said. "The misuse of law to change the nature of marriage undermines the common good. It is tragic that a federal judge would overturn the clear and expressed will of the people in their support for the institution of marriage. No court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined."

South Carolina Republican Sen. James Demint called the decision "another attempt to impose a secular immorality on the American people who keep voting to preserve traditional marriage."

"Traditional marriage has been the foundation of civil society for centuries and we cannot simply toss it aside to fit the political whims of liberal activists with gavels," Demint said.

Ruling on hold

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume immediately. Judge Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge ordered both sides to submit written arguments by Friday on the issue.

Prop 8, which outlawed gay marriages in California five months after the state Supreme Court legalized them, passed with 52 percent of the vote in November 2008 following the most expensive campaign on a social issue in U.S. history.

Both sides previously said an appeal was certain if Walker did not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, then the Supreme Court if the high court justices agree to review it.

Walker heard 13 days of testimony and arguments since January during the first trial in federal court to examine if states can prohibit gays from getting married.

The ruling puts Walker at the forefront of the gay marriage debate. The longtime federal judge was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

The verdict was the second in a federal gay marriage case to come down in recent weeks. A federal judge in Massachusetts decided last month the state's legally married gay couples had been wrongly denied the federal financial benefits of marriage because of a law preventing the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex unions.

The plaintiffs in the California case presented 18 witnesses. Academic experts testified about topics ranging from the fitness of gay parents and religious views on homosexuality to the historical meaning of marriage and the political influence of the gay rights movement.

Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson delivered the closing argument for opponents of the ban. He told Judge Walker that tradition or fears of harm to heterosexual unions were legally insufficient grounds to discriminate against gay couples.

Olson teamed up with David Boies to argue the case, bringing together the two litigators best known for representing George W. Bush and Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election.

Defense lawyers called just two witnesses, claiming they did not need to present expert testimony because U.S. Supreme Court precedent was on their side. The attorneys also said gay marriage was an experiment with unknown social consequences that should be left to voters to accept or reject.

Former U.S. Justice Department lawyer Charles Cooper, who represented the religious and conservative groups that sponsored the ban, said cultures around the world, previous courts and Congress all accepted the "common sense belief that children do best when they are raised by their own mother and father."

In an unusual move, the original defendants, Brown, the state attorney general, and Schwarzenegger refused to support Proposition 8 in court.

That left the work of defending the law to Protect Marriage, the group that successfully sponsored the ballot measure that passed with 52 percent of the vote after the most expensive political campaign on a social issue in U.S. history.

Currently, same-sex couples can only legally wed in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Vatican’s Gay Priests. Rome's Subculture of Gay Priests Rocks the Vatican

The Vatican’s Gay Priests

For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. But a recent exposé is rocking the Catholic Church.



Panorama

A gay priest, wearing his clerical collar, a shirt, and little else, was caught on video in an Italian newspaper’s investigation.




In the basement dining room of Le Mani In Pasta, a trattoria in central Rome, a young, glossy-eyed couple stare at each other across a table for two. They smile and blush over a private joke. There is no handholding or kissing, but they are clearly more than friends, even though they are both wearing dark shirts and the telltale white clerical collar.

For residents of Rome, the sight of courting priests is hardly an anomaly. The phenomenon is a well-known secret here, and one that was largely ignored until last weekend, when the Italian weekly magazine Panorama published a shocking exposé called “Le Notti Brave Dei Preti Gay,” or “Good Nights Out for Gay Priests.” Investigative journalist Carmelo Abbate spent 20 days undercover posing as the boyfriend of a man who ran in gay clerical circles, secretly videotaping the sexual escapades of three Rome-based priests. Abbate caught the priests on hidden camera dirty dancing at private parties and engaging in sex acts with male escorts on church property. He also caught them emerging from dark bedrooms in time to celebrate mass. In one postcoital scene, “Father Carlo” parades around seminaked, wearing only his clerical vestments. Abbate’s “date” even had sex with one of the priests to corroborate the story. “This is not about homosexuality,” Abbate, who is not gay, told NEWSWEEK. “This is about private vices and public virtues. This is about serious hypocrisy in the Catholic Church.”
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The exposé has touched a nerve within the Catholic community in Rome, but Abbate doesn’t believe that it will have any effect, especially given the Vatican’s other sex scandal. Yet unlike the pedophile-priest crisis, which has so far reached scores of dioceses in the United States and Europe, the gay-priest problem is—so far—an issue just for the Rome diocese on the Vatican’s home turf. Most priests in Rome have some affiliation with the Vatican, and Abbate says one of the priests caught on tape also gave mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Vatican says that the offending priests from Abbate’s story will be sought out and stripped of their collars. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, head of the Rome diocese, is in charge of purging the offending clerics, and he has called on all gay priests who cannot respect the basic tenet of celibacy to get out of the priesthood. “Priests who are living a double life have not understood what the Catholic priesthood is and should not have become priests,” he said in a statement responding to the Panorama expose. “Consistency demands that they be discovered. We do not wish them ill, but we cannot accept that because of their behavior the honor of all the other priests is dragged through the mud.”

Vallini may have the right idea when it comes to punishing those who break priestly laws, but the church as a whole seems to find it difficult to differentiate its sex scandals—and to determine what role celibacy plays in either situation. In April, Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone famously blamed gay priests for the pedophilia problem during a press conference in Santiago, Chile. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and pedophilia,” he said. “But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.”

The Vatican backpedaled at the time of Bertone’s comments, admitting that 90 percent of sex-abuse cases do involve priests and adolescent boys, but changing the verbiage from “homosexual” to “same-sex attraction” when talking about the cases. But Abbate’s tell-all expose that launched the current scandal has nothing to do with the priest-to-young-parishioner relationship. In fact, the two sex scandals are vastly different. The gay priest problem is about celibacy, church law, and hypocrisy. The pedophile problem is about child abuse, criminal behavior, and abuses of power.

Victims’ rights advocates, however, have noticed that the Vatican seems more focused on sexual orientation than sexual deviance, and they are furious. While clergymen spent years covering up rumors of child-sex abuse and protecting each other, they’re calling instantly for the ouster of gay priests. “Priests who are committing sex crimes against children and bishops who enable and conceal the crimes are the ones leading double lives,” says Barbara Blaine, head of Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests. “They are the ones who should resign.”

Through the years, a number of directives have been issued addressing priest sexuality. A 1961 Vatican document signed by Pope John XXIII clearly outlines church policy. “Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.”

In 2002, the church softened its stance slightly under Pope John Paul II, whose spokesman said the church should become “less welcoming” to gays in priesthood. “That does not imply a final judgment on people with homosexuality,” he said, refraining from calling homosexuality an “evil tendency” like under the earlier papacy. “But you cannot be in this field.” In 2003, before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became pope, he described homosexuality as a “troubling moral and social phenomenon” affecting the church. And when he became pope in 2005, he focused on gay priests with a five-page “instruction” document calling homosexuality “objectively disordered” but allowed that men could enter the seminary after a period of abstinence. “Men who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ cannot be admitted to seminaries,” Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI, wrote. “The only exception would be for those with a ‘transitory problem’ that had been overcome for at least three years.”

But requirements like those are impossible to enforce, and they are plainly ignored. In Rome’s medieval quarter of Trastevere not far from Le Mani In Pasta, the International Ecclesiastic Seminary attracts men from all over the world who want to study for the priesthood in the heart of Rome. A professor there, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his job, says the vast majority of the young men who come to study are sexually active gay men who quickly become part of the lively gay culture in Rome. Not all the priests are gay or practicing, he concedes, but in recent years he says he has noticed that most new students are young men with a certain sexual slant, and he fears that the institution has a reputation for attracting only gay seminarians.

The exact number of gay priests worldwide is unknown. A study conducted in 2000 by Father Donald Cozzens for his book The Changing Face of Priesthood suggests that as many as 60 percent of all American Catholic priests were gay, but those numbers varied greatly depending on geographical location. “At issue at the beginning of the 21st century is the growing perception that the priesthood is, or is becoming, a gay profession,” Cozzens wrote in his book. “Heterosexual seminarians are made uncomfortable by the number of gays around them.”

Celibacy is not optional in the priesthood, so sexual orientation should be a moot point. But Abbate believes that in Rome, the heart of Catholicism, gay priests feel a certain liberty that straight priests do not. He says he found many openly gay priests on Facebook and other social-networking sites, including a popular Roman Catholic online community called Venerabilis. Abbate also discovered through his covert research that male escorts and transsexual prostitutes in Rome rely on priests as regular customers. Last March, a member of the Vatican choir admitted to police that he arranged male escorts for papal assistants, including Angelo Balducci, a high-ranking member of Gentlemen of his Holiness, a fraternal order whose members assist the pope. Abbate did not find the same code of conduct for heterosexual priests. “You just don’t see heterosexual priests out in the same way,” he says. “Gay priests live freely here; they just do as they please.”

The Catholic church and gay-rights groups quickly pointed out that Abbate’s piece was full of offensive stereotypes, right down to the cover shot of a man’s hands with pink nail polish clutching a rosary. Panorama is owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s media conglomerate, and the Vatican hinted that the attack was political in nature. Berlusconi’s own sex scandals and ongoing divorce have been widely criticized by the Vatican. Abbate shrugs off the insinuation, pointing to the countless other exposes he has done that have been just as hard on Berlusconi’s government. “This is about uncovering a story of extreme hypocrisy,” Abbate told NEWSWEEK. “It’s not a government agenda against the church.”

Pope Benedict XVI is at his summer retreat in Castelgondolfo outside Rome, and, for now, the Vatican is keeping quiet and leaving it up the diocese of Rome to clean up the latest problem. But weeding out noncelibate priests likely won’t make this problem go away, according to religious commentator Bryan Cones, who writes for the popular U.S. Catholic blog. “On this matter, the church’s real problem is the closet,” he says. “I must agree with the Vicar of Rome that it would be helpful if gay priests would come out—so we could thank them for their faithful service, especially as they have been unjustly tarred with ‘causing’ sex abuse. Unfortunately, our church leadership at this time is not creating the kind of open and safe space that would allow for such honesty.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/27/the-vatican-s-gay-priests.html

joana flores

EXACTLY. This should be known to everyone. When it comes to this type of phenomenon, you're either IN or OUT. If you want to be "homosexual" then so be it, go do that on your own personal time without disrespecting a wide variety of people. Like Fred Johnson said, "If you can't abide by the vow, don't enter the profession. If you don't like the Catholic church, don't join it."
Today, 18:39:54

Terence Weldon
Thank you for writing up what is an open secret in some circles, but is widely ignored. The Church's stated opposition to homosexuality is entirely hypocritical and weak in its scriptural foundation. More serious is that the hypocrisy you describe is only one part of it. Gay priests in Rome may be open - in other parts of the world, it is heterosexual priests who have regular mistresses. Priestly celibacy as a universal norm is a myth.

Nor is this a modern phenomenon. From the early church to more modern times, there have been mumerous canonized saints (eg Saint Paulinus of Nola), and bishops, cardinals and popes who have enjoyed sex with men,or who wrote love letter or poetry in homoerotic imagery, or glorified the male form in the homoerotic artworks commissioned for the Vatican.

(For more, see "Catholic Priests, Gay Sex - and Church History", at Queering the Church http://queering-the-church.com/blog/ecclesiology-ministry/church-history-ecclesiology-ministry/catholic-clergy-gay-sex-and-church-history/
What the Vatican press corps really should be reporting, is the sexual lives of the men at the top, who preach celibacy and threaten dire punishments for transgressors - but ignore their prescriptions themselves. It is widely believed the journos have the information. Why don't they publish?

Today, 02:21:07

William
They should be thrown out of the church with all the other homosexuals. You can't be Christian and homosexual. The bible is clear on the subject and so is the Catholic Church.
Yesterday, 19:05:20


I'm sort of amazed that Newsweek would tar itself by referencing this lurid, mid-summer-Italian-titillation bit of anti-gay "journalism". The "investigative" reporter found a couple older gay priests who hide from their colleagues, avoid the gay movement like the plague, hire rent boys, and are foolish enough to let down their guard to strangers, believing that anyone they meet in a gay bar isn't going to ruin their lives.

Maybe for the next issue, this "reporter" can get a female friend to pose as a prostitute and snag some straight priests.
Yesterday, 18:42:09

Well what do you expect from a bunch of guys who run around in dresses?

Ronald Nixon
Better other priest and escorts than little boys. This is actually one article about priest that doesn't make me angry.
Yesterday, 13:18:06

earthorbitsthesun
Mark
Celibacy has the meaning to remain "unmarried," in Western Catholic disciplines. The idea of staying "Unmarried" is their dedication to God and neighbor with an undivided heart by observing continence (celibacy). They limited ordination to unmarried men and requiring a commitment to lifelong celibacy.

Tony, Celibacy is also called "continence" - Self restraint, refraining from sexual intercourse. In Catholic morality, chastity is opposite the deadly sin of lust, and is one of seven virtues and any sexual actions are restricted to only after marriage.


Daniel Chapman
I'm just your typical guy, who happens to be gay. My view on this is based on experience. I say that the church should leave them alone, or they will continue to be forced to go to the sleaziest areas that the gay community has to offer.

As a bartender in a gay bar in the early 80's, I saw waves of priests on vacation. I was in South Florida and can attest that, on any given night, we had at least a dozen priests in our bar. It kind of freaked me out at the time, especially since they tended to take the young hustlers with them.

That having been said, why not leave them alone? Instead of driving them into the gay underground, let them have normal lives and attachments. Secrets corrupt a person. Always have, always will...


[Cet utilisateur est un administrateur] Ken S
The article says, " The Vatican says that the offending priests from Abbate’s story will be sought out and stripped of their collars." I don't know if the writers of this article intended this statement to be some form of a pun but if these priest have already stripped themselves of everything else, what purpose could possibly be served by stripping them of their one remaining piece of clothing?


Rome's Subculture of Gay Priests Rocks the Vatican - http://www.newsweek.com/2010...

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Video of 3 Italian GAY priests caught on tape in GAY club and sex act with camera man.

The Italian magazine, Panorama, is running a cover story this week called "Gay Priests' Nights on the Town." Using a hidden camera, the Italian magazine owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (nice rich pal of Benedict XVI) followed and recorded in video three Catholic priests, 2 Italian and one French, inside a gay nightclub. Then one of the camera man had sex with one of the priest inside a church building, again videotaping the entire scene. Afterwards, one of the priest don on an alb and performed the Mass.

Benedict XVI condemns GAYS as "intrinsic evil people" and he knows that 80% of priests are GAYS. So the double lives of priests and hypocrisy of Benedict XVI and the Vatican are now being revealed - in this video.

Nice job Panorama!




Saturday, July 17, 2010

Thousands march for gay rights in Poland

Sunday, July 18


WARSAW (AFP) - – Thousands of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and supporters of equal rights for sexual minorities marched in Poland's capital Saturday in the first annual EuroPride march in Eastern Europe.

The colourful parade wound through Warsaw in sweltering heat of close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), urging the government in conservative and deeply Roman Catholic country to give homosexual partnerships legal status.

"We demand a civil partnership law," read a massive banner at the head of march, although participants acknowledged such legislation was not on the cards in a country where homosexuality is taboo and few choose to be openly gay.

"We're hoping to open up a debate on the topic of affording legal status to the partnerships of gay and lesbian couples but we're not optimistic such legislation will be passed anytime soon," Jacek Adler, editor-in-chief of the www.gaylife.pl website, told AFP.

Opinion surveys show that 80 percent of Poles oppose gay marriage and 93 percent believe gay and lesbian couples should not have the right to adopt children. Two out of three Poles oppose gay demonstrations.

Saturday's event was the first time the annual EuroPride parade was held in one of Eastern Europe's ex-communist states. Last year's march in Zurich, Switzerland attracted about 50,000 people.

Marchers, some from as far away as Canada, jived along the route to hits by gay icon Kyle Minogue among others.

But the event was a more low-key affair than those in western Europe which also feature scantily clad revellers and drag queens.

"I don't think Poland is as homophobic as some people think it is, but for whatever reasons, people are still uncomfortable with the issue of homosexuality," Ken Coolen, director of Vancouver's gay pride parade, told AFP.

"It's the midst of a change here in Poland, where more people are coming out," he said.

"We want to be in solidarity with Polish gay and lesbians and we want also to show the police in Poland that there is no problem to be openly gay in the police," Stockholm policeman Goran Stanton, who also serves as head of the Association of Gay Police of Sweden, told AFP.

About 2,000 police officers, some clad in riot gear, were on hand to provide security. Eight people were detained for attacking police officers, reports said.

People trying to block the parade hurled eggs and bottles at the marchers and Catholic groups distributed pamphlets to parade-goers with an image of Jesus Christ saying: "I have not come to condemn but to redeem."

They also held prayer vigils at local churches "in the intention of redeeming parade participants."

The decision to hold EuroPride in Warsaw sparked controversy in deeply Catholic Poland where gays have long complained of intolerance and openly homophobic remarks by politicians are far from rare.

"We started lobbying already in 2005 against all odds and amid a very unfriendly atmosphere towards gay rights in our country," said Adam Biskupiak of the Equality Foundation, a Polish group that organised the rally.

Poland's late conservative president Lech Kaczynski -- who died in a plane crash in April -- banned a gay rights rally by local campaigners in 2005 when he was mayor of Warsaw.

He later fell foul of the European Court of Human Rights for that decision.

City authorities declined symbolic or financial support for Saturday's EuroPride event.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Iceland PM weds partner as gay marriage legalized

By The Associated Press

REYKJAVIK, Iceland - Iceland's prime minister has married her partner under a new law legalizing same-sex marriage in the country.

One of her advisers, Hrannar B. Arnarsson, said Monday Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir and writer Jonina Leosdottir were officially married Sunday, the day the law came into force.

The pair has been in a registered partnership since 2002 and had applied to have it converted into a marriage under the new law. No ceremony was held.

The law was passed without a dissenting vote in Iceland's parliament June 11.

Social Democrat Sigurdardottir, 68, became Iceland's prime minister last year, after the previous centre-right government was ousted by a wave of protest triggered by the country's economic crisis.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

New York begins gay couple commitment ceremonies

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City officials began offering wedding-like ceremonies for same-sex couples on Thursday, drawing as much criticism as praise from gay rights advocates who want nothing short of full marriage rights.

The ceremonies provide no new rights or advantages to same-sex couples -- other than the opportunity to have a wedding in the city's renovated marriage bureau.

The city has allowed gay and lesbian couples to register as domestic partners since 1993 but the additional rights conferred upon them lack validity outside city limits. Domestic partnership bestows gay couples more rights, such as bereavement leave, health insurance benefits and hospital visits as family members.

Now the city is hoping to attract same-sex partners to its marriage bureau, which underwent a $12.3 million renovation and re-opened last year in a direct challenge to Las Vegas as a destination for people to get married. The bureau features a floral and bridal gift shop and two simple, yet elegant chapels where couples are married by a marriage clerk.

The new rules allowing the same-sex ceremonies took effect on Thursday, but only two same sex couples turned up for the ceremony, said City Clerk spokesman Michael McSweeney.

Some gay rights advocates criticized the move as doing nothing to move closer to granting gay couples full recognition in New York state.

"It's a cheap ploy," said Jeff Campagna, founder of The Power, a gay rights organization. "What they're saying is pay $35, have a pretend marriage license ... it's a way to increase the coffers of the city, without increasing any benefits to the gay community."

Last December, New York's state senate rejected a bill that would have legalized gay marriage, despite popular support for the issue. Only the states of Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have legalized gay marriage. The District of Columbia began allowing same-sex marriages earlier this year.

Forty other states have specific laws banning it. Voters in Maine repealed a gay marriage law recently and the New Jersey legislature rejected a gay marriage bill.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn hopes the commitment ceremonies in New York City will pressure the state legislature in Albany to extend more rights to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, also known as the LGBT community.

"We are sending a message to Albany that New York City is doing everything we can to recognize the LGBT community ... giving domestic partners benefits, recognizing same sex marriages performed elsewhere, but the state is the only one who can take the next step," said Quinn, a lesbian.

McSweeney of the city clerk's office, which operates the marriage bureau, said the commitment ceremonies fit with the city's tourism strategy.

"We are always thinking of new ways of improving how we do our business ... but the idea is to also allow domestic partners the opportunity to proclaim their commitment to one another in a public setting, where they can invite their family and friends and have the same dignity as people who have a wedding ceremony," McSweeney said.

(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Paul Simao)

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Monday, May 31, 2010

Gay couple released from jail after pardon from president

LILONGWE – A gay Malawian couple sentenced to 14 years in prison were released from jail late on Saturday after a presidential pardon, Sapa news agency reported yesterday.

Malawi’s leader pardoned the couple on humanitarian grounds on Saturday after a meeting with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who applauded the move and urged the country to amend “outdated” laws on homosexuality. “We were asked to release them immediately,” prison service spokesman Evance Phiri was quoted by Sapa as saying.

Steven Monjeza (26) and Tiwonge Chimbalanga (20) were arrested after celebrating their engagement in a traditional ceremony in late December.

They were tried and found guilty this month of sodomy and indecency. The trial became a test case for gay rights in the southern African country.

Activists and the international community welcomed the pardon, with the White House urging an end to “the persecution and criminalisation of sexual orientation and gender identity”.

Homosexuality in Africa has become a contentious issue after a Ugandan lawmaker proposed a Bill including the death penalty for some acts, police raided a gay wedding in Kenya, and the Malawian couple were arrested.

While homosexuality is illegal in most of Africa’s 53 nations, including Malawi and Kenya, South Africa passed legislation in 2006 recognising same-sex marriages. – (Reuters)

Friday, March 5, 2010

Vatican Hit by Gay Sex Scandal

(March 4) -- The Vatican is at the center of a gay sex scandal involving a young chorister who allegedly procured men, including at least one seminarian, for a lay member of one of Pope Benedict's inner circles.

Angelo Balducci, a civil engineer and honorary Vatican usher, was quoted in police wiretaps allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican choir member, about the kind of men he wanted brought to him. Some of the wiretap transcripts were published Wednesday in the Italian daily La Repubblica.

Balducci has been a member since 1995 of "Gentlemen of His Holiness," an exclusive fraternity of ushers within the papal household who serve during state and special occasions. Members of the group bore Pope John Paul II's coffin in 2005.

This latest Vatican embarrassment, coming not long after Irish priests were summoned to Rome to discuss decades of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, surfaced inadvertently as a result of a probe into corruption involving public works contracts.

Balducci, who sits on the board of Italy's public works council and is a construction consultant to the Vatican, was one of four people arrested in February in connection with the corruption probe. He has not yet been charged in that case, which remains open.

On Wednesday, La Repubblica published excerpts from the wiretaps and other police documents from the probe, which indicated Balducci was in regular contact with Ehiem, a member of the Vatican's Giulia Choir. Police identified him as part "of an organized network ... to abet male prostitution."

Among the men allegedly procured for Balducci, according to the transcripts, were "two black Cuban boys," a former male model from Naples and a rugby player from Rome.

Ehiem told Panorama magazine in an interview set to run Friday that he had been introduced to Balducci 10 years ago. The Guardian quoted Ehiem as saying: "He asked me if I could procure other men for him. He told me he was married and that I had to do it in great secrecy."

Ehiem was fired Wednesday from his job in the choir, according to news reports.

Some of the more sensational excerpts from Italian police transcripts obtained by the Guardian quote conversations recorded in January between Balducci and Ehiem about a young seminarian. Balducci inquires about the seminarian and Ehiem says he is "probably at Mass or something."

When it turns out that seminarian is not available, Ehiem calls another time recommending one of the student priest's colleagues or friends. Ehiem says the substitute is "better, taller, a bit taller than you."

Still later, Ehiem is quoted in the transcript asking: "Can I send [him] around right away?" and asks where Balducci is. Ehiem is told that he is "up at the seminary ... where the cardinal lives." Ehiem then says the man "could get there within half an hour ... the time it takes to catch a taxi and get there."

Balducci's lawyer, Franco Coppi, told reporters Thursday night that he had no comment for the moment. "We have more serious questions to tackle," Coppi said. "Second, if these claims are correct, they regard his private life. It is disgraceful that these transcripts, which have nothing to do with the case, should have been spread about."

The wiretaps stemmed from a probe into public works contracts, including a venue in Sardinia that was planned for last year's G8 summit before it was moved to Abruzzo.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/vatican-hit-by-gay-sex-scandal/19383948

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Elton says Jesus was a "compassionate, super-intelligent gay man'

Gay rock star Sir Elton John has told a magazine that "Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems."

The remarks, given in an interview with Parade magazine, are expected to spark an outrage among Christians, said a report in Undercover.com.au.

"On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East - you're as good as dead," Sir Elton reportedly said.

Luke Coppen, of the Catholic Herald, commented "Someone once said we all try to remake God in our own image. It's just possible that Elton John might be guilty of that."

Stephen Green from Christian Voice called Elton's comment "a desperate cry for attention".


Elton John: "Jesus was gay"

http://celebrities.ninemsn.com.au/blog.aspx?blogentryid=601448&showcomments=true

This should rattle some good old fashioned Christian outrage over at the Vatican and throughout middle America... Elton John reckons Jesus was a gay man.

In an interview with Parade magazine, the openly gay muso says, "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East — you're as good as dead."

Elton probably knows his statement will have some Christians calling for his head (much like when the Beatles claimed they were "bigger than Jesus") but he obviously had a point to make, and publicity to grab.

Plus we can kind of see how he came to the conclusion that Jesus was gay, afer all, the man never married, he spent his whole life with twelve other fellas, he was a fantastic host (he turned water into wine) and he loved his mum...

...on second thoughts, we'll leave this one alone.