Gay marriage passes in New York state N.Y. becomes sixth and largest state to legalize gay marriage

Same-sex marriages can begin in July after Gov. Cuomo signs bill into law

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http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/06/25/nyregion/100000000881489/celebration-at-the-stonewall-inn.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43507672/ns/politics-more_politics/t/ny-becomes-sixth-largest-state-legalize-gay-marriage/

By MICHAEL GORMLEY
The Associated Press
updated 6/25/2011 9:51:54 AM ET

ALBANY, N.Y. — After days of contentious negotiations and last-minute reversals by two Republican senators, New York became the sixth and largest state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage, breathing life into the national gay rights movement that had stalled over a nearly identical bill here two years ago.

Pending any court challenges, legal gay marriages can begin in New York by late July after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed his bill into law just before midnight Friday.

At New York City's Stonewall Inn, the Greenwich Village pub that spawned the gay rights movement on a June night in 1969, Scott Redstone watched New York sign the historic same-sex marriage law with his partner of 29 years, and popped the question.

"I said, 'Will you marry me?' And he said, 'Of course!'" Redstone said he and Steven Knittweis walked home to pop open a bottle of champagne.

New York becomes the sixth state where gay couples can wed, doubling the number of Americans living in a state with legal gay marriage.

"That's certainly going to have a ripple effect across the nation," said Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda. "It's truly a historic night for love, our families, and democracy won."

"We made a powerful statement," Cuomo said. "This state is at its finest when it is a beacon of social justice."

The leading opponent, Democratic Sen. Ruben Diaz, was given only a few minutes to state his case during the Senate debate.

"God, not Albany, settled the issue of marriage a long time ago," said Diaz, a Bronx minister. "I'm sorry you are trying to take away my right to speak," he said. "Why are you ashamed of what I have to say?"

The Catholic Bishops of New York said the law alters "radically and forever humanity's historic understanding of marriage."

"We always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love," the bishops stated Friday, "We worry that both marriage and the family will be undermined by this tragic presumption of government in passing this legislation that attempts to redefine these cornerstones of civilization."

Legal challenges of the law and political challenges aimed at the four Republicans who supported gay marriage in the 33-29 vote are expected. Republican senators endured several marathon sessions, combing through several standard but complex bills this week, before taking up the same-sex marriage bill Friday.

Almost identical bill defeated in 2009
The bill came to the floor for a vote after an agreement was reached on more protections for religious groups that oppose gay marriage and feared discrimination lawsuits.

"State legislators should not decide society-shaping issues," said the Rev. Jason McGuire of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms. He said his organization would work in next year's elections to defeat lawmakers who voted for the measure.

The big win for gay rights advocates is expected to galvanize the movement around the country after an almost identical bill was defeated here in 2009 and similar measures failed in 2010 in New Jersey and this year in Maryland and Rhode Island.
Story: Some celebrity quotes on NY's new gay marriage law

Jerry Nathan of Albany, who married his partner in Massachusetts, called the vote "an incredible culmination of so much that's been going on for so many years it doesn't seem real yet."

Ultimately, gay couples will be able to marry because of two previously undecided Republicans from upstate regions far more conservative than the New York City base of the gay rights movement.
Image: People in the Senate gallery react to the passage of gay marriage at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y
Mike Groll / AP
People in the Senate gallery cheer the passage of a gay-marriage Friday night at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y.

Sen. Stephen Saland, 67, voted against a similar bill in 2009, helping kill the measure and dealing a blow to the national gay rights movement. On Friday night, gay marriage supporters wept in the Senate gallery as Saland explained how his strong, traditionally family upbringing led him to embrace legalizing gay marriage.

"While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience," Saland, of Poughkeepsie, said in a statement to The Associated Press before the vote. "I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality."

Also voting for the bill was freshman Sen. Mark Grisanti, a Buffalo Republican who also had been undecided. Grisanti said he could not deny anyone what he called basic rights.

"I apologize to those I offend," said Grisanti, a Roman Catholic. "But I believe you can be wiser today than yesterday. I believe this state needs to provide equal rights and protections for all its residents," he said.

A huge street party erupted outside the Stonewall Inn Friday night, with celebrants waving rainbow flags and dancing after the historic vote.

Watching the festivities from across the street was Sarah Ellis, who has been in a six-year relationship with her partner, Kristen Henderson. Ellis said the measure would enable them to get married in the fall. They have twin toddlers and live in Sea Cliff on Long Island.

"We've been waiting. We considered it for a long time, crossing the borders and going to other states," said Ellis, 39. "But until the state that we live in, that we pay taxes in, and we're part of that community, has equal rights and marriage equality, we were not going to do it."

The bill makes New York only the third state, after Vermont and New Hampshire, to legalize marriage through a legislative act and without being forced to do so by a court.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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'Have to do this': Cuomo charts course for gay marriage in NY

Wall Street donors and advocates also show more might than an ineffective opposition

Image: Andrew Cuomo
Mike Groll / AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reacts after same sex marriage was legalized after a vote in the Senate Chamber at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., on Friday.

By MICHAEL BARBARO
The New York Times
updated 6/25/2011 2:36:57 PM ET

In the 35th-floor conference room of a Manhattan high-rise, two of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most trusted advisers held a secret meeting a few weeks ago with a group of super-rich Republican donors.

Over tuna and turkey sandwiches, the advisers explained that New York’s Democratic governor was determined to legalize same-sex marriage and would deliver every possible Senate vote from his own party.

Would the donors win over the deciding Senate Republicans? It sounded improbable: top Republican moneymen helping a Democratic rival with one of his biggest legislative goals.

But the donors in the room — the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Dan Loeb — had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views.

Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board. Each of them cut six-figure checks to the lobbying campaign that eventually totaled more than $1 million.

Steve Cohen, the No. 2 in Mr. Cuomo’s office and a participant in the meeting, began to see a path to victory, telling a colleague, “This might actually happen.”

The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

And it was about a Democratic governor, himself a Catholic, who used the force of his personality and relentlessly strategic mind to persuade conflicted lawmakers to take a historic leap.

“I can help you,” Mr. Cuomo assured them in dozens of telephone calls and meetings, at times pledging to deploy his record-high popularity across the state to protect them in their districts. “I am more of an asset than the vote will be a liability.”

Over the last several weeks, dozens of lawmakers, strategists and advocates described the closed-door meetings and tactical decisions that led to approval of same-sex marriage in New York, about two years after it was rejected by the Legislature. This account is based on those interviews, most of which were granted on the condition of anonymity to describe conversations that were intended to be confidential.

‘I have to do this’
Mr. Cuomo was diplomatic but candid with gay-rights advocates in early March when he summoned them to the Capitol’s Red Room, a ceremonial chamber with stained-glass windows and wood-paneled walls.

The advocates had contributed to the defeat of same-sex marriage in 2009, he told them, with their rampant infighting and disorganization. He had seen it firsthand, as attorney general, when organizers had given him wildly divergent advice about which senators to lobby and when, sometimes in bewildering back-to-back telephone calls.

“You can either focus on the goal, or we can spend a lot of time competing and destroying ourselves,” the governor said.

This time around, the lobbying had to be done the Cuomo way: with meticulous, top-down coordination. “I will be personally involved,” he said.

The gay-rights advocates agreed, or at least acquiesced. Five groups pushing for same-sex marriage merged into a single coalition, hired a prominent lobbying firm with ties to Mr. Cuomo’s office and gave themselves a new name: New Yorkers United for Marriage.

Those who veered from the script faced swift reprimand. When Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Democrat from Manhattan, introduced a same-sex marriage bill in May without first alerting the governor’s office, he was upbraided by Mr. Cohen. “What do you think you’re doing?” the governor’s aide barked over the phone.

Mr. Cuomo’s hands-on management was a turning point not just for the marriage movement, but also for his long and fraught relationship with the gay community. Advocates groused that he had waited until 2006 to endorse same-sex marriage, years after many leading New York political leaders did so. And many of them still remembered his work on his father’s unsuccessful 1977 bid for mayor of New York, which had featured homophobic posters aimed at Edward I. Koch.

Over time, however, championing same-sex marriage had become personal for Mr. Cuomo. He campaigned on the issue in the race for governor last year, and after his election, he was staggered by the number of gay couples who sought him out at restaurants and on the street, prodding him, sometimes tearfully, to deliver on his word.
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The pressure did not let up at home. Mr. Cuomo’s girlfriend, Sandra Lee, has a gay brother, and she frequently reminded the governor how much she wanted the law to change.

Something else weighed on him, too: the long shadow of his father, Mario, who rose to national prominence as the conscience of the Democratic Party, passionately defending the poor and assailing the death penalty. During his first few months in office, the younger Mr. Cuomo had achieved what seemed like modern-day miracles by the standards of Albany — an austere on-time budget and a deal to cap property taxes. But, as Mr. Cuomo explained by phone to his father a few weeks ago, he did not want those accomplishments to define his first year in office.

“They are operational,” he told his father. Passing same-sex marriage, by contrast, “is at the heart of leadership and progressive government.”

“I have to do this.”

A Democratic surprise

Nobody ever expected Carl Kruger to vote yes.

A Democrat from southeast Brooklyn, known for his gruff style and shifting alliances, Senator Kruger voted against same-sex marriage two years ago, was seen as a pariah in his party and was accused in March of taking $1 million in bribes in return for political favors.

Some gay activists, assuming he was a lost cause, had taken to picketing outside of his house and screaming that he was gay — an approach that seemed only to harden his opposition to their agenda. (Mr. Kruger has said he is not gay.)

But unbeknown to all but a few people, Mr. Kruger desperately wanted to change his vote. The issue, it turned out, was tearing apart his household.

The gay nephew of the woman he lives with, Dorothy Turano, was so furious at Mr. Kruger for opposing same-sex marriage two years ago that he had cut off contact with both of them, devastating Ms. Turano. “I don’t need this,” Mr. Kruger told Senator John L. Sampson of Brooklyn, the Democratic majority leader. “It has gotten personal now.”

Mr. Sampson, a longtime supporter of same-sex marriage, advised Mr. Kruger to focus on the nephew, not the political repercussions. “When everything else is gone,” Mr. Sampson told him, “all you have left is family.”

With Mr. Kruger suddenly a possible yes vote, the same-sex marriage organizers zeroed in on the two remaining Democrats who had previously voted no but appeared open to switching sides: Shirley L. Huntley and Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., both of Queens.

Senator Huntley, a close friend of Mr. Sampson, had privately assured him that she would support the marriage bill, largely out of personal loyalty to him and fellow Democrats.

Persuading Senator Addabbo proved trickier. Same-sex marriage advocates had nicknamed him the Counter, after he told them that his vote would hinge entirely on a tally of his constituents who appealed to him for or against the measure.

By mid-May, Mr. Addabbo sent word to Mr. Cuomo that the numbers were not there for same-sex marriage.

Until then, members of the same-sex marriage coalition had deliberately refrained from inundating Mr. Addabbo’s office with feedback from supporters of the bill, fearing it might alienate and offend him.

But now, the advocates received a message from the governor’s office: Open the floodgates. Brian Ellner, who oversees the marriage push for the Human Rights Campaign, called the head of his field team, who had compiled an exhaustive list of supporters of gay rights in Mr. Addabbo’s district.

“Bury him in paper,” Mr. Ellner said.

Over the next week, the field team collected postcards signed by 2,000 of Mr. Addabbo’s constituents who favor same-sex marriage, twice as many as he had received in the previous few months combined.

When his final tally was completed in early June, he had heard from 6,015 people — 80 percent of whom asked him to vote yes. “In the end, that is my vote,” Mr. Addabbo said.

Republicans resist

In a private room at the Fort Orange Club, a stately brick manor in Albany where the waitresses still wear French maid uniforms, a pollster laid out the results of his research on same-sex marriage for Senate Republicans in early June.

There was little political rationale for legalizing it, the numbers suggested: statewide support did not extend deeply into the rural, upstate districts that are crucial to the state’s Republican Party. And with unemployment at 9 percent, the issue was far down the list of priorities for voters.

Many of the Republicans wanted to avoid ever taking a vote on the issue — a simple strategy to carry out. As the majority party in the Senate, they could block any bill from reaching the floor.

But the caucus — a group of 32 senators who had seized control of the Senate in the elections last year but held just a single-seat majority — was far from unified. And, crucially for same-sex marriage advocates, the Republicans’ relatively untested leader showed no interest in forcing them to reach a consensus. “My management style,” the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, had told lawmakers, “is that I let my members lead.”

Mr. Cuomo was determined to exploit the leadership vacuum by peeling off a few senators from moderate districts.


A major target was James S. Alesi, a Republican from suburban Rochester, who seemed tormented by his 2009 vote. Cameras in the Senate chamber captured him holding his head in his hands as the word “no” left his mouth.

The coalition approached him from every angle. The Republican donors invited him to a meeting on Park Avenue, telling him they would eagerly support him if he backed same-sex marriage. “That’s not the kind of lily pad I normally hop on,” Mr. Alesi recalled.

The advocates collected 5,000 signed postcards from his constituents and nudged a major employer in his district, Xerox, to endorse the bill.

And Mr. Cuomo called him, over and over, to address his objections and allay his fears. He told Senator Alesi that as the first Republican to endorse same-sex marriage, he “would show real courage to the gay community.”

On June 13, aides to the governor left urgent messages with same-sex marriage advocates, who had just left a meeting in Mr. Cuomo’s office, to return there immediately, offering no explanation.

As the group assembled around a conference table, the governor opened the door to his private office and peeked in. “I want to introduce the first Republican to support marriage equality,” he announced.

Mr. Alesi walked into the room, which erupted into applause. In emotional remarks, he apologized to them for what he called his “political vote” against same-sex marriage in 2009.

Bill Smith, a lobbyist for the Gill Action, a gay-rights group, turned to the governor in disbelief. “How many rabbits are you going to pull out of the hat?” he asked.

Outgunned opponents

It was befuddling to gay-rights advocates: The Catholic Church, arguably the only institution with the authority and reach to derail same-sex marriage, seemed to shrink from the fight.

As the marriage bill hurtled toward a vote , the head of the church in New York, Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, left town to lead a meeting of bishops in Seattle.

He did not travel to Albany or deliver a major speech in the final days of the session. And when he did issue a strongly worded critique of the legislation — he called it “immoral” and an “ominous threat” — it was over the phone to an Albany-area radio show.

Inside the Capitol, where a photograph of Mr. Cuomo shaking hands with Archbishop Dolan hangs in the governor’s private office, the low-key approach did not seem accidental. Mr. Cuomo had taken pains to blunt the church’s opposition.


When he learned that church leaders had objected to the language of the marriage legislation, he invited its lawyers to the Capitol to vent their frustration.

Mr. Cuomo even spoke to Archbishop Dolan about the push for same-sex marriage, emphasizing his respect and affection for the religious leader. An adviser described the governor’s message to Archbishop Dolan this way: “I have to do what I have to do. But your support over all is very important to me.”


By the time a Catholic bishop from Brooklyn traveled to Albany last week to tell undecided senators that passing same-sex marriage “is not in keeping with the will of their people,” it was clear the church had been outmaneuvered by the highly organized same-sex marriage coalition, with its sprawling field team and Wall Street donors.

“In many ways,” acknowledged Dennis Poust, of the New York State Catholic Conference, “we were outgunned. That is a lot to overcome.”

With the church largely out of the picture, the governor’s real worry was the simmering tension in the Senate Republican delegation. Its members met, for hours at a time, to debate the political and moral implications of allowing a vote.

But each time new arguments arose. Some questioned whether homosexuality was genetic or chosen. Others suggested that the same-sex marriage legislation be scrapped in favor of a statewide referendum.

Mr. Cuomo invited the Republicans to visit him at the governor’s residence, a 40-room Victorian mansion overlooking the Hudson River, just a few blocks from the Capitol.

There, in a speech the public would never hear, he offered his most direct and impassioned case for allowing gays to wed. Gay couples, he said, wanted recognition from the state that they were no different than the lawmakers in the room. “Their love is worth the same as your love,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Their partnership is worth the same as your partnership. And they are equal in your eyes to you. That is the driving issue.”

In the late hours of Friday night, 33 members of the State Senate agreed with him.

Danny Hakim contributed reporting.

This story, "The Road to Gay Marriage in New York," originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright © 2011 The New York Times

Ricky Martin's book "ME"

Excerpt from Me

By Ricky Martin

Just like everyone else, I have had to walk down my own spiritual path and live through my experiences—the good and the bad, the love and the lack of love, the sense of feeling lost and then finding myself—to arrive at where I am today. Before I could begin to answer the endless questions that were constantly asked of me, I needed to face myself.

Of course, some might say I should have done this many years ago, but in the deepest part of my being, I am certain that the moment is now, because that is how it was always meant to be. It is only now that I am ready, and it is only now that I can do it—not one day earlier or one day later.

The process of writing this memoir has not been easy. It has demanded a lot from me—above and beyond what I expected. I've had to tie up loose ends that I'd never attempted to tie up before, to work deeply into memories that were already erased from my mind, and to find answers to very difficult questions; but above all else...above everything, I have finally had to accept myself. I have had to bare myself utterly and completely to see myself exactly as I am. I discovered things that I liked—and others not as much. And it was precisely the things I didn't like so much that I became intent on remedying from the moment I became conscious of them. I would have never imagined that writing this book would lead me to where it has; however, today I know that I am a better man—and a happier man—because of what I have learned about myself throughout the process.

I wanted to say a lot in these pages, but I wanted to do it with humility and dignity, focusing on the experiences that have helped shape me. More than an autobiography, this book is a testament of my spiritual beliefs, an account of the steps I have taken to arrive at the place of happiness and completeness where I now find myself.


The Real Ricky Martin

The Oprah Winfrey Show
November 02, 2010

From the time he was 12 years old, Ricky Martin drove women wild. As a member of Latin American boy band Menudo, Ricky's youthful good looks sent teenage girls worldwide into hysterics.

As Ricky got older, his sexy voice, red-hot dance moves and chiseled good looks turned him into an international solo sensation. He sold out stadiums, gave one of the most explosive performances in television history at the 1999 Grammys and found himself surrounded with beautiful women on and off the stage.

To the world, it appeared Ricky was truly living la vida loca. In reality, he says he was living a lie. For years, Ricky declined to respond to rumors of his sexuality—until March 29, 2010. That day, Ricky came out on his website, saying: "I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am."

Now, Ricky is opening up about his decision to speak his truth in a new memoir, Me. In his first television interview since coming out, Ricky sits down with Oprah to reveal why he stayed silent about his sexuality for years and his decision to become a father.


Ricky says his 2-year-old twins, Valentino and Matteo, inspired him to tell the world he is a proud gay man. "I had to because I couldn't take it anymore," he says. "But who gave me that final push was definitely my children, because if I didn't come out for them, what was I going to be teaching them? How to lie? I don't want my family to be based on lies. I want to be transparent to them. I want them to be proud of their dad. I want them to be proud of themselves, of their family."

After writing that message and posting it, Ricky says he felt a rush of emotion. First he says he was numb, then relieved. "I was in my studio alone for a minute. My assistant walked in, and I just started crying like a little baby," he says. "He [grabbed] me in my arms. He goes: 'Let it go. Let it go. Finally you're free.'"

Watch Ricky remember that experience

In that moment, Ricky says he felt liberated. "I felt that I could finally say, 'I love myself completely,'" he says. "It's very difficult because for many years I was trying to pretend I was somebody."

Ricky says he knew from a young age that he was gay. "I was 4, 5 years old and I felt this chemistry," he says. "The first day I went to school, when I came back, the first thing they asked me was: 'Do you have girlfriends already? How many girlfriends do you have?' ... I was like: 'What? I don't understand what you mean.'"

Ricky says he never felt he could be himself. "For many years, I was told that the way I was feeling was a mistake. I was told that what I was feeling, that my emotions, were evil," he says. "I would try to deny those emotions as much as I could. There was a moment in my life that I thought I was a really bad person, that I was not enough."

Ricky says his parents were always there for him.

When Ricky was 20, he says he fell in love with a man for the first time—and had his heart broken. "I was ready to give up my career," he says. "And he told me: 'I think your mission in life is very clear. You move masses of people. And I cannot be a burden to that. If something goes wrong between us, you're going to blame me for that.'"

Ricky was devastated. "I was sad and my mom asked me, 'Are you in love, my son?' And I said, 'Yes, Mom, I am in love,'" he says. "[She asked], 'Is it with a man?' [I said], 'Yes, Mom, it's with a man.'"

Then, Ricky says his mother embraced him. "[She said]: 'I love you. Don't worry,'" he says. "She told me everything's going to be fine."

As Ricky's mom held him, he says she began to cry. "She said: 'Oh, my God, what's going to happen to my child? What's going to happen to his career?'" he says. "Unfortunately, people [were] not ready back then, and unfortunately we're still dealing with this issue of homophobia."

Ricky says his dad also accepted him. "I have a really cool dad," he says.

Despite his parents' acceptance, Ricky says the pain of that breakup pushed him farther away from his truth. "[I thought]: 'Being heartbroken? I don't want to feel ever again. So you know what? I'm going to start going out with women because maybe this is telling me that this is not my path.'"

Ricky says he had passionate affairs with women—and even fell in love. "I felt with women and I felt amazing. I felt comfort. I felt passion and sexual. It felt good," he says. "I had long relationships with women. In fact, they are still my friends today."

Ricky attributes his chemistry while performing with women to his love of entertaining. "I just allow my thoughts and my feelings and the music [to] take over," he says. "Yes, we are sexual beings. Let's enjoy it. Let's have fun. This is me. When I'm onstage, I just feel it."

Although he had relationships with both men and women, Ricky says he is gay. "I am not bisexual," he says. "I am a gay man."

On March 26, 2000, Ricky's interview with Barbara Walters aired before the Oscars®. During the interview, Barbara said to Ricky: "You know, you could stop these rumors. You could say, as many artists have, 'Yes I am gay.' Or you could say, 'No, I am not.'"

Ricky responded: "For some reason, I just don't feel like it."

Though Ricky says he expected the question, he says it felt like Barbara wouldn't let it go. "I have a lot of respect for Barbara. She's an amazing journalist, and she was doing her job," he says. "I was feeling she was beating me up."

In that moment, Ricky says he felt punch-drunk. "Was I ready to tell the world who I was?" he says. "Maybe I didn't even know who I was."

After the interview, Ricky says he felt invaded. "I felt violated in many ways. But once again, it was not the first time I was asked this question in an interview," he says. "But this was a massive TV show, and then that gave the right to every journalist to ask."

Oprah: One of the things you say in Me is that the constant bombardment of the gay question actually pushed you further away from the truth.

Ricky: Because it was treated in a very scandalous way. And people were mocking my sexuality, and I was like: "I don't want to be that. Is that me? I totally want to reject myself. You know what? I think I hate myself." And that's where you go. Those are the thoughts where you go. That's why I must insist when someone is not ready, we must not try to force that person to come out. Right now we're dealing with people that are being bullied because they are gay, and now we're dealing with people that are committing suicide because they're forced to come out. And that is horrible. You're ready whenever you're ready. You have to go through a process. You have to go through a very spiritual process in order for you to accept yourself, and then it feels amazing when you do so.

The scrutiny and secrets had begun to take a toll on Ricky. "You just go to bed and you say, 'I hate myself.' And you just don't want to say that again," he says. "[I'd think]: 'Look at everything you've done with your family. With your charity. Look at all the love that you've given. How can you hate yourself?'"

To heal, Ricky stepped away from the spotlight. While working with his foundation in India, Ricky learned about the horrors of sex trafficking and founded the People for Children project to help defend exploited children around the world. Ten days after the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, Ricky and his team arrived to assist in the humanitarian efforts and help ensure that human traffickers wouldn't take advantage of the devastation.

While in Thailand, Ricky met a baby who would change his life forever. A baby, nicknamed Baby Wave, was the last unclaimed orphan at a local hospital in Phuket. He was found abandoned in a park with a short note pinned to his blanket. "Please adopt this baby. I cannot afford to take care of him. His parents are missing because of the tsunami disaster at Patong. If you cannot adopt this baby, please take him to the orphanage adoption center."

Ricky writes in Me about meeting Baby Wave. "The first thing I thought was that I wanted to adopt him," he says. "Of course, given that he had become a national hero, that was not even an option."

PAGE 7 of 12

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Ricky-Martin-on-Coming-Out/7

Elton John and David Furnish's Baby Boy!

Meet Sir Elton John and David Furnish's Baby Boy!

Posted Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:33am PST by Us Magazine in Stop The Presses!

Ladies and gentlemen....introducing Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John!

In the new issue of Us Weekly (out Wednesday), Sir Elton John and David Furnish share first-ever photos of their beautiful baby son, who was born on Christmas Day.



*******

Sir Elton, 63, and his partner David Furnish have appointed a top Hollywood interior designer to turn the unit beside their luxury home into a dream nursery, The Mail on Sunday in the UK reported.

Although the work is not yet finished, several months after it started, eight-day-old Zachary is already installed there, and looked after by round-the-clock nannies.

"Elton and David have wanted this baby for a long time. They bought their first apartment in 2007 and then the following year they bought the smaller one next door," a New York television star who is a long-time friend of the couple said.

"Everyone originally thought they bought the smaller apartment because they wanted extra space, but then I found out they were trying to have a baby.

"They haven’t said whether they have knocked the wall down between the two apartments but I must say at Elton’s age, I wouldn’t blame him if there is no adjoining door. Will he really want to be woken up at night by a screaming baby?

"From what I understand the baby and his nannies are living in one apartment and Elton and David are living in another."

The couple have hired "interior designer to the stars" Martyn Lawrence-Bullard to decorate the baby’s unit. Lawrence-Bullard, who also masterminded Sir Elton’s flat, was overheard telling a friend: "I am still decorating it. It is not quite finished yet."

"It seems a slightly odd arrangement when you have waited so long to have a child. It certainly gives a new answer to the question: what do you give the baby who has everything? His own flat, of course," a source at the building, the 32-storey Sierra Towers, said last night.

"Everyone in the building has been talking of nothing else but the baby all week.

"Apparently he is seriously cute with wispy blond hair. He is in his own apartment with a Filipino lady and an African-American nurse, who are with him 24/7."

Sir Elton’s spokesman Gary Farrow yesterday said of the baby’s sleeping arrangement: "It’s private. No comment."

Zachary was born to a surrogate mother on Christmas Day. Sir Elton, who has battled alcohol and cocaine addiction throughout his career, and Furnish picked an egg donor to match their specifications.

Sir Elton and Furnish rang in the New Year at the five-star Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel at the end of Rodeo Drive, a 10 minute drive from Sierra Towers.

They joined their decorator Lawrence-Bullard and his partner, photographer David LaChapelle and magazine editor Ingrid Sischy at Wolfgang Puck’s acclaimed Cut steakhouse at the hotel.

The group donned fake black plastic top hats and blew cheap trumpets to welcome in the New Year.

As Furnish left he said: "The baby is beautiful. He’s back at the apartment sleeping. We’re just so excited."


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* Buying a baby - not a pair of shoes The Daily Telegraph, 3 hours ago
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http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/body-soul/sir-elton-johns-new-baby-boy-lives-in-flat-next-door/story-e6frfou0-1225980466138#ixzz1BUzdVp9T

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.

.

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

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.

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...

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!

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.

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.

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)

More on Gay & Lesbian Issues

* GLAAD Rallies Against O'Reilly The Advocate
* Church rejects Anglican pressure over gay rights Reuters
* Obama extends benefits for gay federal employees Reuters

# Gay & Lesbian Issues Video:Malawi pardons gay couple. Reuters
# Gay activists protest in Moscow Play Video Gay & Lesbian Issues Video:Gay activists protest in Moscow AFP
# Activists to defy Moscow gay pride demo ban Play Video Gay & Lesbian Issues Video:Activists to defy Moscow gay pride demo ban AFP

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)

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

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.

New US church leader says :HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT SIN

NEW BISHOP: HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT SIN
New US church leader says

Homosexuality no Sin

Mon Jun 19, 2006 3:30pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.

Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year.

Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual. "I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.

"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender." Jefferts Schori, who was raised a Roman Catholic, supported the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.


The Eternal Gospel Herald Vol. 4 No. 7 - Html PDF


Source: http://www.eternalgospel.org/



Transgender man allowed to remain as church pastor


The Rev. Drew Phoenix, pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church and a transgender person, stands outside the church on St. Paul Street. (Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor / October 30, 2007)


By Liz F. Kay Sun reporter
October 31, 2007

The highest judicial body of the United Methodist Church announced yesterday that a transgender man can remain pastor of a congregation in Charles Village.

The ruling by the Judicial Council affirms last spring's decision by Bishop John R. Schol to reappoint the Rev. Drew Phoenix -- formerly the Rev. Ann Gordon -- to St. John's United Methodist Church.

Schol's action had been appealed to the Judicial Council by several local clergy in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, who have raised questions about the proper role of transgender people within the church. ...

Story continues at link below-.Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.minister31oct31,0,3137806.story.

Are these the type of churches and pratices that the Modern-Day Seventh Day Adventist Corporate Church wants to embrace and emulate???

Is this Present Truth?

Is this our distinctive mission? ---I'll allow the Spirit of Prophecy texts to address those concerns: [Rev. 18:1-3, quoted.]

While this message is sounding, while the proclamation of truth is doing its separating work, we as faithful sentinels of God are to discern what our real position is.

We are not to confederate with worldlings, lest we become imbued with their spirit, lest our spiritual discernment become confused and we view those who have the truth and bear the message of the Lord from the standpoint of the professed Christian churches.
At the same time we are not to be like the Pharisees and hold ourselves aloof from them.--EGW'88 1161 (1893). {LDE 84.3}

Standard after standard was left to trail in the dust as company after company from the Lord's army joined the foe and tribe after tribe from the ranks of the enemy united with the commandment-keeping people of God.--8T 41 (1904). {LDE 182.3}
Last Day Events, Ellen G. White, PP. 84, 182.