Local
Gay man says priest refused to give last rites
Incident at Washington Hospital Center angers LGBT Catholic group
A Roman Catholic priest working as a chaplain at D.C.’s Washington Hospital Center refused to give last rites and communion to a heart attack patient earlier this month after the patient told him he’s gay and believes Pope Francis is sympathetic to gay people, the patient told the Blade.
D.C. resident Ronald Plishka, 63, a retired travel agent and lifelong Catholic, said he asked a nurse to arrange for a priest to see him on Feb. 7, one day after he was admitted by ambulance to the hospital emergency room for a heart attack. He said that at the time he wasn’t sure he would survive.
A short time later, Plishka said, Father Brian Coelho, a priest assigned to the hospital’s Department of Spiritual Care, arrived at his bedside. He said Coelho offered to take his confession before proceeding with communion and last rites, which the church now calls the sacrament of anointing of the sick.
“We started talking and I told him I was so happy with this new Pope because of his comments about the gays and his accepting the gays,” Plishka said. “And I mentioned that I was gay. I said it and then I asked him does that bother you? And he said, ‘Oh, no, that does not bother me,’” said Plishka.
“But then he would not proceed with administering the last rites or communion. He couldn’t do it.”
According to Plishka, Coelho, who brought a supply of holy water to his hospital room, never said in so many words that he was refusing to administer communion and last rites.
Asked what Coelho told him, Plishka said, “Well, I mean he stopped. He would not do it. By him not doing it I assumed he would not do it because why was he getting ready to do it and all of a sudden when I say I’m gay he stops?”
Plishka said Coelho gave no reason for not giving him the sacraments he requested but offered instead to pray with him.
“He said what he wanted to do,” said Plishka. “He wanted to pray. That’s what he wanted to do. He said well I could pray with you. And I just told him to get the fuck out of here — excuse me. But that’s what I told him.”
The patient with whom he shared the hospital room overheard some of what was said and asked him, “What in the name of God happened?,” Plishka said.
“And then the doctors came in and told me to calm down or I’m going to have another heart attack,” he said.
Coelho, whose photo appears in the Washington Hospital Center’s online staff directory of hospital chaplains, did not return a call from the Blade seeking comment on his interaction with Plishka.
So Young Pak, Washington Hospital Center’s director of media relations, said the Archdiocese of Washington assigned Coelho to serve as a Catholic chaplain at the hospital. She said the hospital did not hire Coelho.
Pak released a statement to the Blade saying the hospital cannot comment on the specifics of the interaction between Coelho and Plishka “because we were not a party to it.”
But her statement says the hospital is taking “our patient’s concerns very seriously.” She said the Human Rights Campaign Foundation recognized Washington Hospital Center last year as a “Leader in LGBT Healthcare Equality.”
“We want to hold true to this important commitment to the LGBT community and to all of our patients,” she said. “It is our expectation that all who offer spiritual care to patients in our hospital adhere to our values and extend excellent care, both physical and spiritual, to all patients regardless of their faith traditions,” she said.
Pak added, “Our Department of Spiritual Care will reinforce our expectations with this priest and his superiors.”
Plishka said the treatment he received from the hospital itself was “excellent” and praised the hospital and its doctors for saving his life.
Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Washington, which has jurisdiction over D.C. area priests working as hospital chaplains, said her office would have no comment at this time.
A June 2010 biography of Coelho published on the Archdiocese website says Coelho was appointed at that time as parochial vicar at St. Mary Parish in Landover Hills, Md. It says he was “born in India and attended seminary there prior to entering the Archdiocese of Washington’s Redemptoris Mater Seminary.”
The biography says he was ordained on May 26, 2007 and served as a parochial victor at St. Mary of the Mills in Laurel, Md., and at St. Elizabeth Parish in Rockville, Md., in previous assignment.
Pak said Coelho began his tenure as chaplain at Washington Hospital Center in October 2013.
Officials with the LGBT Catholic organizations Dignity U.S.A. and Dignity Washington expressed disbelief that a priest would refuse to offer last rites and communion to a patient in need.
“This is just abhorrent and not Christ-like at all,” said Dignity Washington President Daniel Barutta. “I can’t imagine where that priest is coming from.”
Henry Huot, a retired Catholic priest who serves as chair of Dignity Washington’s Pastoral Ministry Committee, said longstanding Catholic practice calls for priests to provide the sacraments to people in situations similar to Plishka.
“Any baptized Christian ought not to be denied the sacraments at his or her request,” Huot said. “And that is a cardinal rule of pastoral care. So I don’t know what was going through the mind of this hospital chaplain to deny this man the sacraments,” he said. “It violates this cardinal rule.”
Huot and other Dignity officials, including a priest who asked not to be identified, said no church rule or policy says sacraments should be withheld to people because of their sexual orientation.
“The fact that conditions existed for a priest to make this call is upsetting,” said Dignity USA President Marianne Duddy-Burke. “There should be very clear standards. You minister to the person in need without judgment and without conditions,” she said. “It is not the role of the priest to cause the person in distress additional hardship.”
Duddy-Burke said it’s the responsibility of the Archdiocese to set pastoral care standards for priests under its jurisdiction.
“And I would hope that if this case is brought to the attention of Archdiocesan officials, as it should be, that they would respond appropriately and discipline this priest and make it known to every priest and every person that’s providing pastoral care in the Archdiocese that people should be treated as children of God first.”
Barutta said the group’s pastoral committee headed by Huot has a list of priests on call to provide pastoral care for people in situations similar to Plishka.
“Can you imagine Pope Francis being at that hospital?” Barutta said. “He would be siting by the bedside and be with this guy for more than an hour. I’m almost positive of that.”
Plishka said he is thankful that, unlike his encounter with the priest, his medical treatment at the Washington Hospital Center worked out well. In what he called state of the art cardiac procedures, he said doctors implanted stents through a catheter to reopen clogged arteries in his heart. Much to his surprise, the hospital discharged him just three days after he was admitted, with instructions that he adhere to several weeks of rest and outpatient treatment.
Once at home, Plishka said he called the hospital chaplain’s office to lodge a complaint against Fr. Coelho. He said he also called the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception next to Catholic University, where he has attended Mass nearly every Sunday for years.
“They have a priest on call,” he said. “So he called me back and said he agreed with what the priest at the hospital did. He said unless you’re willing to change and basically become somebody you’re not, then this priest had every right to do that, to refuse you communion and to refuse you the last rites of the church,” Plishka said.
He said he doesn’t recall the priest’s name but recalls the priest saying he was the one assigned to take calls from members of the community on that day — Feb. 8.
Ironically, Plishka said, a minister from another denomination came to his hospital room and gave him the spiritual support he didn’t receive from Fr. Coelho. In response to a call to the hospital by one of his friends, who Plishka had told of his encounter with Coelho, the hospital sent a Methodist minister to see him in his hospital room shortly after Coelho’s visit.
“He prayed with me and gave me communion and all of that,” said Plishka. “But it’s not the same. It’s not my religion, you know? I’ve been a Catholic all my life and for them to refuse me a sacrament and to refuse me communion? It destroyed me.”
Now, Plishka said, he decided to speak out about his experience with the hope that it might make a difference.
“I think there comes a time when as a gay man you have to take a stand, you know? It’s just intolerable to be treated like you’re nothing. And I could have died. And all I did was ask for the rites of the church that are due to me. But because I’m gay I’m denied that.”
Maryland
Maryland’s oldest rural gay bar — and one of the last — is a log cabin in the woods
The Lodge is a Boonsboro watering hole resembling a log cabin
By SAPNA BANSIL | In the woods of a conservative Western Maryland town of fewer than 4,000 people is an unlikely landmark of state LGBTQ history.
The Lodge, a Boonsboro watering hole that resembles a log cabin, is Maryland’s oldest rural gay bar — one of a few remaining in the country, according to historians.
For about four decades, the Washington County venue has offered safety, escape and community to queer people far from large, liberal cities. Starting Friday night, The Lodge will close out Pride month with one of its biggest parties of the year: a weekend of dancing, drinking and drag in celebration of Frederick Pride, held about 20 miles away in the area’s largest city.
The rest of this article the Baltimore Banner published on June 27 can be read on its website.
Virginia
Va. court allows conversion therapy despite law banning it
Judge in June 30 ruling cited religious freedom.
In 2020, the state of Virginia had banned the practice of conversion therapy, but on Monday, a county judge ruled the ban violates the Virginia Constitution and Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allowing the therapy to start once more.
The conversion therapy ban, which can be seen in Va. Code § 54.1-2409.5 and 18VAC115-20-130.14, was overturned on June 30 as a result of two Christian counselors who argued that their — and all Virginia parents’ — constitutional right to freedom of religion had been encroached upon when the state legislature passed the ban.
A Henrico County Circuit Court judge sided with John and Janet Raymond, two Christian counselors represented by the Founding Freedoms Law Center, a conservative organization founded in 2020 following Virginia’s conversion therapy ban. Virginia’s Office of the Attorney General entered a consent decree with FFLC, saying state officials will not discipline counselors who engage in talk conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy, as the legislation described it, is considered to be “any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” The ban’s reversal will now allow parents to subject their children to these practices to make them align better with their religion.
This decision comes despite advice and concern from many medical and pediatric organizations — including the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and the American Counseling Association, to name a few — all of which denounce conversion therapy as dangerous and harmful to those subjected to it.
The American Medical Association, the largest and only national association that convenes more than 190 state and specialty medical societies, says that “these techniques are the assumption that any non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities are mental disorders, and that sexual orientation and gender identity can and should be changed. This assumption is not based on medical and scientific evidence,” with attached data indicating people subjected to conversion therapy are more likely to develop “significant long-term harm” as a result of the therapy.
The AMA goes as far as to say that they outright “oppose the use of reparative or conversion therapy for sexual orientation or gender identity.”
FFLC has a clear goal of promoting — if not requiring — conservative ideology under the guise of religious freedom in the Virginia General Assembly. On their website, the FFLC argues that some progressive policies passed by the Assembly, like that of freedom from conversion therapy, are a violation of some Virginians’ “God-given foundational freedoms.”
The FFLC has argued that when conservative notions are not abided by in state law — especially when it involves “God’s design for male and female, the nuclear family, and parental rights” — that the law violates Virginians’ religious freedom.
A statement on the FFLC’s website calls gender dysphoria among children a “contagion” and upholds “faith-based insights” from counselors as equal — in the eyes of the law — to those who use medical-based insights. This, once again, is despite overwhelming medical evidence that indicates conversion therapy is harmful.
One study showed that 77 percent of those who received “sexual orientation change efforts,” or conversion therapy, experienced “significant harm.” This harm includes depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, and internalized homophobia. In addition, the study found that young LGBTQ adults with high levels of parental or caregiver rejection are “8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide,” with another study finding that “nearly 30 percent of individuals who underwent SOCE reported suicidal attempts.”
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat representing Fairfax, said that the overturning of the ban on religious merit disregards the entire concept of having professionally licensed counselors.
“I have no problem if somebody wants to go look at religious counseling from their priest or their minister, their rabbi, their imam — that’s perfectly fine,” Surovell told the Virginia Mercury. “When somebody goes to get therapy from somebody licensed by the commonwealth of Virginia, there’s a different set of rules applied. You can’t just say whatever you want because you have a license. That’s why we have professional standards, that’s why we have statutes.”
District of Columbia
GenOUT Chorus offers solace, strength to LGBTQ teens
Summer camp held from June 23-27
As Pride month draws to a close and Washington begins to take down its rainbow flags and WorldPride decorations, it can be easy to confine the ideas of LGBTQ liberation to June. One historic organization in Washington has been speaking out — or singing out if you will — to ensure that LGBTQ youth are allowed to explore and be themselves every month of the year.
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington is one of the oldest and largest LGBTQ choruses in the world. With more than 300 members and more than 40 years in the D.C. LGBTQ community, to say it is an institution would be an understatement.
Beginning in 1981, following an inspiring performance by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at the Kennedy Center, a group of 18 gay men — led by a “straight” woman and friend of Washington’s gay community, Marsha Pearson — created the GMCW. Since its establishment the organization has only grown in number and relevance within the city. From hosting multiple concerts a year, international equality trips, and creating a dedicated space to “inspire equality and inclusion with musical performances and education,” the GMCW is one of the cornerstone organizations in the Washington LGBTQ community.
One of the most remarkable parts of the GMCW is its youth outreach program and choir: GenOUT. The outreach ensemble specializes in providing a space for Washington’s LGBTQ and allied youth, ages 13-18, to find their voice through song and connect that voice to community. The GenOUT program has been around since 2001, and since 2015 has provided a platform for their voices to be heard — literally — making it the first LGBTQ youth chorus in the Washington area.
The Washington Blade sat down with GenOUT Director C. Paul Heins and member Ailsa Ostovitz to discuss why GenOUT, and more specifically the GenOUT summer camp, which was held from June 23-27, has become an essential space for LGBTQ youth in the D.C. area to find their voice amid less-than-supportive administration and rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the nation.
“This is my 11th season with GenOUT, and also the 11th season with Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington,” Heins said when explaining how he ended up in the director role for the self-selected, no audition required youth outreach ensemble. “I was hired in August of 2014 to start GenOUT. I spent that first fall researching other choruses, figuring out the infrastructure, promoting the chorus, and building relationships with schools, organizations, and faith communities. And then we started in January of 2015 with nine brave singers and since then, we’ve had 150+ singers from 80 or more schools in the DMV participate.”
Ailsa Ostovitz, on the other hand, being in high school had not had as much experience with choirs — yet her commitment and unwavering passion for the work she — and the other performers within GenOUT provide to each other was unmistakable.
“I’ve been a part of the course since April of 2022, and that was like seventh grade— which is wild to think about,” Ostovitz said when reflecting on how long she had been a part of GenOUT. She explained how she had begun to develop a drive for filling leadership roles within GenOUT after gaining valuable experiences and education from the organization.
“This is my first year in leadership,” she added. “The rest of the years, I kind of hung back. I really wanted to — especially last season — kind of put myself in the position of a peer and think ‘What would I want from people that are supposed to represent me to the adults? What would I want out of that?’”
And with those questions in mind, Ostovitz explained she buckled down and worked hard to get to where she is now as a member of the leadership team within the GenOUT choir.
“I spent a lot of time working with my section leader, and, looking up at him and being like, ‘What are you doing now that I can do in the future?’ And so this year, I ran for leadership,” Ostovitz said. “I got section leader, and that was cool. I’ve just spent a lot of time — most of my time in this course — learning leadership skills to kind of help me in all sorts of things in life, because I like to take control of things, and I like doing stuff.”
These leadership skills are just a handful of the things that students like Ostovitz learn while participating in the program. This year’s theme was “Make Them Hear Us!: Empowering LGBTQ+ and Allied Youth Through Music, Media, and Community,” and provided multiple opportunities for GenOUT’s members to engage with new concepts, ideas, and experiences.
From field trips to mentoring opportunities to an end-of-camp performance, it becomes clear when speaking to those familiar with the GenOUT experience: it is not your traditional summer day camp.
“The title of the camp references the anthem that GMCW has sung for many years,” Heins said. “‘Make Them Hear You’ from the musical ‘Ragtime’ encourages us to share important stories — stories that honor the fights that we’ve been fighting, the rights that we have won, affirmations that we seek for every human being, and the focus on media — specifically developing young people’s understandings of the kinds of media that they can access and use to share their voice.”
The camp offers singing and dancing lessons, creative writing exercises, LGBTQ+ history lessons, and open discussions about identity — providing an outlet for students to figure out who they want to be and find their voice.
“What this camp does, I believe, is it helps foster young people’s voices and not only encourages them to speak, but to give them the skills to speak in a way that will be heard meaningfully,” Heins added. “I have noted that youth in queer choruses like GenOUT have said that singing in a chorus allows young people to express themselves more honestly and with greater passion than other forms of expression. They’ve also said that singing with others that understand you on a very deep, profound level, makes the expression much easier and more beautiful. I think that experience is what really makes this a special opportunity for young, LGBTQ and allied people.”
Ostovitz echoed Heins’s sentiment, emphasizing that the space GenOUT provides allows her to feel empowered in ways more than by creating leadership skills that will help her later in life. GenOUT has allowed for her to see the humanity and similarities LGBTQ youth all face in a straight world.
“Joining the chorus and being in this camp, it really gives people a chance to see that every person is going through the same experience you are, on a level of finding your own identity and being confident in that,” Ostovitz said. “It really, really serves a purpose by showing there are still queer people. They’re not fizzling out — young people are queer. We want to use our voices to express what we feel and how things are affecting us, and I think that using music to do that is probably one of the most powerful ways to do that.”
In addition to allowing for internal growth and honing their singing abilities, both Ostovitz and Heins pointed out the other valuable skills students learn while in the GenOUT program. Ostovitz explicitly highlighted the mentorship program GenOUT has with GMCW, and how it has helped students like her figure out their future.
“Because we are so connected with GMCW, we run a mentorship program where, if you want to explore career, identity, whatever, we can connect you with somebody from GMCW,” Ostovitz said. “You get to spend a whole semester with a person working on your voice or your career or your what you want to do in higher education. It’s not only for things related to your queer identity, but it’s also just for life. It’s really cool.”
This year’s theme, centering around media and the many ways people can share their voice, was highlighted through the camp’s field trips to two legacy media organizations — WAMU and NBC Washington — and a discussion with staff from the Washington Blade, including Publisher Lynne Brown and International News Editor Michael K. Lavers.
“GenOUT provides a chance to get to know people from all around this area, but it also connects you to older folks, It connects you to people from the past, as well as we learn about LGBTQ history,” Heins said. “I think a camp specific thing is we want young people to understand how they can share their stories beyond just talking to their friends. There are these forms of media that are out there to share your stories, to have your voices heard, and to have a sense that these media are there for everyone. It’s not just a thing for people aged 21 and over. That was something that Lynne and Michael from the Blade were sharing with; that anyone can write in a letter to the editor. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be published, but that anyone has that opportunity. And I think that’s a great way for them to say the Blade is open to you to share your voice.”
The concept that there are people who want to, or may need to hear queer voices represented is one that is not lost on Ostovitz.
“There is something Thea says that has kind of integrated into our chorus — that someone out there needed to hear you, needed to hear your voice, needed to hear your story,” Ostovitz said. “That’s something that I kind of live by in this chorus, where I’m like, ‘I believe that there is someone out there that needed to hear this song for whatever reason, whatever it did for them. And I’m hoping to learn how much more can this chorus do for not just our little community, but how much more can it do around the world or the country — especially now.”
Living in the political center of the U.S., Ostovitz explained, has impacted how she approaches her identity, her education, and the urgency of using her voice — both as a student and as a young queer person navigating an increasingly hostile national climate.
“Being so close to the political center of the country and also a student at the same time has not been the easiest thing in the world as of late,” she said. “You’re thinking a lot about ‘Oh, I wonder if this program in my school will still exist next year,’ because a lot of the funding for physics and science programs in general has been cut. So I’m fortunate enough that Maryland has been pretty good about going against this administration. And so being in this chorus gives me a second to step back from my academics and just go somewhere for the two hours of rehearsal.”
For Ostovitz, just having those two short hours a week to focus on music — without thinking about the political climate that paints her and her choir peers as nefarious for being LGBTQ — provides solace.
“Everybody else is going through the same thing as I am, but we’re all also working towards the same goal, which is acceptance and uplifting of everybody and everyone — no matter who they are,” she said. “It kind of settles you down and grounds you. And then you just make music with people, and it’s really like a stress reducer for me.”
“Is it too trite to say that that would make people feel less alone, knowing that it’s not just a DMV thing, but that there are queer people all over?” Heins asked Ostovitz.
“No, it’s not — for sure,” Ostovitz responded. “It was a bit eye-opening.”
“A lot of us are fortunate enough to have families that support us enough to trust us and help us be passionate and mean what we do with the work that we do in this chorus — because it is optional,” Ostovitz added. “It is optional to have the courage that we have to practice and commit as much as we do, and the fact that we have a whole organization backing us on that is pretty cool.”
“We often say that we sing for those who can’t sing in a chorus like ours,” Heins said. “We sing for people who don’t have the freedom or the option to live their authentic lives. I think that’s very powerful.”
“It’s a very unique experience to be surrounded by so many people that get it,” Ostovitz said. “It’s a very joyful experience when we perform our big shows at the Lincoln Theater, being part of that production is also a very unique experience. So I think everything about this chorus is very joyfully unique.”
“I feel very proud, and I feel very inspired,” Heins said. “I feel inspired by the young voices. I feel a sense of inspiration in my own music-making, when I am able to take a piece from its very beginning all the way to the stage in a polished form. And I feel that sense of pride in knowing that I’ve helped this group of young people develop their confidence to do really amazing things.”
“GenOUT sang 22 times last year, which for any chorus is a big deal, but for a youth chorus coming from thither and yon, it is really a big deal,” Heins added. “I’m just really inspired and proud, and know that when I am in a nursing home somewhere and these folks are still out working and I know the country will be in good hands.”
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