News
Vatican denounces reports of gay sex scandal
Allegations of blackmail, prostitution as pope steps down
Cardinal Keith Michael Patrick O’Brien (Photo public domain)
Vatican officials this week denounced reports in the Italian press that an underground network of gay priests assigned to the Vatican organized meetings for sex and may have been subjected to blackmail.
Criticism of the press reports by a high-level Vatican spokesperson came less than a week before yet another gay-related scandal hit the Catholic Church – this time in Scotland.
British Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who has called same-sex marriage “grotesque,” announced he decided to step down a month ahead of previously announced retirement plans after allegations surfaced on Feb. 23 that he engaged in “intimate” acts with priests in the 1980s.
O’Brien denied the allegations but said on Monday he cancelled his trip to Rome this week, where he was expected to participate in the selection of a new pope. He said he didn’t want the allegations against him to overshadow the conclave of cardinals set to convene within the next week.
The Vatican immediately accepted his decision to step down from his church duties, which it viewed as a resignation.
News of the alleged network of gay priests at the Vatican surfaced last week when the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and the Italian news magazine Panorama reported that Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on the same day he learned of the allegations.
In a development that created an uproar at the Vatican, La Repubblica reported it received detailed information about a 300-page Vatican report prepared by three cardinals who uncovered the network of gay priests during a nine-month internal Vatican investigation.
Among other things, the report says the investigation discovered a “faction” within the Vatican “united by sexual orientation,” according to La Repubblica.
The newspaper said it had no confirmation that Benedict based his decision to resign solely on the explosive findings of the investigation. But it reported sources as saying Benedict planned to keep the findings confidential and decided to leave it up to his successor to determine how to address the matter.
“It was on that day, with those papers on his desk, that Benedict XVI took the decision he had mulled over for so long,” La Repubblica reported in its Feb. 21 edition while discussing Benedict’s resignation.
Vatican officials have since confirmed that the investigation took place but have refused to comment on its findings. Vatican spokesperson Rev. Federico Lombardi acknowledged the reports by La Repubblica and Panorama that the investigation was launched last May after one of the pope’s butlers was arrested for allegedly stealing papal correspondence and leaking it to the media.
La Repubblica reported several other findings of the investigation, including problems associated with the Vatican bank. Vatican observers in Italy speculated that various rival factions of cardinals and other Vatican officials were likely responsible for leaked information about the investigative report.
Efforts to portray rivals in a negative light are “part of the great game of the conclave, whose tools include political attacks and efforts to condition consensus,” Vatican observer and author Alberto Melloni of Bologna, Italy, told the New York Times.
Other observers have said intrigue and infighting that sometimes takes place in the process of selecting a Pope appears to be occurring at a greater intensity this time, as conservative and more progressive factions of cardinals line up behind different candidates under consideration for the papacy.
The Vatican’s Secretariat of State, its highest office, issued a statement on Feb. 23 denouncing the press accounts of the contents of the investigative report or “dossier” as “unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories.”
In a separate statement, the Vatican said Benedict dissolved the three-cardinal investigative committee on Monday and expressed “satisfaction for the results of this investigation,” according to a report by the Washington Post.
“The Holy Father has decided that the acts of this investigation, known only to himself, remain solely at the disposition of the new Pope,” the Post quoted the statement as saying.
La Repubblica reported that the investigation uncovered an underground network of gays working at the Vatican who organized “sexual meetings” in several locations, including a sauna in Rome, a private villa just outside Rome, and a beauty salon inside the Vatican.
The newspaper also reported the investigation found some of the gay priests may have been subjected to blackmail by men not associated with the Vatican with whom they had “worldly” relations.
“When you have this culture of secrecy and guilt and repression you have conditions which foster the potential for blackmail and for manipulation,” said gay British journalist and former priest Mark Dowd in an interview with CNN.
The cardinals who headed the Vatican investigation have been identified as Julian Herranz of Spain; Jozef Tomko of Slovakia; and Salvatore De Giorgi, the former archbishop of Palermo.
The British newspaper The Guardian broke the story about Cardinal O’Brien’s alleged “gay” scandal in a story in its Feb. 23 edition.
According to The Guardian, three priests and a former priest, all from Scotland, filed a complaint against O’Brien with the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain one week before Benedict announced his resignation.
One of the complainants, The Guardian reports, charges that O’Brien “developed an inappropriate relationship with him, resulting in a need for long-term psychological counseling.”
Another, identified only as “Priest A,” described being visited by O’Brien and “inappropriate contact between the two took place,” the newspaper reported. “Priest B” claims he was invited to spend a week at the then archbishop’s residence, where he encountered “unwanted behavior by the cardinal after a late-night drinking session.”
The Guardian said “Priest C” had been seeing O’Brien for counseling over personal problems and alleges that O’Brien “used night prayers as an excuse for inappropriate contact.”
The four who filed the complaint called on the Vatican ambassador to take steps to prevent O’Brien from going to Rome to participate in the conclave to select a new pope, saying the papal selection process would be tainted if the cardinal was part of it.
O’Brien, who announced he had cancelled his trip to Rome the day after The Observer published its story, said he would obtain legal counsel to fight the allegations, which his accusers say took place in the 1980s.
The press reports about the alleged network of gay priests at the Vatican reportedly involved consenting adults, and the allegations against O’Brien involved adult victims. But the revelations of these developments prompted news media outlets in the U.S. and Europe to bring up longstanding allegations of the sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests that have plagued the Catholic Church for more than two decades.
Organizations representing victims of sexual abuse by priests have called on the Vatican to bar cardinals in the U.S. and elsewhere from participating in the selection of a new pope if they knew about priests that sexually abused juveniles but did not act to stop the abuse.
Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based group that advocates for LGBT equality within the Catholic Church, told the Blade the unfolding gay sex scandal, if true, is due in part to the Vatican’s harsh position on homosexuality.
“They have created a situation where people can’t express their sexuality in healthy ways,” he said. “They can’t even deal with their sexuality in the open. So it creates a climate of suspicion and a climate of fear.”
Jeannine Gramick is a Roman Catholic nun who co-founded New Ways Ministry and serves as national coordinator for the National Coalition of American Nuns. She told the Blade she is hopeful that the scandal would nudge the church into adopting a more tolerant position on gays.
“I think the impact it should have is to point out the hypocrisy of having a very negative stance about homosexual activity between loving persons and the private secret condoning of activity that is not in the context of a committed relationship,” she said.
“So my hope is that it will bring about a re-examination of the church’s approach to sexuality to become more realistic and honest,” Gramick said.
National
HRC condemns DoE removal of LGBTQ bullying data from federal survey
Organization cites rise in homophobic, transphobic policies, worse mental health outcomes
The Human Rights Campaign is slamming the White House — and the Department of Education — following their removal of some LGBTQ bullying data from federal data collection.
The Civil Rights Data Collection is a mandated survey of all public school districts that collects figures on a wide variety of statistics about students — including demographics that include race, ethnicity, sex, disability status, and English learner status; course-level enrollment data, such as how many students are enrolled in advanced placement or honors classes; and school climate information, such as rates of bullying, harassment, suspensions, and expulsions.
That data collection has been ongoing since 1968 — nearly six decades — but now has a major change in what questions are being asked, or not asked, that advocates are largely attributing to the Trump-Vance administration’s culture war fight on LGBTQ children in the country.
Changes to the 2025-2026 survey questions — approved by the Office of Budget and Management in July — eliminated a space for schools to report how many students identify as nonbinary, how often those students are victims of harassment and bullying, and whether school districts have policies prohibiting gender identity-based incidents.
K-12 Dive, a publication that focuses its reporting on news related to K-12 education, first published a list of these data collection changes from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026.
These questions, as well as others that included LGBTQ student topics on treatment in schools, were added to the CRDC under the Biden-Harris administration. By including these questions, policymakers hoped this would lead to increased investigations into discrimination complaints, initiate compliance reviews, and provide policy guidance to districts, according to Education Department documents.
The CRDC also eliminated the mention of “gender identity” from the definition of rape and sexual assault. The prior collection of data (before the Trump-Vance administration changed it) defined rape as something that could be done to “all students, regardless of sex, or sexual orientation, or gender identity.” Now, the new data collection questions say, “All students, regardless of sex, or sexual orientation can be victims of rape,” removing “gender identity” from the new definition.
By removing and changing definitions, this could have a real-world impact on some of the school’s most vulnerable students. According to CRDC data from 2021-2022, more than 1,800 school districts reported enrolling one or more nonbinary students.
Additional data also shows that the changes to data collection is harming public school students. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee released a report in April finding that the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to all but close the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has left students facing discrimination and harassment throughout the country without the federal recourse they are entitled to under federal law.
The Williams Institute, a think tank that collects data and conducts research on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, has data indicating the true number of nonbinary and transgender children is much higher — they estimate that for children ages 13 to 17, nearly 724,000 identify as nonbinary or trans.
This is in line with a slew of policies pushed by the Trump-Vance administration since their federal takeover. Within his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” This directive attempts to make the federal definition of gender unchangeable, determined by sex assigned at birth alone.
Within his first month of his second term, Trump issued Executive Order 14187, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The order directs federal agencies to restrict gender-affirming medical care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries — for individuals under the age of 19.
He also pushed multiple anti-trans executive orders, including Executive Order 14201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” and Executive Order 14183, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” targeting trans athletes and military members, respectively.
These policies have a real-world impact on trans people.
The Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to crisis and suicide prevention for LGBTQ people under 25, reported that, for the seventh year in a row, LGBTQ youth are at higher risk for suicide as a result of mistreatment and stigmatization.
Trevor Project data showed that nearly 60 percent of LGBTQ young people ages 13-17 said they were bullied in the past year, and that 36 percent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the last year. The data shows a bigger discrepancy for trans youth, with that number hovering around 40 percent considering suicide.
HRC President Kelley Robinson issued a statement following the approval of the new data collection questions that leaves LGBTQ students’ bullying statistics under — if not completely unreported.
“If there was even a shadow of a doubt, this latest move by the Trump administration makes it abundantly clear they do not care about the safety of LGBTQ+ students, and trans students in particular,” Robinson said. “These are adults who should be protecting our kids. And instead, they are making sure bullying and harassment are not tracked. If they are not tracked, bullying and harassment cannot be prevented or stopped — which is exactly what the Trump administration wants. Parents deserve to know their kids are safe at school, and every single young person deserves dignity and safety at school. Anything less is plain evil.”
HRC has a “Welcoming Schools” initiative that they say is the “most comprehensive” bias-based bullying prevention program in the nation. The program includes LGBTQ and gender-inclusive resources for schools, help navigating special education and disability resources for LGBTQ-identifying students, and other tools to help schools become more inclusive.
This program has been in effect for nearly two decades and, according to HRC, reaches nearly 750,000 students.
The Washington Blade reached out to both the Department of Education and Office of Management and Budget for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Netherlands
Dutch PM: More needs to be done to defend trans rights
Rob Jetten on Friday was on World Pride Human Rights Conference panel
Editor’s note: International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Photo Editor Michael Key will be on assignment in Amsterdam until Aug. 10.
AMSTERDAM — Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten on Friday said more needs to be done to defend transgender people and their rights.
“Everywhere in the Western world, it’s definitely the group that’s the most vulnerable in the moment and it’s rather well-picked also by our advisories,” he said during a panel at the World Pride Human Rights Conference in Amsterdam that Ying Xin and Diego García Blum of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ryan-Carr Center for Human Rights Policy moderated. “They’ve chosen the smallest group within our broader community (trans people) to attack them, to ensure that we can strip their rights and if they’ve done with that, they’ll go after the next group within our community, so we shouldn’t be naïve about what’s behind it.”
“It’s very well-funded. It’s very well-organized and we have to organize as well to fight back and to win this fight,” added Jetten. “We also need to be more open in conversations that we are having within the community and also dive into it much deeper and maybe even have more difficult and annoying conversations.”
Jetten in February became the Netherlands’ first openly gay prime minister.
He appeared on the panel alongside former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who in 2017 became his country’s first openly gay head of government, and former San Marino Captain Regent Paolo Rondelli, who was his country’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2007-2016.
Several other current former heads of government who are gay or lesbian also participated in the panel. They include former Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, former Luxembourgish Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, and Andorran Prime Minister Xavier Espot Zamora. California Congressman Mark Takano, who chairs the Congressional Equality Caucus, and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund CEO Evan Low were among those who attended.
Jetten in his remarks said he was “very surprised” to learn that “not only in the U.S. but also in some European countries that we’ve let them decide what the gay group looked like.” The Dutch prime minister further pointed out that conservatives began “to attack the debate on toilets or starting this debate about trans people in Olympic games.”
“That is, of course, a ridiculous debate to start, but we’ve got distracted because we were so busy having this debate on Olympians, and then we actually forgot the real fight was about access to healthcare, just being yourself, being able to enlist in the army, or being able to be a young trans boy or girl in school,” said Jetten. “We got distracted by some fresh meat that was thrown into the area by some very conservative people.”
“We have to open our eyes and have very in-depth conservations within our community, and come up with a much better strategy to win this fight and to protect all our trans brothers and sisters, dolls, whatever,” he added. “Because if we don’t win this fight for trans people, we’re going to lose the bigger fight for all LGBTQ people in the world.”
Varadkar noted Ireland in 2015 passed a law that allows people to legally change their gender without surgery or other medical interventions.
He conceded there was “a liberal wind blowing across the world at the time, and it was largely uncontested.”
“It would be harder now, quite frankly, to do that legislation,” said Varadkar.
Scottish lawmakers in 2022 passed the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which lowered the age for anyone to legally change their gender without medical intervention from 18 to 16. Then-British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government later blocked the measure from taking effect.
The U.K. Supreme Court in 2025 ruled the legal definition of a woman under the country’s Equality Act is limited to “biological women.” Author J.K. Rowling is among those who praised the decision that stemmed from a case that challenged the Scottish government’s decision to include trans women in its definition of women when it sought to increase the number of women on government boards.
The Trump-Vance administration on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day it was in office, issued a sweeping executive order that, among other things, declared the federal government would only recognize two genders: male and female. The White House earlier this year in its counterterrorism strategy said it “will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We have to stay united,” said Rondelli. “The strategy was, since the beginning, was a Nazi strategy to create groups, target groups, and to create maximum distractions to avoid discussion about some sort of policies.”
“Trans people are the target at the moment,” he added. “But after them it will probably be some others, so we have to stay united.”
The White House
HRC files class action over federal ban on gender-affirming care coverage
Lawsuit filed Monday challenges White House effort to restrict care
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the nonprofit sister organization to the largest LGBTQ human rights lobbying and advocacy organization in the U.S., along with law firms Correia & Puth and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, filed a class action lawsuit against the government as it attempts to restrict gender-affirming healthcare for federal employees.
The suit, filed on Monday, alleges that the Office of Personnel Management, run by Trump appointee Scott Kupor, is discriminating against LGBTQ federal employees (and their families and retired employees) by prohibiting health insurance coverage for gender-affirming care under the Federal Employees Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits plans. There are five plaintiffs named in the complaint, but it extends to others who have those healthcare plans.
The document asserts that OPM’s prohibition on coverage for “gender transition” care in the FEHB and PSHB programs violates Title VII, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, or national origin.
The policy, which was implemented on Jan. 1 following the 2025 issuing of Program Carrier Letter, mandated that insurance providers in these programs deny any coverage for gender-affirming care. In February, HRC filed a federal complaint with OPM over the change in healthcare policy, which was ultimately passed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for review. That complaint is now an officially filed class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Research from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law, a think tank that collects data and conducts research on issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity, indicates that this policy denying gender-affirming care will impact healthcare access for at least 39,400 current and former federal employees and their dependents.
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson released a statement following the lawsuit’s filing.
“Our message to the Trump administration is simple: we’ll see you in court,” said Robinson. “Healthcare access should never be weaponized to advance discrimination — and the denial of coverage for critical healthcare based simply on who you are blatantly violates the rights of all of us.”
Gender-affirming care has been under constant attack by the Trump-Vance administration since its return to the White House, despite the practice being considered as extensively evidence-based but also supported by nearly every major medical organization. This type of care is provided to all people—not just transgender people—and includes things such as social affirmation, including using correct names and pronouns and wearing clothing that matches a person’s gender identity; mental health support, such as counseling to reduce depression and anxiety; and, in some cases, medical interventions such as reversible puberty blockers or hormone therapy when deemed medically appropriate.
“Federal employees have been through the wringer with the Trump administration,” said Cathy Harris, partner at Correia & Puth. “We draw the line at blatant discrimination to deny healthcare to our nation’s dedicated civil servants.”
“This odious policy is the latest example of the Trump administration’s obsession with targeting transgender people, using shameful and cruel tactics to threaten their employment, their health, and the well-being of themselves and their families,” Robinson added. “OPM’s actions will not go unchallenged, and we’ll continue to fight so that federal employees and their families receive the dignity they deserve.”
This is not the first time the White House has directly attacked gender-affirming care.
In January 2025, the administration issued Executive Order 14187, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The order directs federal agencies to restrict gender-affirming medical care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries — for individuals under the age of 19.
For more information on how to get involved with the lawsuit, visit hrc.org.
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