National
LGBT Catholics reflect on first year of Francis papacy
Despite moderation, church remains ‘natural enemy of LGBT movements’
Pope Francis (Photo by Agência Brasil; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
LGBT Catholics continue to welcome Pope Francis’ more moderate approach to gays in the church since his election as pontiff last March.
Dignity USA Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke noted to the Washington Blade last week that Francis uses the word “gay” as opposed to “homosexual or same-sex attraction disorder or any of the sort of distancing and clinical kind of terms” his predecessors – Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II – used. She added the pontiff also raises LGBT-specific people “in conversation and in daily life.”
“There’s a tone of comfort and sort of acceptance of reality,” said Duddy-Burke. “It’s a small place, obviously, but it is a marked difference.”
Dignity Washington Treasurer Bob Miailovich told the Blade that Francis continues to focus more on the marginalized, even though official church doctrine has not changed.
“That’s kind of like we’re going to be more gentle,” said Miailovich. “The point is to remember we’re all included in God’s love, not walking around trying to find out what’s wrong with people.”
Francis last summer said during an interview with La Civiltà Cattolica, an Italian Jesuit magazine that the church has grown “obsessed” with same-sex marriage, abortion and contraception. The Argentine-born pontiff less than two months earlier told reporters who asked him about the reported homosexuality of the man whom he appointed to oversee the Vatican bank during a flight back to Rome after attending World Youth Day in Brazil that gay men and lesbians should not be judged or marginalized.
Francis has yet to meet with LGBT Catholic organizations since his election, but Duddy-Burke pointed out the pontiff reached out to a young gay man who wrote to him.
The pope, who is the former archbishop of Buenos Aires, in 2001 visited a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 people with AIDS. Francis told La Civiltà Cattolica he used to receive letters from gay people who said they were “socially wounded” because they felt as though the church “has always condemned them.”
“The pope has really taken a giant step toward greater acceptance of LGBT people in the Catholic Church,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry in Mount Rainier, Md., told the Blade. “His non-judgmental example, his humble demeanor, his seeming willingness to listen – all these things have had a great influence on Catholic culture and sensibility.”
The College of Cardinals last March elected Francis to succeed Benedict who abruptly resigned in February 2013.
The LGBT Catholics with whom the Blade spoke all noted church teaching on homosexuality, marriage and other issues has not changed in spite of Francis’ more conciliatory tone.
Francis last July criticized what he described as the “gay lobby” during his press conference with reporters while returning to Rome from World Youth Day.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Feb. 19 wrote to U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage to indicate its support of his proposal that would amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gay nuptials. The Vatican later this year is scheduled to hold what Duddy-Burke described as “this extraordinary synod” on strengthening the family.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child last month sharply criticized the Vatican over its opposition to homosexuality and other declarations that “contribute to the social stigmatization of and violence against” LGBT adolescents and children raised by same-sex couples.” LGBT Federation of Argentina President Esteban Paulón in a March 13 statement that marked Francis’ first anniversary as pope noted he described the South American country’s same-sex marriage bill as a “demonic plan.”
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who signed the measure into law in 2010, sharply criticized then-Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio’s rhetoric that included calls for a “holy war” against it.
“A year after assuming the papacy, Bergoglio has demonstrated that, aside from the gestures and simulations, he continues maintaining a line of contempt and denial of rights toward lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people,” said Paulón. “He has not moved a single step of his conception, as clearly expressed during the debate over Argentina’s same-sex marriage law.”
Paulón further criticized Francis over the Vatican’s “complicit silence” over laws in more than 70 countries that criminalize homosexuality with prison time or even death – Duddy-Burke expressed a similar opinion to the Blade. Paulón also blasted the pontiff over what he described as the Vatican’s continued cover-up of priests accused of pedophilia.
“The Vatican has demonstrated that in reality, nothing has changed in spite of some ‘friendly’ and ‘conciliatory’ declarations,” he said.
LGBT rights advocates with whom the Blade spoke earlier this month in the Dominican Republic largely echoed Paulón.
Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez of the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo last June referred to now-U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic James “Wally” Brewster as a “maricón” or “faggot” in Spanish during a press conference. Archbishop Jude Thaddeus Okolo, the Vatican’s envoy to the Caribbean country, earlier this year declined to invite Brewster’s husband to a diplomatic reception with Dominican President Danilo Medina because the country’s Constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
The event was cancelled after a number of ambassadors said they would not attend because Okolo did not invite Brewster’s husband.
“It is unfortunately a personal posture,” Stephanía Hernández, a trans woman who is a member of Gente Activa y Participativa, a Dominican LGBT advocacy group, told the Blade as she discussed López. “The declarations of Francis, the pope, have been very diplomatic and very sensible.”
“The church has a political agenda,” added Deivis Ventura of the Amigos Siempre Amigos Network of Volunteers. “The church is the natural enemy of LGBT movements around the world and here. Francis saying that he treats gays with compassion is not going to change this posture.”
Francisco Rodríguez Cruz, a gay Cuban blogger who writes under the pen name Paquito el de Cuba, told the Blade that advocates in the Communist country have also closely followed Francis during the first year of his papacy.
Rodríguez said he personally feels there have not been “substantial changes” in the church’s position on LGBT-specific issues since the Argentine-born pontiff’s election. He added the Catholic hierarchy’s “evolution” towards “the understanding of diversity” could have a positive impact on LGBT Cubans and efforts to extend additional rights to them in the Caribbean country.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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