News
Obama urged to raise LGBT issues with Francis
Adviser says president ‘inspired’ by pontiff
Pope Francis is scheduled to meet with President Obama at the Vatican on Thursday. (Photo by Agência Brasil; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
Human Rights First President Elisa Massimino and Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, said in a letter to Obama that the meeting will be “an important opportunity to address critical moral issues confronting the global community.”
“We write to urge you to use this meeting — and the joint statement following it — to reinforce Pope Francis’ positive statements on the inherent dignity of LGBT people and to amplify the shared opposition of the United States and the Catholic Church to laws criminalizing LGBT people which have sparked violence against this vulnerable minority around the world,” said the women.
Massimino and Kennedy specifically cited Nigeria and Russia, which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics last month against the backdrop of criticism over the Kremlin’s LGBT rights record, in their letter to Obama. The women further noted Francis is expected to travel to Uganda this year.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni last month signed a bill into law that imposes a life sentence upon anyone found guilty of repeated same-sex sexual acts.
“At a time when members of the LGBT community are being arrested, attacked, and ‘outed’ in situations that make them vulnerable to violence, there is a real urgency for U.S. leadership,” writes Massimino and Kennedy. “There is particular value for Pope Francis to raise this issue publicly in Uganda because his words will reverberate throughout Africa and worldwide at this time, and we hope he would raise these issues consistently.”
LGBT Federation of Argentina President Esteban Paulón told the Washington Blade he also hopes Obama will discuss Russia and Uganda’s LGBT rights records with Francis.
Paulón noted the pontiff was among the most vocal opponents of his country’s same-sex marriage bill before lawmakers approved it in 2010. Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner criticized then-Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio over his rhetoric against the measure that included calls for a “holy war” against it.
“We hope that in this meeting President Obama, like he did when he visited Russia (in 2013) and in recent declarations against Uganda’s homophobic laws, brings to the table at this meeting the need for the Vatican to change the position it has had on LGBT rights,” Paulón told the Blade. “We know that Obama supports marriage equality and the pope was the most active opponent to the Argentina law.”
Paulón added he hopes Obama will also urge Francis to change the Vatican’s policy towards sexual abuse.
“The Vatican must stop covering up and protecting pedophiles,” said Paulón.
LGBT Catholics continue to welcome Francis’ more moderate approach to gays in the church since he succeeded Pope Benedict XVI last March.
The Argentine-born pontiff said last summer during an interview with La Civiltà Cattolica, an Italian Jesuit magazine, the church has grown “obsessed” with same-sex marriage, abortion and contraception. Francis 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.
The former archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2001 visited a hospice to kiss and wash the feet of 12 people with AIDS. Dignity USA Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke told the Blade during an interview earlier this month 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” that Benedict and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, used.
The LGBT Catholics and advocates with whom the Blade spoke about the first anniversary of Francis’ pontificate noted church teaching on homosexuality, marriage and other issues has not changed in spite of his 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. The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child last month sharply criticized the Vatican over its continued opposition to homosexuality and anti-gay rhetoric that contributes to the “social stigmatization of and violence against” LGBT adolescents and children raised by same-sex couples.
A White House spokesperson on Wednesday declined to say whether Obama would raise LGBT-specific issues during his meeting with Francis.
“You always welcome the opportunity to meet with the pope,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters on Wednesday while traveling to Rome from Brussels where Obama discussed Russia’s continued aggression towards Ukraine with European and NATO allies. “But in particular, the president – I think like many people around the world – has been inspired by the first year that Pope Francis has had, by the way in which he has motivated people around the world by his message of inclusion, of equality, which has deep meaning for people both of the Catholic faith, but people of different faiths all over the world.”
“It’s an opportunity for them to get to know each other personally, for the president to hear from the pope about what he is trying to do around the world, and really for the president to express his appreciation for the pope’s leadership on a range of challenges that he has highlighted in his first year,” added Rhodes.
Chile
Far-right Chilean President José Antonio Kast takes office
Former congressman opposes LGBTQ rights
Chilean President José Antonio Kast took office on Wednesday.
Kast — the far-right leader of the Republican Party who was a member of the country’s House of Deputies from 2002-2018 — defeated Jeannette Jara — a member of the Communist Party of Chile who was the former labor and social welfare minister in former President Gabriel Boric’s government — in last year’s presidential election.
The Chilean constitution prevented Boric from running for a second consecutive term.
The Washington Blade has previously reported Kast has expressed his opposition to gender-specific policies, comprehensive sex education, and reforms to Chile’s anti-discrimination laws. Kast has also publicly opposed the country’s marriage equality law that took effect on March 10, 2022, the day before Boric took office.
The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, a Chilean LGBTQ and intersex rights group known by the acronym Movilh, declared a “state of alert” after Kast’s election, “given this leader’s (Kast’s) public and political trajectory, characterized for decades by systematic opposition to laws and policies aimed at equality and nondiscrimination of LGBTIQ+ individuals.”
Argentine President Javier Milei, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Landau, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado are among those who attended Kast’s inauguration that took place in the Chilean Congress in Valparaíso.
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
Florida
Fla. House passes ‘Anti-Diversity’ bill
Measure could open door to overturning local LGBTQ rights protections
The Florida House of Representatives on March 10 voted 77-37 to approve an “Anti-Diversity in Local Government” bill that opponents have called an extreme and sweeping measure that, among other things, could overturn local LGBTQ rights protections.
The House vote came six days after the Florida Senate voted 25-11 to pass the same bill, opening the way to send it to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supports the bill and has said he would sign it into law.
Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization that opposed the legislation, issued a statement saying the bill “would ban, repeal, and defund any local government programming, policy, or activity that provides ‘preferential treatment or special benefits’ or is designed or implemented with respect to race, color, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
The statement added that the bill would also threaten city and county officials with removal from office “for activities vaguely labeled as DEI,” with only limited exceptions.
“Written in broad and ambiguous language, the bill is the most extreme of its kind in the country, creating confusion and fear for local governments that recognize LGBTQ residents and other communities that contribute to strength and vibrancy of Florida cities,” the group said in a separate statement released on March 10.
The Miami Herald reports that state Sen. Clay Yarborough (R-Jacksonville), the lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said he added language to the bill that would allow the city of Orlando to continue to support the Pulse nightclub memorial, a site honoring 49 mostly LGBTQ people killed in the 2016 mass shooting at the LGBTQ nightclub.
But the Equality Florida statement expresses concern that the bill can be used to target LGBTQ programs and protections.
“Debate over the bill made expressly clear that LGBTQ people were a central target of the legislation,” the group’s statement says. “The public record, the bill sponsors’ own statements, and hours of legislative debate revealed the animus driving the effort to pressure local governments into pulling back from recognizing or resourcing programs targeting LGBTQ residents and other historically marginalized communities,” the statement says.
But the statement also notes that following outspoken requests by local officials, sponsors of the bill agreed to several amendments “ensuring local governments can continue to permit Pride festivals, even while navigating new restrictions on supporting or promoting them.”
The statement adds, “Florida’s LGBTQ community knows all too well how to fight back against unjust laws. Just as we did, following the passage of Florida’s notorious ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ law, we will fight every step of the way to limit the impact of this legislation, including in the courts.”
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