Vatican does U-turn to praise Oscar Wilde
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Oscar Wilde once said, ‘We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars’ and in a heavenly way the gay playwright found praise today from an unlikely source – the Vatican.
In its second U-turn in a week, the official mouthpiece of Pope Benedict XVI, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote that he was a man ‘always looking for the beautiful and the good but also for God’.
It also added that: ‘Wilde was a fortunate man, as more than 100 years after his death his works had not been forgotten and continue to fly off the shelves.’
The eulogy comes just days after the Vatican changed its stance to give its approval to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter – who it had once described as the ‘wrong kind of hero’.
Wilde, who converted to Roman Catholicism as he lay dying in a Paris hotel bed in 1900, served two years in prison for acts of gross indecency with men, and his behaviour shocked strait-laced Victorian England.
Given his homosexual tendencies and the Catholic Church’s strict view of homosexuality, the fact that it had now embraced him was all the more surprising.
The article praising the Irish-born writer was headlined ‘When Oscar Wilde met Pius IX’ and was a review of a new book on him called ‘A Portrait of Oscar Widle’ by Italian author Paolo Gulisano.
L’Osservatore Romano wrote: ‘Oscar Wilde was a man constantly looking for the beautiful and the good, but also for a God that he never challenged, respected and who he fully embraced after his dramatic experience of jail, concluding with his communion in the Catholic Church.’
Monda also noted how Dublin-born Wilde had said that ‘Catholicism was the only religion to die in’ and also recalled his little remembered audience with Pope Pius IX in 1877.
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Gay sailor’s family blames military after his death
Relatives of a slain sailor are calling the 29-year-old’s death a hate crime.
Rose Roy of Beaumont said her nephew, Navy Seaman August Provost III, had complained a year before about being harassed for being gay.
Roy said she advised Provost to report and document the incidents, but she said the military did little to help.
“He went to the Navy to serve and protect,” she said in an interview with Beaumont’s KFDM News, “he didn’t get protected at all.”
Roy told The Associated Press that the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy discouraged her nephew from asking for help.
“That phrase is just stupid because it tells them they have no one to speak to,” she said.
The 29-year-old Houston native was found dead Tuesday at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. Roy said the family was told that Provost was shot three times, had his hands and feet bound, his mouth gagged, and body burned.
The family plans to hold funeral services July 10 in Houston.
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A Texas gay raid and Stonewall
The Fort Worth police have “some explaining to do,” said Jacquielynn Floyd in The Dallas Morning News. On June 28, officers raided a gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge, sending a patron to intensive care with a head injury. “In what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence,” it took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid, the gay-rights movement’s catalyst. The cops’ story—drunk gay men groped them—doesn’t add up.
Well, police chief Jeff Halstead is backing his men and their classic “Gay Panic Defense,” said Dan Savage in The Stranger, which goes: He made a pass at me, so I was justified in beating/killing him. That would still be illegal, but it’s also bunk. “I’ve been in a million gay bars” like the Rainbow Lounge, and “gay men don’t grope police officers when they enter gay bars.”
It is, “obviously, very sad” that one of the Rainbow Lounge patrons is in critical condition, said Rod Dreher in BeliefNet, but come on, the report that “cops who entered a gay bar were set upon by drunk, horny patrons who played grab-ass with them” is “hilarious,” and not at all far-fetched. Gay people, especially drunk gay people, can be “as stupid as the rest of us.”
Except that the hospitalized man was reportedly drinking bottled water, said Jeff Epperly in New England’s Bay Windows. But 40 years after Stonewall, this kind of gay harassment goes on all over the U.S., not just in Texas. The raid at Forth Worth’s Rainbow Lounge “was the work of a police department that wasn’t smart enough to hide its bigotry.” See A Texas gay raid and Stonewall The Week Magazine
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COPS: NYC GAY BASHINGS COULD BE LINKED
The NYC Anti-Violence Project has issued a community alert now that the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crimes Bureau thinks several recent anti-gay attacks on the Upper East Side might have come at the hands of the same assailants.
In addition to Joseph Holladay, brutally beaten and robbed, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly now states, “There was an incident in Carl Shurz Park that we believe he [sic] may be associated with two other events—one that happened Saturday morning, the other happened Sunday morning. All of these events happened on the Upper East Side, the 19th precinct.
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New Study Finds Gap in LGBT Health Services
With all the media coverage lately around Gay Pride events, as well as around marriage equality, it is ironic that so little is really known about the lives and health needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This lack of specific information on the LGBT community is not just an academic problem; policymakers, especially those in government, demand real numbers to document the existence of problems. This is particularly true in these tough economic times, as funders, government officials and state agencies rightly demand efficient programs that are targeted like laser beams on specific, documented problems. In this context as with so many things, knowledge equals power: the power to allocate resources and work to fix these problems.
At the national level, researchers have estimated that LGBT people lag behind on seven of the ten targets set by the U.S. government to improve health nationally, called Healthy People 2010. In New York City, we know that LGBT lag behind on at least six of NYC’s health goals, called Take Care New York. However, most states do not measure sexual orientation on their health surveys, and none have consistently measured gender identity.
As researchers and advocates, we are working to change that. In our recent work funded by the New York State Department of Health interviewing 60 experts in health and human services and surveying 3,500 LGBT New Yorkers about their health and human service needs, we have found some striking disparities between their experiences and those of non-LGBT people. Empire State Pride Agenda has just this week published these findings in a report entitled “LGBT Health and Human Service Needs in New York State.”
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Huffington Post
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Private meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at convention will address sexuality, ministry
By Mary Frances Schjonberg, July 01, 2009
[Episcopal News Service] Eight members of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies are scheduled meet privately with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at General Convention in a session that is intended in part to address lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in the church.
General Convention meets July 8-17 in Anaheim, California, and Williams will be present July 7-9.
The session is not an official convention meeting and thus there has been no announcement of the plans. However, when contacted by Episcopal News Service, the Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe of the Diocese of California confirmed the details.
Barlowe said that he and the other deputies understood the meeting was to be brief and private, but that it was not a secret.
“It’s not a summit or constituted in an official way,” he said. “We don’t expect to issue a communiqué or anything like that.”
Instead, Barlowe said, he hopes the meeting will be a chance for dialogue and a chance for Williams to hear about the ministries of eight Episcopalians whose “significant fundamental characteristic” is “our deep love for the Episcopal Church within the Anglican Communion.” The eight deputies’ lives reflect the broad range of ministry of all Episcopalians, he said.
Barlowe set the meeting in the context of the communion-wide Listening Process, which is intended to hear all sides of the issues concerning human sexuality and the church.
Williams, Barlowe suggested, has not had a chance to hear about the broad range of ministry and leadership in which LGBT Episcopalians are involved.
There’s a larger hope attached to the meeting, according to Barlowe.
“Anytime committed Christians come together, something remarkable happens,” he said. “What comes to the fore is the commitment to be better bearers of the good news of Christ.”
The chance to have such a meeting, he said, is typical of the way leadership in the Episcopal Church seeks ways to move the mission and ministry of the church forward by trying to form partnerships with “other passionate ministers such as Archbishop Rowan.”
Barlowe, who has been a candidate in episcopal elections in the dioceses of California and Newark, said that he first raised the possibility of a meeting with the archbishop when the California deputation was discussing Anglican Communion issues. His colleagues encouraged him to pursue the idea and Barlowe says he sought the support of other LGBT deputies.
When he contacted Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori or House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson to ask for time with the archbishop, the request came with the backing of many of those deputies, he said.
Jefferts Schori and Anderson, along with their staffs, “graciously” agreed to ask Williams to meet with some deputies and Williams “graciously” agreed, Barlowe said.
Jefferts Schori’s and Anderson’s willingness to help bring about the meeting “is totally consistent with their leadership” of the church and their goal of fostering “serious and respectful conversation,” he added.
The presiding officers did not appoint the deputies, Barlowe said. Instead, he was asked to put the group together. He said he consulted with others and sought deputies who reflected the range of geographic, age, and ministerial diversity of those people who supported the request for the meeting.
In addition to Barlowe, the deputies are:
- Louie Crew, Diocese of Newark;
- the Rev. Canon Lisa Gray, Diocese of Michigan;
- the Rev. Tobias Haller BSG, Diocese of New York;
- Joanne O’Donnell, Diocese of Los Angeles;
- the Rev. Altagracia Perez, Diocese of Los Angeles;
- Rebecca Snow, Diocese of Alaska; and
- Michael Spencer, Diocese of Eastern Michigan.
The Rev. Eric H. F. Law, known for his work in multicultural leadership training, has been helping the deputies prepare for their meeting, according to Barlowe, and Law may attend the session with Williams.
Because they do not all know each other, Barlowe said, the group has been presenting to each other their “ministry biographies.” He called that experience “emotionally powerful.”
“Once again, I’ve been overwhelmed by just how committed the ministers of this church are,” he said, adding that hearing the deputies’ stories “made me incredibly thankful yet again for being part of the Episcopal Church.”
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The Human Toll Of Anti-Gay Hate
How does a family react to a son’s life taken because he is gay? The toll taken on those left behind is explored in PBS’ documentary Beyond Hatred premiering tonight. On the night of September 13, 2002, in Leo Legrange Park in Rheims, France, Francois Chenu was brutally murdered by three neo-Nazi skinheads. When the trio came upon Francois they asked him if he was gay and he answered yes. The twenty-nine-year-old fought back as the men beat him, then, when it was over, he called them cowards, prompting the men to kill their victim. Acclaimed Director Olivier Meyrou dispenses with the dramatic reenactments. In fact, the film mostly ignores Francois’ death by drowning, opting instead to concentrate on the lives of the family left behind. It’s powerful filmmaking, to say the least. Meyrou catches up with Francois’ parents and three sibling two years after his death, as the killers’ trial is about to open. The documentary focuses on the mundane lives of the Chenu family, allowing us to sense the strength necessary to continue after such a brutal crime.
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Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns
Reading the headlines, the news isn’t good for gay Utahns.
Former Equality Utah Director Mike Thompson has moved to San Francisco, taking his organizing skills from Holladay to the Haight. He says it’s personal, not professional.
Then, Pride Week opened with what looks like a hate crime.
Christopher Vonnegut Allen was arrested after allegedly beating his gay neighbors — a man and a woman — bloody in Ogden. One victim needed surgery. You may not have heard of it. Prosecutors charged Allen with only one count of burglary.
And this week, two nice Mormon ladies from Santa Cruz decided to give their unwilling church one more chance to reconcile with its gay members and the LGBT community outside the flock.
While the rest of the country moves forward — New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, for goodness sake — this place seems perpetually stuck.
It probably helps that Thompson missed the headlines. Still, he’s optimistic.
“You can’t have a defeatist attitude,” he says. “You’ve got to press against it in order to even hope for a change.”
He points to Salt Lake City’s nondiscrimination ordinance and domestic partners registry, an anti-bullying law, polls that show Utahns supported the Common Ground Initiative (even if lawmakers didn’t).
“Maybe they’re not significant in some people’s minds, but there are measurables there,” he says. “People are having conversations. Change is going to come sooner or later.”
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Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns
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Gay partners celebrate rite to bless relationships
Denise Chustz held on to her partner, Wendy Suchowski, tightly as they stared at one another Saturday afternoon.
As the sun beamed down on the Pointe Coupee couple, they began to smile broadly after the Rev. Keith Mozingo, announced, “You may now kiss your partner.”
Next to them, their friends, Adam White and Bolton Morris, of Plaquemine, did the same. The two couples were among the approximately 30 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples who took part in a blessing of relationships ceremony during the third annual Baton Rouge Pride Fest.
Mozingo, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church, officiated over the blessing of relationships at Magnolia Mound Plantation. The church is part of a national denomination that recognizes and supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles and relationships.
Mozingo said the blessings performed Saturday do not constitute legally recognized unions.
“It’s finally saying to those couples that (they’re) in a valid relationship,” Mozingo said.
White said he and Morris will wait to get married until it is legal in Louisiana.
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Gay partners celebrate rite to bless relationships
2TheAdvocate
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Man charged with hate crime in assault on two gay men
A Central Islip man used anti-gay epithets while beating and kicking two men early Friday morning, then told police he would do it again, Suffolk authorities said.
Wenzola Rountree, 31, was charged with assault as a hate crime and aggravated harassment after he approached three openly gay men walking out of a friend’s home on Earle Street in Central Islip at 1:15 a.m. Friday, said Det. Sgt. Robert Reecks of the Hate Crimes Unit.
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