First a recap:

Section 3 of DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. The entire law is just over a page long. The relevant part says that for federal purposes “the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.’’

That means federal employees in same-sex marriages are discriminated against because of the sex of their spouse. That can take a heavy and unfair financial toll on a marriage in the form of additional health-care payments and lost retirement benefits.

There’s also the damage to couples’ dignity, for which there is no price tag.

The law is short on words but long on the hurt it has caused.

If the court upholds DOMA, as the House Republican leadership has asked it to do, discrimination will continue. Overturning DOMA will be followed by cheers of celebration by those who believe in full human rights for all and also questions about its implementation. The office of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) had no comment.

“It’s premature to speculate on what happens after a Supreme Court decision when we don’t have a decision,” said Fred Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization. “When a decision comes down, the administration has said they will implement any Supreme Court ruling in compliance with the law, and we have every reason to believe that’s what they’ll do. President Obama has a record of advancing equality for gay and lesbian Americans, and we have confidence the president will move to protect our families.”

The Obama administration, however, would have a choice on how broadly to interpret a court decision to overturn DOMA, as reported last week by my colleague Peter Wallsten in The Washington Post and by the New York Times.

The question hinges on the “state of celebration” and the state of residence.

Federal employees living in the 12 states and the District where same-sex marriages are legal would get full spousal benefits immediately if DOMA is overturned. But it’s not clear what that decision would mean for those who were legally married in one place, D.C. or Maryland for example, but now live in a place without marriage equality, like Virginia.

“It would make sense that these same-sex spouses would, in the absence of DOMA Section 3, be entitled to employment benefits on the same terms as all other married federal employees. It also makes sense that the federal government, as an employer, would treat all of its employees the same across its entire workforce,” said Gary Buseck, legal director of Gay Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) in Boston.

If the administration were to use the state-of-celebration standard, what would count would be where the couple was married, not resides. Use of the state-of-residence standard would result in some crazy contradictions. Federal employees married, living and working in the District or Silver Spring to same-sex partners, for example, would have full spousal benefits, while a similar worker a cubicle away who lives in Alexandria would be denied some of those benefits.

“For a number of important benefits, like spousal health coverage, there is no statute or regulation posing a barrier for civilian federal employees to be recognized as married by the federal government if the couple entered into a valid marriage, even if they live in a state that disrespects the marriage,” said Susan Sommer, senior counsel and director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, which has fought against DOMA.

There could be some obstacles for retirement benefits based on the place of residence, she added, but “the federal government has a long history of navigating these kinds of issues. The Obama administration has made very clear its commitment to treating married same-sex couples with equality for federal government purposes.”

At a reception last week for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month, Obama did not mention the coming DOMA decision directly, but he did say, “We’re reaching a turning point. We’ve become not just more accepting; we’ve become more loving, as a country and as a people. Hearts and minds change with time. Laws do, too.”

He added: “And as I said in my inaugural address, if we truly are created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

If DOMA falls, he’ll be able to apply that to benefits for federal employees, no matter where they live and to whom they said “I do.”

Twitter: @JoeDavidsonWP

Previous columns by Joe Davidson are available at wapo.st/JoeDavidson.

9 hours ago

People traveling to New York City for Gay Pride events over the June 28-30 weekend are being told to seek advice about vaccination for invasive meningococcal disease, in a report released Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Doctors from Weill Cornell Medical College and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene are raising the alarm in the article due to a deadly bacterial meningitis outbreak affecting men who have sex with other men.

Since August of 2010, New York health authorities have received reports of 22 cases of the disease among gay men or men who have had intimate encounters with other men. Seven of these men have died, a rate of death significantly higher than that found in the general population where meningitis kills between 10 and 14 percent patients, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Among 12 men infected with HIV who also came down with meningococcal disease, five died.

Last year, “meningococcal incidence among NYC [men who have sex with men] was 50-fold greater than the age-adjusted rate for the general population,” the paper stated.

Los Angeles has also seen cases among the gay community, four since last December. There have also been two previous outbreaks in Toronto and Chicago in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Out of 12 cases in those two cities, 42 percent died.

Many people carry the bacteria that causes meningitis, Neisseria meningitides, in their noses and throats. Among children, the rate of colonization with the bacteria can be as high as 37 percent.

But most don’t suffer any consequences. The current rate of invasive disease is tiny, between 0.3 and 0.6 cases for every 100,000 people, according to the Annals report.

For those who do wind up sick, the consequences can be severe. The bacteria invades the linings of the brain and spinal cord, leading to disability, hearing loss or brain damage, or death. It can also enter the bloodstream and cause septicemia.

Fortunately, there’s a vaccine – the CDC recommends that all 11 and 12 year olds be vaccinated — which is why the doctors decided to issue their warning, now, just before Gay Pride weekend celebrations.

“It would be reasonable for people traveling to New York City and participating in the events to talk to their doctors about whether or not they might benefit from vaccinations,” Dr. Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control in the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told NBCNews.com.

The city saw one case in 2010, 4 cases in 2011, and 13 in 2012. In October of last year, New York mounted a vaccine campaign targeting gay media, bars, and communities. The drive seems to have succeeded. Although four cases were reported to authorities earlier this year, there have been no cases in the last four months, Varma said.

Los Angeles, which has seen four cases among men who have sex with men, does not currently recommend a vaccine drive, but suggests that “concerned individuals consult their personal health care provider to discuss prevention options, including vaccination.” Los Angeles is offering free vaccines at clinics around the county. Providers in San Diego have been advised to talk to their patients who are traveling to the Gay Pride events about the vaccine recommendation in NYC, according to Dr. Eric McDonald, deputy health officer for the county of San Diego .

Following the HIV epidemic that began in the early 1980s, social systems for alerting gay men to health issues became well established. But many men have sex with men “on the down low,” Varma explained, and “in black and Hispanic communities, where there’s a stigma around sexual identity, we face challenges getting the message out. These are groups that don’t necessarily read gay media or websites.”

That the outbreak has struck younger men between ages 20 and 40 is another problem since they may not often see a doctor.

Experts are puzzled by the bacteria’s virulence and deadliness. The strain involved belongs to serogroup C (there are also A, B, Y, and W-135 strains), which is a typical strain for North America.

“The mortality rates from this strain is higher than is typically seen nationally,” Weill Cornell’s Dr. Matthew Simon, one of the article’s authors, said. “We don’t know for sure why.”

Having a compromised immune system due to HIV infection is one obvious reason, but, Simon explained, “it’s a high mortality rate without HIV, too. What are the underlying microbiological reasons for that? At this point there’s not a good answer.”

Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young Ph.D., of “The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction,” (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com), now on sale.

Opinion »

Op-Ed: Turkey’s False Nostalgia

Turkey’s past is no model for a democratic future. Earlier leaders, including Ataturk, were just as authoritarian as Erdogan.

The Supreme Court rulings are not as simple as whether gays and lesbians can marry or not, and whether they become eligible for federal benefits.

WASHINGTON — If the range of possible Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage this month requires a scorecard, the potential confusion arising from those decisions may demand a manual.

It’s not as simple as whether gays and lesbians can marry or not, and whether they become eligible for federal benefits. The two decisions are likely to create new questions for couples in civil unions and those who move between states, as well as for employers.

As a result, what’s already a complex situation for many gay and lesbian couples could get more complicated, at least initially, says John Culhane, a law professor at Widener University’s Delaware campus and co-author of Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to come up with a second edition pretty quickly,” Culhane says. “Whatever the court does, some things are going to change.”

A few of the potential decisions could make things easier or leave them unchanged, but those are among the more unlikely outcomes. The court could uphold California’s gay marriage ban, leaving the status quo there. It could declare a new right to marriage for all same-sex couples nationwide — an initial upheaval, but one offering long-term uniformity.

And the court could leave intact the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal benefits to legally married gays and lesbians in 12 states and the District of Columbia that allow same-sex marriage. The law has created an uneven situation within and among states, but at least such a ruling wouldn’t require change.

But if DOMA’s benefits ban is struck down or the case is thrown out on technical grounds, both of which appear more likely, several unanswered questions would arise:

– What happens if legally married couples have moved to a state without same-sex marriage? The section of DOMA that protects those states from having to recognize marriages performed in other states would apply to state benefits, but what about federal benefits? That could be up to President Obama — and future court cases.

That’s because some federal agencies base marriage rights on where the license was issued, so the federal benefits would follow the couple; for others, however — including Social Security — it’s the current residence.

“I don’t think anybody really knows how that’s going to play out,” says Steve Branton, a financial planner at Mosaic Financial Partners in San Francisco.

– What happens to couples in civil unions, from New Jersey to Hawaii, who currently receive virtually the same state benefits as those who are married?

Federal law does not recognize civil unions, so they wouldn’t automatically qualify for federal benefits. But Todd Solomon, an expert on domestic partner benefits at the law firm McDermott Will Emery, says another legal fight could be expected.

New opportunities also would arise for gay and lesbian couples if the federal law denying benefits is struck down. Some are straightforward, such as being able to contest the last three years of federal tax returns. Others are more dramatic; for instance, they could move to a gay-marriage state because of the added attraction of federal benefits.

Getting divorced is another matter: If a same-sex married couple moves to a state that has not legalized gay marriage, they may have to move back to the first state to break the marriage apart, Branton says. A San Francisco attorney jokingly coined such a marriage “wedlocked.”

Striking down DOMA also would force employers in the affected states to change their benefit plans.

“In the long run, it would be easier for employers,” says Richard Stover, an actuary with Buck Consultants who deals with human resources and benefits for gays and lesbians. Many employers’ health plans already cover same-sex spouses and domestic partners, he says.

As for California’s Proposition 8, most speculation has focused on rulings that would permit same-sex marriages to resume in California for the first time since 2008. That could happen if the Supreme Court upholds one of the lower court rulings, denies standing to those defending the law, or dismisses the case outright.

Some of those options could leave unanswered questions as well:

If the ban’s backers lacked the legal right to defend it, the federal district court ruling would stand. That could be interpreted to apply only to the two couples who sued, to the two counties where they live (Los Angeles and Alameda), or statewide.

If the case is dismissed, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision would stand. Three other states in the circuit — Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii — allow civil unions or domestic partnerships. Same-sex couples there might argue that they deserve marriage rights as well.

Says Culhane: “There’s always the question of how broadly precedent will be applied.”

Civil rights activists won’t win everything, but they will make significant progress.

By the end of June, we’re expected to have a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on California’s Proposition 8 case, which banned gay marriage, and on DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.

While journalists should probably stick to telling you what happened yesterday, I’ll go out on a limb with a couple predictions of what I expect the court to do, based on the fact that I covered the original Proposition 8 case in San Francisco and interviews with the parties since then.

Bottom line: I expect a “bronze medal” win for gays and lesbians, with the Supreme Court upholding lower-court decisions that ruled Proposition 8′s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. Similarly, I expect the portion of DOMA that’s being challenged to be thrown out, giving gay and lesbian couples more than 1,000 federal benefits that straight couples now get.

But why a bronze medal win rather a gold? I don’t expect the Supreme Court to issue a sweeping, 50-state ruling on gay marriage. Instead, look for the justices to confine their ruling only to California, probably finding that the proponents of Proposition 8 had no “standing” to bring the case since they were private parties, rather than the governor or the state attorney general. This one-state victory for gays is why the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office characterizes it as the “bronze medal scenario.”

After that, other states can continue to decide same-sex marriage on their own.

Then there will most assuredly be lawsuits filed immediately after the high court’s ruling, claiming, for example, that the ruling only applies to the two couples who brought the Proposition 8 case to the courts in the first place. Those challenges will be quickly fought, and, I predict, successfully defeated.

Why am I so confident that the high court will rule in favor of gays? Judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over the original Proposition 8 case and ruled it unconstitutional, recently spoke to the Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast in Palm Springs. He told the crowd the critical point in the Supreme Court arguments came when proponents of Propostion 8 admitted that marriage is the only benefit that they think gays should be denied. That would mean their opposition to gay marriage is based purely on discrimination.

Judge Walker pointed to this exchange between Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the lawyer defending Proposition 8, Charles Cooper.

Sotomayor: “Outside of the … outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits or imposing burdens on them? Is there any other rational decision-making that the government could make? Denying them a job, not granting them benefits of some sort, any other decision?”

Cooper’s response: “Your Honor, I cannot. I do not have anything to offer you in that regard.”

On DOMA, I predict the result will be much more of a gold medal win for gays and lesbians. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 7-to-2 ruling in favor of gays, with Justices John Roberts and even Justice Clarence Thomas joining in, based on their strong feelings about states’ rights. Marriage has always been governed by the states, not the federal government.

It’s also worth remembering that Chief Justice Roberts actually did pro bono work for gays on a previous Supreme Court case when Roberts was a private lawyer working in Washington.

Meanwhile, if I’m wrong on all this, rest assured that we’ll have gay marriage in California anyway, because it will head back to the ballot, where it would pass. The latest affirmation of that came in this week’s USC/Los Angeles Times Poll, which shows nearly six in 10 Californians now support same-sex marriage.

As for when gay and lesbian marriages could begin in California, rulings from the high court usually take about 25 days to take effect. But the celebrating will happen when the ruling comes in June, which also happens to be Gay Pride Month across the country.

Hank Plante is an Emmy- and Peabody-winning journalist who spent three decades as a reporter for the CBS TV stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. This originally appeared in The Desert Sun.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including ourBoard of Contributors.

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The Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone — no relation to the American publication — has been a leading player in anti-gay crusades in the east African nation. The documentary Call Me Kuchu profiles a community of activists at the center of the political and cultural storm.

Cinedigm

The Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone — no relation to the American publication — has been a leading player in anti-gay crusades in the east African nation. The documentary Call Me Kuchu profiles a community of activists at the center of the political and cultural storm.

Cinedigm

Call Me Kuchu

• Director: Katherine Fairfax Wright, Malika Zouhali-Worrall
• Genre: Documentary, Drama
• Running Time: 87 minutes

With: David Kato, Christopher Senyonjo

(Recommended)

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Horrific and uplifting, the excellent documentary Call Me Kuchu is partly framed as a portrait of David Kato, Uganda’s first openly gay man. An activist of enormous courage and persistence — against odds that make the U.S. fight for marriage equality seem like a cakewalk — Kato was a savvy political strategist, with wit, charm and joie de vivre to burn. And he loved a good party, with his friends in drag where possible. But he was terrified of sleeping alone on his farm.

And with good reason: In January 2011, a year after directors Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zoukali-Worrall began making Call Me Kuchu, Kato was bludgeoned to death in his home by a man he’d been kind to. Because his tiny group was well-connected, his murder instantly became global news.

Call Me Kuchu — the word is a local colloqualism for “queer” — doesn’t mine the story of his murder for its drama, though, and really there’s no need to, for it was only the culminating incident in a numbing, constant narrative: Kato and his tiny band of fellow activists lived with hatred and violence day in, day out.

The film is structured around their legal fight against a Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill that called for the death penalty for HIV-positive gays — and prison for anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, who failed to turn in anyone known to be L,G,B or T.

You’d think such malice, such flagrant violation of civil rights, could occur only in a fascist state these days. But the film shows in frightening detail that such formal legislative proposals are made possible precisely by the canny exploitation of the rickety new democratic infrastructure of a post-colonial African state.

In the wake of Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship, and still operating under the long shadow of British influence, Uganda has built a modern political and legal system. Yet amid widespread poverty and uneven education, a culture of reactionary extremism persists, its flames regularly fanned by religious zealots, unscrupulous politicians and media hacks.

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David Kato, a teacher and LGBT rights activist — as well as the first openly gay man in Uganda — is at the forefront of Call Me Kuchu’s story.

Cinedigm

David Kato, a teacher and LGBT rights activist — as well as the first openly gay man in Uganda — is at the forefront of Call Me Kuchu’s story.

Cinedigm

We see American evangelists, clearly thrilled to find more fertile soil for anti-gay rabble-rousing than they did at home, whipping up crowds to take action against “sodomites” who would corrupt their children. The cocky young editor of the trash tabloid Rolling Stone — no relation to the American magazine published (ironically enough) by out gay media mogul Jann Wenner — crows about putting photos of gays he outed on the cover under the headline “Hang Them.”

Crowds of other haters crash Kato’s funeral to scream invective at the mourners. And at the United Nations, as country after country voices opposition to the Ugandan bill, the representative from Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe begs to differ, citing the fear that African children could be recruited to “abhorrent practices.”

Mostly, though, Call Me Kuchu is a celebration of Kato’s small band of LGBT activists, an opportunity for them to tell their stories. They’re gentle Christians, and it becomes a privilege to know them all, including the octogenarian straight cleric who openly supports them.

Meet Naome, a serenely beautiful lesbian who walks a fine line building bridges to the mainstream world, knowing that if she’s outed all her gains will crumble.

Here’s Stosh, a 20-something trans man, who tells of being berated by his grandmother years ago, after a man saw the teenage Stosh fooling around with another young woman — and administered a “corrective rape.”

And this is Longjones, a vivacious LGBT counselor who came out after a long sojourn in the closet, who celebrates a key legal victory by emceeing an impromptu drag beauty pageant.

What keeps the group active is the knowledge that their greatest enemy is isolation; even as they pack their bags for yet another move prompted by a fresh round of threats, they stay in close touch.

By the end of this hair-raising film you may share their grief, their hope and their dream of a gay village that will shelter them from a society that, despite all its trappings of freedom and modernity, refuses to receive them as equals. (Recommended)

Only a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for some of the nation’s top evangelical activists to gather in Washington D.C. on the eve of major court rulings on gay rights and the definition of marriage – and skirt those issues.

But that’s precisely what happened Thursday afternoon at the kickoff luncheon for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference.

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Four of the most recognizable conservatives in the Senate, along with Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, addressed the crowd of several hundred. And between the four of them, Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin mustered just three glancing mentions of the gay-marriage debate.

(PHOTOS: 25 gay-rights milestones)

With the Supreme Court weighing the fate of both the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, the near-absence of the subject from Thursday’s agenda was a striking omission – yet another indication of how much the politics of marriage have changed over the last decade.

There were no warnings against judicial activism or denunciations of self-appointed legislators in black robes, no pledges to revive the Federal Marriage Amendment or vows to stop the homosexual agenda in its tracks.

As recently as 2008, it was Democrats who paid glancing deference to the pro-gay marriage sentiments of their base, before moving on to other topics. Today, few Republicans have reversed their views on gay marriage – nearly every major GOP lawmaker in the country opposes it – but they have apparently reconsidered their enthusiasm for talking about it.

(PHOTOS: Pols who evolved on gay marriage)

Of the speakers Thursday, Rubio was the most willing to address the issue. Even he introduced the subject in lateral terms, praising conservatives who get involved in politics despite knowing that “just because you disagree with someone on the definition of marriage, you get called a bigot.”

“You are the salt of the earth,” he said later in his remarks. “Whether it’s the issues we hold dear in our society, such as marriage or the value of every life, or compassion towards our fellow man, we are called upon to preserve those things.”

The only other speaker to mention the issue of marriage was Lee, another first-term senator elected in 2010 on a platform of strictly limiting the size and role of government.

But Lee – like Rubio – spent far more time on other parts of his proposed agenda, emphasizing conservative policies toward the family such as school choice and welfare reform.

“Conservatives have argued for years that the family must be at the core of our worldview. On issues like school prayer, or the right to life, or traditional marriage, or home-schooling, conservatives have said protecting the family is the most important part of our moral agenda,” Lee said.

Paul and Johnson did not mention marriage at all, focusing instead on (in Paul’s case) the persecution of Christians overseas and the problems with U.S. foreign aid programs and (in Johnson’s case) the threat of overpowering government policies like the Affordable Care Act.

Conservative leaders say it would be wrong to read too much into the speeches Thursday. There’s no question, they say, that in the event of a sweeping Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay unions, the Republican Party’s leadership and its field of 2016 candidates would take the side of social conservatives.

A new report paints a mixed picture of acceptance for LGBT adults in America.

Most lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults say America is becoming more accepting of them.

About 92% of LGBT adults say society has become more accepting in the past decade, a survey released today finds. But 58% say they have been the target of slurs or jokes at some point in their lives. About 39% say they have been rejected by a family member or friend.

The Pew Research Center conducted the online survey April 11-29 among a national sample of 1,197 adults who had previously identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Paul Taylor, a report co-author and Pew Research Center executive vice president, says, “Many are still searching for a comfortable, secure place in a society where acceptance is growing but is still limited.”

Nicholas Sakurai, associate director of the LGBT Equity Center at the University of Maryland in College Park, says, “Inclusion is growing over time.” Being inclusive can mean not discriminating, respecting the name or pronoun that people choose for themselves, and not assuming that someone is straight, he says.

The survey also found that 39% of LGBT adults say same-sex marriage has drawn too much attention from other issues that are important to the LGBT community.

John O’Connor, executive director of Equality California, a Los Angeles-based advocacy organization for LGBT people, says same-sex marriage is a priority. “But it should not be prioritized at the risk of overlooking the many other important areas where we need to achieve progress,” he says. “We look at the need for safe schools, anti-bullying efforts, transgender equality, protection for LGBT seniors, the entire arena of health, issues around LGBT families, and immigration.”

Other survey findings:

• About 79% of LGBT respondents are Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 49% of the general public.

• Just 18% of LGBT adults say they are “very happy,” compared with 30% of adults in the general public.

• About 55% of LGBT adults say the USA is headed in the right direction in general. About 32% of adults in the general public says so.

This survey is part of Pew’s LGBT in Changing Times series, which is focused on issues for the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions on same-sex marriage this month.

About 93% of LGBT adults favor same-sex marriage, the report says. Support among the general public is lower at 51%, but it is a record high, according to a Pew poll released June 6.

Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies of the not-for-profit Family Research Council, based in Washington, D.C., urges caution about redefining marriage. “Society needs children, and children need a mom and a dad,” he says.

Sakurai says, “Having marriage equality is important.” With marriage, the government sends people a message about what is acceptable, he adds.

“Marriage is a symbolic issue that resonates,” he says. “I sort of feel the love.”

STORY: Report: Most foresee legal recognition of gay marriage

The remarks — which the Vatican spokesman did not deny and the participants at the private audience confirmed — appeared to be part of an effort by the pope to take on the entrenched interests in the Vatican that many believe were a factor in why the previous pope, Benedict XVI, resigned unexpectedly. They appear to underscore numerous reports in the prelude to the election of the pope, that corruption, blackmail and violation of one of the highest codes of Catholic conduct were part of the intrigue that scandalized the Vatican in recent years.

Francis, who portrays himself as a simple pope of the people, has made it clear that one of his highest priorities is to put the Vatican’s house in order. He has appointed a group of eight cardinals to advise him on how to overhaul the Vatican, and the head of the Vatican Bank has recently given a series of interviews to journalists — an openness unheard of under his predecessors.

“It’s pretty incredible that the pope said these things,” said Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian weekly L’Espresso. “I don’t think there’s any doubt on the foundation of the phrases attributed to him. Otherwise they would have denied it.”

The pope made the remarks at the Vatican on June 6, while speaking to a meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious, the regional organization for priests and nuns of religious orders.

“In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true,” he said in Spanish, according to a loose summary of the meeting posted on a Chilean Web site, Reflection and Liberation, and later translated into English by the blog Rorate Caeli.

“The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there … We need to see what we can do,” Francis continued, in the document, produced here verbatim.

On Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, did not deny the reports of Francis’s remarks, saying only that he had no comment on a private meeting — a marked shift from past months, in which the Vatican vehemently called such reports “unverified, unverifiable or completely false.”

Also on Tuesday, the Latin American group, known by its Spanish acronym CLAR, confirmed the remarks and issued an apology, saying it was distressed that its summary had been published.

Long the subject of speculation in Vatican circles, the term gay lobby had emerged most recently in juicy, unsourced reports in the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica and a news weekly, Panorama, before the March conclave in which Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was elected.

Before his retirement on Feb. 28, the reports said, Benedict had been worn down by corruption scandals — including what they said was a network of gay priests inside the Vatican who used blackmail to gain influence and trade in state secrets.

A secret dossier compiled by three cardinals Benedict had asked to investigate a leaks scandal at the Vatican last year had revealed the network, which also included lay people who were aware of gay clerics inside the Vatican and who were in a position to blackmail them, the reports said.

Veteran watchers of the Roman Curia were unfazed by Francis’ remarks. One Vatican official, speaking on the traditional condition of anonymity, said he was not surprised that Francis had spoken of a gay lobby, but noted that the summary lacked “context and tone.”

“If you have an institution as big as the Vatican, there are some who will be homosexual, some maybe actively so,” the official said. “But whether there’s collusion or internal cooperation, I’ve certainly not been aware of it.”

Others said that the remarks were in line with the new pope’s emphasis on openness.

“A lobby of those who blackmail each other proliferates if you don’t talk about it, if there’s no air,” said Alberto Melloni, a Vatican historian and director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, a liberal Catholic research institute. “He’s right to talk about it, it breaks the mechanism in which omertà favors the use of blackmail. If no one talks about it, it’s a powerful weapon. In that way, he’s cut the issue down to size and conveys the sense that reforming the Curia is easy.”

“This is a question of blackmail and blackmailability, not homosexuality,” he added.

Two of the biggest internal threats to Benedict’s papacy, including a scandal of leaked documents, were driven by factions within the Vatican who used leaked information to vie for power. Those scandals contributed to Benedict’s decision to retire.

Writing in La Repubblica on Tuesday, the Vatican expert Paolo Rodari said that Francis had also mentioned the gay lobby in a meeting last month with bishops from Sicily.

In the summary of Francis’s remarks to the Latin American group, the pope said that he was moving ahead with improving Vatican governance, including with the committee of eight cardinals that he named in April. “I am very disorganized, I have never been good at this,” Francis is quoted as saying. “But the cardinals of the commission will move it forward.”

In its statement, CLAR added that it had not made a recording of Francis’s remarks, but that those present, a half-dozen men and women, had written a summary of his points for their personal use. “It’s clear that based on this, one cannot attribute with certainty to the Holy Father singular expressions in the text, but just the general sense,” the statement said.

The summary also quoted the pope as saying that he had not imagined he would be elected pope. He said he had come to Rome “only with the necessary clothes, I washed them at night, and suddenly this … And I did not have any chance!” the summary read. “In the London betting houses I was in 44th place, look at that, the one who bet on me won a lot, of course…! This does not come from me,” he added, indicating it had been God’s will.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

Pope Francis lamented that a “gay lobby” was at work at the Vatican in private remarks to the leadership of a key Latin American church group — a stunning acknowledgment that appears to confirm earlier reports about corruption and dysfunction in the Holy See.

The Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious — the regional organization for priests and nuns of religious orders — confirmed Tuesday that its leaders had written a synthesis of Francis’ remarks after their June 6 audience. The group, known by its Spanish acronym CLAR, said it was greatly distressed that the document had been published and apologized to the pope.

In the document, Francis is quoted as saying that while there were many holy people in the Vatican, there was also corruption: “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there … We need to see what we can do …” the synthesis reads.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday the audience was private and that as a result he had nothing to say.

In the days leading up to Pope Benedict XVI’s Feb. 28 resignation, Italian media were rife with reports of a “gay lobby” influencing papal decision-making and Vatican policy through blackmail, and suggestions that the scandal had led in part to Benedict’s decision to resign.

The unsourced reports, in the Rome daily La Repubblica and the news magazine Panorama, said details of the scandal were laid out in the secret dossier prepared for Benedict by three trusted cardinals who investigated the leaks of papal documents last year. Benedict left the dossier for Francis.

At the time, the Vatican denounced the reporting as defamatory, “unverified, unverifiable or completely false.”

Francis’ remarks on the matter, as reported by the CLAR leadership, were published Tuesday in Spanish on the progressive Chilean-based website “Reflection and Liberation” and picked up and translated by the blog Rorate Caeli, which is read in Vatican circles.

In the synthesis, Francis was quoted as being remarkably forthcoming about his administrative shortcomings, saying he was relying on the group of eight cardinals he appointed to lead a reform of the Vatican bureaucracy.

The document quoted him as saying: “I am very disorganized, I have never been good at this. But the cardinals of the commission will move it forward.”

In its statement, CLAR said no recording had been made of Francis’ remarks but that the members of its leadership team — a half-dozen men and women — together wrote a synthesis of the points he had made for their own personal use.

“It’s clear that based on this one cannot attribute with certainty to the Holy Father singular expressions in the text, but just the general sense,” the statement said.

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Text of the CLAR synthesis is at http://www.reflexionyliberacion.cl/articulo/2729/papa-francisco-dialoga-como-un-hermano-mas-con-la-clar.html

Text of the CLAR apology is at http://www.clar.org/clar/index.php?module=Contenidofunc=viewpubtid=2pid=659

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