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.
———
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
———
Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield
More than two dozen activists were detained in Moscow on Tuesday as they were protesting a bill that stigmatizes the gay community and bans the giving of information about homosexuality to children.
The protesters attempted to rally outside the Russian State Duma before what is expected to be a final vote on the bill banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.”
Police moved in after supporters of the bill started showering the protesters with eggs and water. Some of the protesters who were not detained were viciously attacked by masked men on a central street a mile away.
The Kremlin-backed legislation imposes hefty fines for providing information about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to minors or holding gay pride rallies.
Russia is also considering banning citizens of countries that allow same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children.
Lawmakers changed the wording of “homosexual propaganda” to “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” which backers of the bill define as “relations which are not conducive to procreation.”
Breaching the law carries a fine of up to 5,000 rubles ($156) for an individual and up to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for media.
Earlier Tuesday a dozen anti-gay activists picketed the Duma. One of them held a poster that read: “Lawmakers, protect the people from perverts!”
The bill has been seen as Putin’s attempt to consolidate his support base which includes many conservative Russian Orthodox voters.
Russian and foreign rights activists have decried the bill as violating basic rights. Human Rights Watch on Monday said the bill would “infringe Russian citizens’ freedom of expression and information, and discriminate against Russia’s LGBT community.”
Russian officials have rejected criticism. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov defended the bill in February, saying that Russia does not have any international or European commitment to “allow propaganda of homosexuality.”
Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1993 but anti-gay sentiment is still high.
Experts don’t expect all-encompassing rulings from a cautious court.
WASHINGTON — Mitchell Katine came to the Supreme Court 10 years ago for the final chapter of Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark gay rights case in which the justices struck down state sodomy laws.
Not even Katine nor the other lawyers working for John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in their battle against Texas’ sodomy law imagined the length and breadth of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision, which struck down all remaining state sodomy laws.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the 6-3 ruling “leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” His warning proved prophetic within months, when Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court became the first to legalize same-sex marriage.
As the Supreme Court prepares to issue two historic decisions on gay marriage this month, however, the judges and lawyers who worked on both sides of those earlier cases don’t expect anything quite so eloquent or all-encompassing from a cautious and conservative court.
The consensus view: The justices will limit the expansion of gay marriage rights to California, with few if any implications for the rest of the country. Only on the Defense of Marriage Act, most agree, will the court strike a broad blow against discrimination by striking down the ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples.
“It will really move us forward without going all the way,” Katine predicts, lamenting that Lawrence and Garner did not live to witness the moment. “I really wish they had not died and could see the true fruits of their labor.”
Houston attorney Gary Polland was on the other side of the issue in Lawrence. As chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, he backed the anti-sodomy statute and encouraged the state to prosecute the case. And while Katine celebrated Kennedy’s sweeping declaration of homosexual rights on June 26, 2003, Polland criticized what he saw as “legislating courts.”
Still, Polland says he won’t be surprised or angry if the high court does what Katine expects in the two same-sex marriage cases this month. The federal government had no business getting involved in family law in 1996 by defining which married couples could receive federal benefits, he says. And unlike 2003, he says, the Supreme Court would be right to limit its ruling on California’s gay marriage ban to that state only.
“I think it’s going to be an incremental move, whatever it is,” Polland says. “This court doesn’t want to be in the position of making political decisions for the country.”
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BAN
The guessing game on the same-sex marriage cases is a complex one, due not only to their nature but the wide array of choices facing the justices.
In Hollingsworth v. Perry, pitting backers of California’s gay marriage ban against two couples who want to marry, the ruling conceivably could affect just those two couples — or the entire country. The justices could rule broadly or narrowly on the merits of the case, or they could decide it doesn’t belong before them and send it back.
Several potential decisions would have the same effect, however: Gays and lesbians in California could marry, as two lower federal courts said they could. That result, veterans of past gay rights cases say, offers the court a reasonable middle ground.
“Anything that avoids giving momentum to either side in this highly debatable and intensive social debate that’s going on throughout the country would be the route, I think, that would guide them,” says John Greaney, a law professor at Suffolk University School of Law in Boston, who served on the Massachusetts court and voted with the majority in the 2003 Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case that legalized gay marriage. To get five votes on the Supreme Court, he says, “you have to tailor it as narrowly as possible.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage who have been on the losing side of cases dating back to Romer v. Evans — the 1996 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado voters could not rescind local laws banning discrimination against gays — take solace in the likelihood that the court won’t extend gay-marriage rights nationwide.
They cite several reasons for a go-slow approach: Chief Justice John Roberts’ preference for narrow rulings. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision for going too far and setting off recriminations from abortion opponents. The continuing debate that has led a dozen states to approve gay marriage and three dozen others to ban it.
“I think there’s a better chance of the people of California winning it all than there is of the country being placed under a constitutional regime requiring the creation of gay marriage,” says Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota, who filed an amicus brief in support of Texas’ sodomy ban a decade ago.
One particularly popular prediction: The high court will decide that the ban’s supporters lack the legal right to appeal the lower court rulings, given they do not represent the state government.
“It would be surprising if the court reaches a decision about Proposition 8′s constitutionality, because long-standing case law indicates that Proposition 8′s sponsors do not have standing,” says Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia University law professor who represented those challenging the Colorado referendum in Romer and the Texas statute in Lawrence.
Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. acting solicitor general who filed a brief against Texas in 2003, notes the justices referred often during oral argument to his Proposition 8 brief, which contends that the ban’s supporters have no fiduciary duty to the state of California and could not appeal on the state’s behalf.
Paul Smith, the lead attorney representing Lawrence before the Supreme Court a decade ago, says the decision may be several different opinions that add up to a plurality. “There’s going to be at least two opinions,” he predicts. “There may be five.”
DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT
If the Proposition 8 decision is destined to be limited, these litigators say, the ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor is more likely to be a broad one denying its constitutionality.
Among the reasons: Even though the Obama administration isn’t defending the federal law, which creates another issue of legal standing, it continues to enforce it. As a result, Edie Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging the law in New York, is out $363,000 in estate taxes.
In addition, gay marriage proponents and opponents agree, the court probably won’t want to decide both cases on narrow, procedural grounds. “I think there will be enormous pressure to decide the DOMA case on merits grounds,” Goldberg says.
But both sides also predict that while striking down DOMA, the justices won’t go so far as to grant gays and lesbians the additional legal protection accorded women and African-Americans known as “heightened scrutiny.” That would set a precedent that could be applied in other cases.
“That might open up a plethora of additional lawsuits,” says Greaney, the retired Massachusetts judge. “It would give the gay rights folks tremendous leverage going forward in all areas. The court probably would not want that.”
Judging from Kennedy’s questions during oral argument in March, they say, a narrow majority of justices could decide the case on grounds of federalism, or states’ rights, rather than on broader grounds of due process or equal protection.
Says Polland, the former GOP county chairman: “The federal government doesn’t have any jurisdiction in the family law field.”
Experts don’t expect all-encompassing rulings from a cautious court.
WASHINGTON — Mitchell Katine came to the Supreme Court 10 years ago for the final chapter of Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark gay rights case in which the justices struck down state sodomy laws.
Not even Katine nor the other lawyers working for John Lawrence and Tyron Garner in their battle against Texas’ sodomy law imagined the length and breadth of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision, which struck down all remaining state sodomy laws.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the 6-3 ruling “leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” His warning proved prophetic within months, when Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court became the first to legalize same-sex marriage.
As the Supreme Court prepares to issue two historic decisions on gay marriage this month, however, the judges and lawyers who worked on both sides of those earlier cases don’t expect anything quite so eloquent or all-encompassing from a cautious and conservative court.
The consensus view: the justices will limit the expansion of gay marriage rights to California, with few if any implications for the rest of the country. Only on the Defense of Marriage Act, most agree, will the court strike a broad blow against discrimination by striking down the ban on federal benefits for married same-sex couples.
“It will really move us forward without going all the way,” Katine predicts, lamenting that Lawrence and Garner did not live to witness the moment. “I really wish they had not died and could see the true fruits of their labor.”
Houston attorney Gary Polland was on the other side of the issue in Lawrence. As chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, he backed the anti-sodomy statute and encouraged the state to prosecute the case. And while Katine celebrated Kennedy’s sweeping declaration of homosexual rights on June 26, 2003, Polland criticized what he saw as “legislating courts.”
Still, Polland says he won’t be surprised or angry if the high court does what Katine expects in the two same-sex marriage cases this month. The federal government had no business getting involved in family law in 1996 by defining which married couples could receive federal benefits, he says. And unlike 2003, he says, the Supreme Court would be right to limit its ruling on California’s gay marriage ban to that state only.
“I think it’s going to be an incremental move, whatever it is,” Polland says. “This court doesn’t want to be in the position of making political decisions for the country.”
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BAN
The guessing game on the same-sex marriage cases is a complex one, due not only to their nature but the wide array of choices facing the justices.
In Hollingsworth v. Perry, pitting backers of California’s gay marriage ban against two couples who want to marry, the ruling conceivably could affect just those two couples — or the entire country. The justices could rule broadly or narrowly on the merits of the case, or they could decide it doesn’t belong before them and send it back.
Several potential decisions would have the same effect, however: Gays and lesbians in California could marry, as two lower federal courts said they could. That result, veterans of past gay rights cases say, offers the court a reasonable middle ground.
“Anything that avoids giving momentum to either side in this highly debatable and intensive social debate that’s going on throughout the country would be the route, I think, that would guide them,” says John Greaney, a law professor at Suffolk University School of Law in Boston, who served on the Massachusetts court and voted with the majority in the 2003 Goodridge v. Department of Public Health case that legalized gay marriage. To get five votes on the Supreme Court, he says, “you have to tailor it as narrowly as possible.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage who have been on the losing side of cases dating back to Romer v. Evans — the 1996 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado voters could not rescind local laws banning discrimination against gays — take solace in the likelihood that the court won’t extend gay-marriage rights nationwide.
They cite several reasons for a go-slow approach: Chief Justice John Roberts’ preference for narrow rulings. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision for going too far and setting off recriminations from abortion opponents. The continuing debate that has led a dozen states to approve gay marriage and three dozen others to ban it.
“I think there’s a better chance of the people of California winning it all than there is of the country being placed under a constitutional regime requiring the creation of gay marriage,” says Teresa Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota, who filed an amicus brief in support of Texas’ sodomy ban a decade ago.
One particularly popular prediction: The high court will decide that the ban’s supporters lack the legal right to appeal the lower court rulings, since they do not represent the state government.
“It would be surprising if the court reaches a decision about Proposition 8′s constitutionality, because longstanding case law indicates that Proposition 8′s sponsors do not have standing,” says Suzanne Goldberg, a Columbia University law professor who represented those challenging the Colorado referendum in Romer and the Texas statute in Lawrence.
Walter Dellinger, a former U.S. acting solicitor general who filed a brief against Texas in 2003, notes the justices referred often during oral argument to his Proposition 8 brief, which contends that the ban’s supporters have no fiduciary duty to the state of California and could not appeal on the state’s behalf.
Paul Smith, the lead attorney representing Lawrence before the Supreme Court a decade ago, says the decision may be several different opinions that add up to a plurality. “There’s going to be at least two opinions,” he predicts. “There may be five.”
DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT
If the Proposition 8 decision is destined to be limited, these litigators say, the ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor is more likely to be a broad one denying its constitutionality.
Among the reasons: Even though the Obama administration isn’t defending the federal law, which creates another issue of legal standing, it continues to enforce it. As a result, Edie Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging the law in New York, is out $363,000 in estate taxes.
In addition, gay marriage proponents and opponents agree, the court probably won’t want to decide both cases on narrow, procedural grounds. “I think there will be enormous pressure to decide the DOMA case on merits grounds,” Goldberg says.
But both sides also predict that while striking down DOMA, the justices won’t go so far as to grant gays and lesbians the additional legal protection accorded women and African-Americans known as “heightened scrutiny.” That would set a precedent that could be applied in other cases.
“That might open up a plethora of additional lawsuits,” says Greaney, the retired Massachusetts judge. “It would give the gay rights folks tremendous leverage going forward in all areas. The court probably would not want that.”
Judging from Kennedy’s questions during oral argument in March, they say, a narrow majority of justices could decide the case on grounds of federalism, or states’ rights, rather than on broader grounds of due process or equal protection.
Says Polland, the former GOP county chairman: “The federal government doesn’t have any jurisdiction in the family law field.”
Homosexuality was deemed a mental disorder by the nation’s psychiatric authorities, and gay sex was a crime in every state but Illinois. Federal workers could be fired merely for being gay.
Today, gays serve openly in the military, work as TV news anchors and federal judges, win elections as big-city mayors and members of Congress. Popular TV shows have gay protagonists.
And now the gay-rights movement may be on the cusp of momentous legal breakthroughs. Later this month, a Supreme Court ruling could lead to legalization of same-sex marriage in California, and there’s a good chance the court will require the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in all U.S. jurisdictions where they are legal — as of now, 12 states and Washington, D.C.
The transition over five decades has been far from smooth — replete with bitter protests, anti-gay violence, backlashes that inflicted many political setbacks. Unlike the civil rights movement and the women’s liberation movement, the campaign for gay rights unfolded without household-name leaders.
Progress came about largely due to the individual choices of countless gays and lesbians to come out of the closet and get engaged.
These were people like a Chicago graduate student willing to confront a high-profile critic of gay relationships. A young community organizer plunging into advocacy work for AIDS victims. Three gay couples in Hawaii suing for the right to marry at a time when that seemed far-fetched even to many activists.
“It is pretty mind-blowing how quickly it’s moved,” said David Eisenbach, who teaches political history at Columbia University and has written about the gay-rights movement.
“There are kids coming out in high school now, being accepted by their classmates,” Eisenbach said. “Parents, relatives, friends are seeing the people they love come out. It’s very hard to discriminate against someone you love.”
As the Supreme Court rulings approach, here is a look back at three of the gay-rights movement’s pivotal phases and some of the people who chose to get involved.
———(equals)
INTO THE STREETS
Dr. David Reuben had many fans after publishing his best-selling “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” in 1969. Murray Edelman wasn’t among them.
Edelman, then a University of Chicago graduate student, was part of a tiny band of activists who launched a gay liberation movement in the city late in 1969.
When Reuben — who depicted gay men’s relationships as bleakly impersonal and short-lived — was booked to appear on a TV talk show in Chicago in January 1971, Edelman and some fellow activists decided to attend.
Irked at being denied a chance to ask questions, Edelman headed to the stage toward the end of the session, seeking to confront Reuben. He was hauled out of the studio, but the incident received TV and newspaper coverage.
“It was the first time they really acknowledged there were gay activists in the city,” Edelman said.
It was an era abounding with firsts for the gay-rights movement.
Historians can trace its roots back to individuals and incidents many decades earlier, and some pioneering national gay-rights organizations were formed in the 1950s.
But the pace picked up in the 1960s — which saw the first gay-rights protest in front of the White House and, in 1969, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that federal civil servants could no longer be fired solely because they were gay.
About 72% of Americans say that legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable,” a new survey finds.
About 72% of Americans say legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable,” according to a survey released today.
Of those who support same-sex marriage, about 85% say it is inevitable, says the Pew Research Center‘s survey. About 59% of opponents also say it is inevitable.
“As more states legalize gay marriage or give equal status, the question in our minds was how the public sees the trajectory on this issue,” says Michael Dimock, the report’s lead author and director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “Do they see a future in which gay marriage is going to be the rule, not the exception, in American society?”
For the first time in Pew polling, just over half (51%) of Americans favor allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, the report says. The telephone survey was conducted May 1-5 among 1,504 U.S. adults. The margin of error was +/-2.9 percentage points.
The survey found a strong link between personal experiences and attitudes about homosexuality. About 87% of Americans know someone who is gay or lesbian, compared with 61% in 1993. About 68% of those who know a lot of gays or lesbians favor same-sex marriage, compared with 32% of those who don’t know anyone.
“As for the gay marriage issue, it’s not about whether we will have families. We already do. It’s about whether we will enjoy the same protection as our siblings, neighbors and co-workers,” says Rick Rosendall, president of the not-for-profit Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C. “The more people recognize that their siblings, neighbors and co-workers include gay men and lesbians, the clearer it is that those family members, neighbors and co-workers should be treated the same as they are.”
Same-sex marriage is or will be legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Several states also have domestic-partnership provisions for same-sex couples.
“This poll should caution us to redouble our efforts in explaining to Americans what marriage is, why marriage matters, and what the consequences of redefining marriage are,” says Ryan Anderson, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Anderson, who promotes marriage between a man and woman, says it’s not quite clear what Pew’s poll question means, since same-sex marriage is legally recognized in 12 states. “The more important question is not what will happen — but what we should do.”
Thomas Peters, communications director of the not-for-profit National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, says Pew’s poll numbers are no surprise. “Gay marriage activists have spent a huge amount of money and cultural influence trying to convince Americans of the lie that redefining marriage is inevitable,” he says in an e-mail.
This survey is part of Pew’s “LGBT in Changing Times” series, which is focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage this month.
DENVER – A gay couple is pursuing a discrimination complaint against a Colorado bakery, saying the business refused them a wedding cake to honor their Massachusetts ceremony, and alleging that the owners have a history of turning away same-sex couples.
As more states move to legalize same-sex marriage and civil unions, the case highlights a growing tension between gay rights advocates and supporters of religious freedom.
“Religious freedom is a fundamental right in America and it’s something that we champion at the ACLU,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the group in Colorado, which filed the complaint on behalf of the couple. “We are all entitled to our religious beliefs and we fight for that. But someone’s personal religious beliefs don’t justify breaking the law by discriminating against others in the public sphere.”
The attorney for Jack Phillips, one of the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop, sees it differently.
“We don’t believe that this is a case about commerce. At its heart, this is a case about conscience,” said Nicolle Martin. She said the matter is important because it will serve as an example for future cases across the country as more gay couples gain legal recognitions for their relationships.
“It brings it to the forefront. I just don’t think that we should heighten one person’s beliefs over and above another person’s beliefs,” she said.
The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a formal complaint last week after the ACLU initiated the process last year on behalf of David Mullins and Charlie Craig. The case is scheduled for a hearing in September before Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission.
Nationwide, 12 states now allow gay marriage, with Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota doing so this year. And in a year that Colorado lawmakers approved civil unions, they also elected the first gay Speaker of the House.
But Colorado’s civil union law does not provide religious protections for businesses despite the urging of Republican lawmakers. Democrats argued that such a provision would give businesses cover to discriminate.
Mullins, 28, and Craig, 33, filed the discrimination complaint against Phillips after visiting his business in suburban Denver last summer. After a few minutes looking at pictures of different cakes, the couple said Phillips told them he wouldn’t make one for them when he found out it was to celebrate their wedding in Colorado after they got married in Massachusetts. Phillips has said making a wedding cake for gay couples would violate his Christian religious beliefs, according to the complaint.
“We were all very upset, but I was angry and I felt dehumanized and mortified,” Mullins said. He said he vented his frustration on Facebook and was surprised at how “the story ended up catching fire,” with responses from local media and bloggers in other countries posting about it.
“We felt that the best way to honor the support that they had given us was to follow this complaint through,” he said. In the process, the ACLU said they found out about two other gay couples who had been refused a wedding cake from the same shop. Both have written affidavits in support of the discrimination claim.
Recent advances on gay rights only underscore Colorado’s difficult past on the issue. In 2006, voters banned gay marriage. More notably, in 1992, voters approved a ban on municipal antidiscrimination laws to protect gays, leading some to brand Colorado a “hate state.” Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court said the law, known as Amendment 2, was unconstitutional.
The complaint seeks to force Masterpiece Cakeshop to “cease and desist” the practice of refusing wedding cakes for gay couples, and to tell the public that their business is open to everyone.
If Phillips loses the case and refuses to comply with the order, he would face fines of $500 per case and up to a year in jail, his attorney said.
“It would force him to choose between his conscience and a paycheck. I just think that’s an intolerable choice,” Martin said.
About 72% of Americans say that legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable,” a new survey finds.
About 72% of Americans say legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “inevitable,” a survey released today finds.
This number includes 85% of same-sex marriage supporters as well as 59% of its opponents, according to the Pew Research Center‘s survey. The telephone survey was conducted May 1-5 among 1,504 U.S. adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.
“As more states legalize gay marriage or give equal status, the question in our minds was how the public sees the trajectory on this issue,” says Michael Dimock, the report’s lead author and director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “Do they see a future in which gay marriage is going to be the rule, not the exception, in American society?”
For the first time in Pew polling, just over half (51%) of Americans favor allowing gay men and lesbians to marry legally, the report says.
The survey found a strong link between personal experiences and attitudes about homosexuality. About 87% of Americans know someone who is gay or lesbian, compared with 61% in 1993. About 68% of those who know a lot of people who are gay or lesbian favor same-sex marriage, compared with 32% of those who don’t know anyone.
Rick Rosendall, president of the non-profit Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, D.C., says, “As for the gay marriage issue, it’s not about whether we will have families. We already do. It’s about whether we will enjoy the same protection as our siblings, neighbors and co-workers. The more people recognize that their siblings, neighbors and co-workers include gay men and lesbians, the clearer it is that those family members, neighbors and co-workers should be treated the same as they are.”
Same-sex marriage is or will be legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Several states have domestic-partnership provisions for same-sex couples.
This survey is part of the “LGBT in Changing Times” series, which is focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.
An app that promised users “freedom from homosexuality” has been removed from the Apple App Store, but still remains in Google’s Play Store for Android phones and tablets, despite requests to have it removed.
Setting Captives Free, a nondenominational ministry led by Mike Cleveland from Medina, Ohio, says it is committed to ridding people of sin through the teachings of Jesus Christ. In its mobile phone apps and on its website, the organization offers a series of interactive courses and informational materials on fighting temptation and living a sin-free life.
But one course in particular, titled “Door of Hope: Freedom from the Bondage of Homosexuality,” last week caught the attention of gay rights and equality group All Out. The 60-day interactive course, which was then available through both the iPhone and Android apps, promises to “teach you to enjoy a newfound relationship with the Lord and how to find freedom from homosexuality.”
“Friend, before we discover God’s method of freeing us from homosexuality, we must first agree with God on the issue of homosexuality,” a passage from the second section of the course reads.
All Out launched a petition May 29 that demanded Apple and Google remove the app from their respective stores. “Gay ‘cures’? There shouldn’t be an app for that,” All Out posted on its site. “Apple and Google have policies against these kinds of apps but so far this one has escaped their notice. Sign now to tell them to drop this and all other gay ‘cure’ apps!”
More than 94,000 people have signed the petition so far.
Apple removed the app last week, citing clause 16.1 in its App Store Guidelines, according to a Setting Captives Free representative. “Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected,” 16.1 reads.
“Apps that are primarily designed to upset or disgust users will be rejected.”
Apple wouldn’t comment on the removal process or reasoning when reached by ABC News.
This isn’t the first time Apple has banned an anti-gay app. It pulled an app March 2011 called Exodus, which provided similar content for helping people “in their journey out of homosexuality.”
Google, on the other hand, has not removed the app. It still appears in the Google Play Store, although only parts of the course are accessible. Google declined to comment on the app when reached by ABC News.
“All Out would like to engage in a conversation with Google about why the so-called ‘Gay Cures’ app is so dangerous, especially to young people,” Joe Mirabella, All Out’s director of community Campaigns, told ABC News. “All Out would like Google to remove the app from their stores before anyone is harmed by it.”
Meanwhile,
critics have left comments for Google on the app review page. “Remove this app from Google market, Apple has already removed it from theirs. Pray away the gay is such a load of hogwash, and very offensive!” one user wrote.
Google has always maintained a more open approach to its app store. Its App Developer Guidelines don’t mention “objectionable content” as Apple’s does.
Google does have a strict ban, though, on sexually explicit material, bullying and hate speech.
Setting Captives Free says it has attempted to reach Apple to get clarification on the ban and whether future versions of its app will be approved for the store. In hopes of keeping its app in both of the popular mobile stores, the ministry also clarified that it does not think it can cure homosexuality as if it is a disease.
“We do not offer a cure as if homosexuality was a disease nor do we claim to be able to change anyone,” the organization said. “We present a Way of Life — His name is Jesus. If homosexuals are unhappy with their current way of life, they have the right to pursue happiness and change if they wish.
“Those who oppose us cannot understand because they have not experienced the transforming power of the gospel.”
No more. The protracted debate over whether to allow gay scouts and scout leaders has angered many church leaders and parents across the political and religious spectrums. The result is a surge of enrollments in alternative outdoor and character-building programs that cater to pagans and Pentecostals and everyone in between.
“Before the Boy Scouts was founded in 1908 you had all these independent scouting groups like the Sons of Daniel Boone and the League of Woodcraft Indians,” said Jay Mechling, professor emeritus of American studies at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth.” “Now we are starting to see those types of groups again.”
Some parents are seeking to sever ties with the Boy Scouts because of the May 23 vote to allow gay youths into the program. Still others are indignant that the scouts have not moved more quickly to adopt more inclusive policies.
The variety of choices include the Royal Rangers, which offers “Christ-like character formation” for boys, as well as SpiralScouts International, founded by the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Wicca, which awards badges named for pagan holidays.
Churches sponsor 70 percent of the Boy Scouts’ 116,000 troops and packs. The two largest chartering organizations nationwide, the Mormon and the United Methodist Churches, have said they will continue their support. But other churches are rallying to dissolve their Boy Scout groups in favor of ones that take a more religious approach.
At its annual meeting this month, the Southern Baptist Convention is expected to urge its nearly 46,000 churches in the United States to join or increase their participation in the Bible-based Royal Ambassadors program rather than continue sponsoring Boy Scout troops, said Roger Oldham, the Baptists’ spokesman.
Days after the Boy Scouts’ vote on gay members, the Rev. Ernest Easley, pastor of Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., used his Sunday sermon to press church members to enroll their boys in the Royal Ambassadors.
Roswell Street Baptist had sponsored Troop 204 since 1945, but Mr. Easley said the church had no choice but to leave the Scouts. “We cannot and will not put our arms around any organization that stands morally opposed to what God’s word teaches,” he said.
A meeting of church leaders from a half-dozen denominations and parents who oppose the inclusion of gay scouts is scheduled this month in Louisville, Ky., to discuss building what the organizer, John Stemberger, calls a new “character-development organization for boys.”
Permitting gay scouts will lead to a “mass exodus from the Boy Scouts program,” according to a statement posted on the Web site of the Royal Rangers, a Pentecostal program with about 81,000 members in the United States. Its spokesman, Keith Surface, said inquiries about new groups have doubled since May 23.
“There have been some organizations and members that have decided not to continue with scouting, but we can’t quantify the impact,” Deron Smith, a Boy Scouts of America spokesman, said in a statement. If any church abandons scouting, the Boy Scouts of America will help them identify other suitable sponsors, Mr. Smith said.
For some parents, the Boy Scouts were never an option for their children.
“It was hard because I had this organization that I loved and got so much out of as a boy, but I just could not bring myself to sign my own son up,” said Todd Schweikert, who was an Eagle Scout, the group’s highest rank, in Ames, Iowa, and now lives in Brooklyn. “I just disagree with the Boy Scouts’ policies that discriminate against people.”
This year, Mr. Schweikert, 33, started the 5th Brooklyn Scouts, a secular program for both boys and girls chartered by the Baden-Powell Service Association, named after Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scout movement in the early 20th century. Mr. Schweikert’s group has 45 members, including his son, Jonathan, 8. They have taken a wilderness survival class in Central Park and on Saturday will volunteer at a run hosted by Brooklyn Pride, which supports gay rights.
