LGBTQ Breaking News Service

A German Catholic diocese has hosted an online event declaring that same-sex blessings are a matter of “not if, but how.”

The Diocese of Essen, in Germany’s industrial Ruhr area, held the conference, entitled “Blessings for all. Blessing celebrations for same-sex couples,” ahead of a nationwide event on May 10 in defiance of the Vatican’s “no” to same-sex blessings.

The diocese said in a May 3 post on its website that around 100 people took part in the conference. Among them were theologians who, it said, argued that “the Church must move out of the premodern era and embrace the current state of knowledge of science and society.”

The report noted that “currently some dioceses are jointly developing a handout on the topic [of same-sex blessings], which will also include a proposal on how to conduct a blessing celebration.”

One participating professor suggested that blessings of homosexual unions should take the form of comprehensive and festive liturgies, including the proclamation of the word, a prayer of blessing, intercessions, and the exchange of rings.

“Blessing celebrations are high forms of Christian liturgy, comparable to baptism,” Benedikt Kranemann said.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that Essen’s Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck said in an interview last month that he would “not suspend a priest in his diocese or impose other Church penalties on him” if the cleric blesses same-sex couples.

Essen diocese noted that its vicar general, Fr. Klaus Pfeffer, addressed the virtual conference.

It said: “Deeply hurtful, wounding, overshadowing entire life stories: according to the impression of Essen’s vicar general Klaus Pfeffer, this is how the Church acts when it judges the lives of homosexual couples, refuses to bless them and dares to declare the binding, faithful love of two people a sin.”

“This finally needs to end: Not if, but how blessing celebrations for homosexual couples can be conducted in the church was the focus of the digital symposium ‘Blessing for all. Blessing celebrations for same-sex couples’ on Friday, April 30, in the Diocese of Essen.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) published a “Responsum ad dubium” March 15 replying to the question, “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” The CDF answered, “Negative,” outlining its reasoning in an explanatory note and accompanying commentary.

The Vatican statement, issued with the approval of Pope Francis, sparked protests in the German-speaking Catholic world. A number of bishops expressed support for blessings of same-sex couples, while churches displayed LGBT pride flags, and a group of more than 200 theology professors signed a statement criticizing the Vatican.

Catholic pastoral workers are organizing a day of protest on May 10. The event is known as “Segnungsgottesdiensten für Liebende,” or “blessing services for lovers.” The organizers, who are using the hashtag “#liebegewinnt” (“love wins”), hope that same-sex couples across Germany will take part in the event.

Several German bishops have previously spoken in favor of blessings for same-sex couples, including Overbeck, bishops’ conference chairman Georg Bätzing (Limburg), Helmut Dieser (Aachen), Reinhard Marx (Munich and Freising), Franz-Josef Bode (Osnabrück), Peter Kohlgraf (Mainz), and Heinrich Timmerevers (Dresden-Meissen).

But other bishops have welcomed the CDF’s intervention. Among them are Rainer Maria Woelki (Cologne), Stephan Burger (Freiburg), Ulrich Neymeyr (Erfurt), Gregor Maria Hanke (Eichstätt), Wolfgang Ipolt (Görlitz), Stefan Oster (Passau), and Rudolf Voderholzer (Regensburg).

Bätzing said last week that the day of protest was not a “helpful sign.”

The bishops’ conference chairman said that blessing services were “not suitable as an instrument for Church-political demonstrations or protest actions.”

Catholic priests in Germany are protesting the Vatican’s ordinance on blessing gay couples.

According to CBS News, dozens of priests have announced plans to bless gay couples and perform several other church services on May 10. Many of these services, which are happening across Germany, will be live-streamed online.

“In view of the refusal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to bless homosexual partnerships, we raise our voices and say: We will continue to accompany people who enter into a binding partnership in the future and bless their relationship,” the group said in a statement.

In Germany, Catholic blessings for same-sex couples had been becoming a common occurrence. That said, the fact that100 Catholic churches will participate in this protest and almost 20 events will be live-streamed is exciting news.

“It always has been a little bit kind of a secret,” said the Rev. Christian Olding, who admits to blessing about 10 same-sex couples in the past eight years, to the Wall Street Journal. “This is the first time that we are going this way in society, to do it visibly for everyone.”

These services are in protest to the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. The office is in charge of orthodoxy issues. The office issued a two-page statement decree, after being approved by Pope Francis, that stated gay couples could not be blessed by Catholic priests.

“It is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation,” the decree reads.

It then added, “It is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage, as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex. The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.”

That decree has garnered a lot of criticism and been the catalyst for several protests. In March, an Italian priest named Father Giuliu Mignani told his congregation that he would not be giving blessings before Easter in protest of the Vatican’s decree.

“If I can’t bless couples formed by persons of the same sex, then I won’t bless palms or olive branches either,” Father Mignani told the crowd on March 28.

230 professors of Catholic theology in Germany also signed a statement protesting the decision in March.

“We distance ourselves firmly from this position,” the statement read, according to the Associated Press. “We believe that the life and love of same-sex couples are not worth less before God than the life and love of any other couple.”

In addition, several Hollywood entertainers expressed their frustrations with the Catholic Church.

“Can’t a nice gay gentleman like myself just be able to sit here and enjoy Glenn Close’s EIGHTH Oscar nomination without having to see this shit?” Billy Eichner wrote on Twitter before adding, “On a serious note, to everyone who goes out of their way to talk about how “cool” this pope is…NO. The Catholic Church has abused the LGBTQ community for MILLENIA. So, go to church if you need to I guess but THAT’s what you’re enabling. Bye!”

“How can the Vatican refuse to bless gay marriages because they ‘are sin’, yet happily make a profit from investing millions in ‘Rocketman’ – a film which celebrates my finding happiness from my marriage to David?? #hypocrisy,” wrote Elton John, who is married to David Furnish, on Instagram.

The Vatican’s Secretariat of State department funded the Centurion Global Fund in Malta. That fund then gave $1.2 million to Rocketman.

It seems the Vatican has made many enemies with its decree rejecting blessings to same-sex couples. And some of those enemies are within their very own ranks. But will the Vatican listen to these protests or will there be more of the same?

Source: CBS News, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press,

The surprise statement Thursday by Jen Psaki that she would most likely step down as White House press secretary early next year has sparked speculation over who would succeed her behind the most famous lectern in the world.

Most of the talk about the second press secretary to President Joe Biden pointed to a historic ”first” — the first-ever LGBT person to serve as top spokesman to the president.

The immediate name on the lips of most White House correspondents was Karine Jean-Pierre, the principal deputy press secretary. A longtime fixture in Democratic campaigns, Jean-Pierre served as regional political director in the Office of Political Affairs under President Barack Obama and as chief of staff to Kamala Harris during her vice presidential campaign last year.

Jean-Pierre is openly gay and has long spoken of this.

”President Obama didn’t hire LGBT staffers, he hired experienced individuals who happen to be LGBT,” she told The Advocate. “Serving and working for President Obama where you can be openly gay has been an amazing honor. It felt incredible to be a part of an administration that prioritizes LGBT issues.”

The other name heard as a likely successor to Psaki is also LGBT. Ned Price, 38, now holds the position as State Department spokesman that Psaki held under Obama and that Mike McCurry held before serving as President Bill Clinton’s second (and, most White House correspondents agree, best) press secretary from 1994 to 1998.

Price previously worked as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency until he resigned in 2017. In an op-ed published in The Washington Post, he wrote that he stepped down because he could not work as an intelligence professional in the Trump administration. 

”I think it’s going to be time for somebody else to have this job, in a year from now or about a year from now,” Psaki told David Axelrod on his CNN podcast ”The Axe Files.”

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

The new UNAIDS ambassador says that eliminating bans on same-sex relations is crucial to fighting the spread of HIV — a comment sure to provoke negative reactions from leaders of countries with statutory prohibitions on homosexual sex. 

Lord Norman Fowler, the former British health minister during the 1980s, who oversaw the United Kingdom’s response to the early days of the AIDS crisis, said that many people are unwilling to come forward for HIV testing in countries where homosexuality is criminalized, out of fear of being prosecuted and jailed — and in some cases, even sentenced to death.

In many countries, the laws date back to colonial times, when European rulers imposed such bans based on their own morals or religious beliefs.

“That’s going to have a vast effect upon any population,” Fowler said in an interview with Thomson Reuters Foundation, referring to the existing laws in 68 different countries that criminalize homosexuality. “It means they don’t come forward for testing and it means that they come forward far too late for testing.”

By eliminating punishments for same-sex relations, Fowler maintained, more people would get tested, which in turn would make them aware of their status and would enable them to take measures to protect themselves from transmission, or to seek treatment if they do test positive for HIV.

Fowler, who served as health minister between 1981 and 1987 under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has a mixed record as it relates to LGBTQ issues. He supported Section 28, a law that barred local authorities from “promoting” homosexuality, which some activist have since criticized for censoring the free speech of LGBTQ groups and student-led organizations, and leading teachers in schools to promote an atmosphere of hostility towards the LGBTQ community. Others said it hindered HIV/AIDS education by causing local authorities to censor vital information on the virus and ways to prevent it, lest they be accused of violating the law.

The law was eventually overturned in 2003.

See also: Human rights body calls on Jamaica to repeal it colonial-era law outlawing gay sex

Fowler also voted against legislation to equalize the age of consent for same-sex relations. Prior to 1994, the age of consent for consensual same-sex relations between males was 21, and stood at 18 from 1994 until 2000, when it was lowered to 16, the same age at which heterosexual individuals can consent to sex. (Due to the gender bias of Victorian-era politicians, the age of consent for lesbians was never written into law, and thus, remained the same as the age of consent for heterosexual women.)

Fowler says he regrets his past political stances, admitting they were mistakes.

In his new role at UNAIDS, Fowler will be focused on highlighting efforts to reduce HIV infections — a difficult task at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic remains front of mind. While HIV transmission rates have plummeted in more developed countries, 1.7 million people across the globe were infected in 2019, according to statistics from UNAIDS. And transmission remains a problem in less developed nations, particularly those that are not as open when it comes to discussing sexual health. In total, more than 38 million people are currently living with HIV. 

“[T]he fact is that AIDS — in spite of all the heroic efforts that have been made over the past 20 years — remains an enormous problem,” Fowler said. “The issue of AIDS remains a very central one, and although it may not be as evident in Europe, it certainly remains very evident in whole swathes of the world.”

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Over the past six years, activists in Japan have pressed the Diet, the national parliament, to introduce a non-discrimination law that protects the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Japan currently does not have any national legislation protecting LGBT people from discrimination, and a recent study puts Japan next to last in a ranking of laws on LGBT Inclusiveness for developed countries.

One proposed law – the LGBT Equality Act – is currently under intense negotiation between Japan’s ruling and opposition parties. In April, the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) announced it would pass an LGBT law during the current Diet session, set to end in June.

But the ruling party bill, presented at the LDP’s Special Mission Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, only requires the government to “promote understanding of LGBT people.” It fails to mention non-discrimination protections and falls short of the government’s international human rights obligations. Many Japanese LGBT rights groups oppose the draft bill, concerned that such weak language won’t offer any real protections. Opposition parties are demanding a law that explicitly protects against discrimination.

In January, 116 human rights and LGBT organizations sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga supporting binding non-discrimination legislation. In March, the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation (J-ALL), an umbrella organization of 80 LGBT groups in Japan, submitted a petition containing over 100,000 signatures to the Diet, asking to introduce the LGBT Equality Act. That same month, a court in Sapporo called Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage discriminatory and “unconstitutional.”

In July, Tokyo is set to host the Olympics, whose charter forbids “discrimination of any kind,” including sexual orientation. There is little time left before the Diet session closes in mid-June. All political parties, including the LDP, should come together and enact a national anti-discrimination bill before the Summer Games begin.

The LDP should revise the bill to include a clear clause in the main text of the law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Japan needs to pass a national anti-discrimination law now.