NEWS NOTES: May 23, 2013

NewsHere are some items that you might find of interest:

1) Tonight, two Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees are proposing to banish gay-straight alliances from Catholic schools in the city, reports The Globe and MailCatholic schools are funded by the Ontario provincial government, which last year required all schools to institute gay-straight alliances if a student makes a request.

2) An ultra-traditionalist French Catholic professor committed suicide by shooting himself in Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral after writing a blog post in which he lamented France’s new marriage equality law, according to The Independent.

3) The Czech Republic’s President Milos Zeman has refused to approve the appointment of a Catholic gay man to a professorship at the nation’s Charles University, Prague, reports Agence France PresseZeman explained that he refused to approve Martin C. Putna’s appointment because Putna marched at a gay-rights rally with a sign which contained an anti-gay slur.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry

 

 

 

3 replies
  1. Richard Baldwin Cook
    Richard Baldwin Cook says:

    Whaa? “The Czech Republic’s President Milos Zeman has refused to approve the appointment of a Catholic gay man to a professorship at the nation’s Charles University, Prague, reports Agence France Presse. Zeman explained that he refused to approve Martin C. Putna’s appointment because Putna marched at a gay-rights rally with a sign which contained an anti-gay slur.”

    This Czech news is a little red riding hood item: not just a little confusing but also not too confusing; it is just confusing enough . . .

    Reply
    • newwaysministryblog
      newwaysministryblog says:

      Yes, it is a confusing story. The problem, as I see it, is that the gay professor who carried the sign containing the anti-gay slur probably intended that slur to be ironic or empowering, in the fashion that some people have appropriated the formerly-derogatory term “queer” to be a term of empowerment. The Czech President, it seems, did not interpret the slur that way and took it seriously. This is my best guess as to why the president did not approve the professor.

      Reply

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  1. […] Toronto Catholic School District Board has turned down a proposal brought by two of its trustees to ban gay-straight alliances at the state-funded Catholic schools […]

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