NEWS NOTES: Registering a Baby, Overturning Sodomy Laws, and Possibly Poland’s First Gay President

Here are some items that might be of interest:

1) Pink News reported that a lesbian couple in the heavily Catholic nation of Italy succeeded to have their artificially inseminated baby recognized legally by the government.  Previously, the government would only recognize babies conceived by fertility treatments if the parents were a heterosexual couple.  Chiara Foglietta, one of the mothers in this case, is an elected official in Turin, and she said she was told to write on a government form that the child was conceived through heterosexual intercourse.  Foglietta and wife Micaela Ghisleni persisted to get their son, Niccolò Pietro, officially recognized as the child of the two of them.  The law which made such registrations illegal was passed in 2016, with the strong backing of Italy’s Roman Catholic hierarchy. (See also a more extensive report on the issue from The Daily Beast.)

2) After the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago recently ruled sodomy laws unconstitutional, a deacon from the nearby island nation of St. Lucia expressed hope that his country would not follow suit.   Rev. Mr. Peter Fevrier, a diocesan official for family and life, acknowledged that “There seems to be a trend worldwide of countries adjusting their legislation as far as this matter is concerned,” but decried same-sex relations as an “abomination,” according to The St. Lucia Times.  Bondings 2.0 recently reported that the archbishop of Trinidad and Tobago had welcomed the court’s decision, saying homosexuality should not be illegal.

3) Poland’s first openly gay mayor has decided to run for president, making him the first openly gay candidate for this top office in the heavily Catholic nation.  Gay Star News reported that recent polling shows that 1 in 4 Poles said they would be willing to vote for Robert Biedroń, currently mayor of Slupsk, to become president.  90% of Poles are Catholic, and between 50 and 70% of the nation opposes same-sex relationships.  The presidential election is still several years away.

4) The April issue of U.S. Catholic magazine contained several stories on LGBTQ issues, including a timeline of “the relationship between gay and lesbian Catholics and their Church.”

5) Two Catholic school boards in Alberta, Canada, were among four boards cited by a report as not doing enough to support LGBTQ students, staff, and families, according to The Red Deer Advocate.  Kristopher Wells, who oversaw Public Interest Alberta’s Progress Report on LGBTQ Policies of Four Alberta School Boards, said these  boards’ policies were “inadequate, often vague, ambiguous, and hard to access.”  The two Catholic boards were Christ Redeemer Catholic Schools in Southern Alberta, and Edmonton Catholic Separate School District.

–Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, April 29, 2018