So, Who Was Really Behind Kim Davis Meeting The Pope?
Now that the Vatican has distanced itself from Kim Davis, saying it feels a “sense of regret” over the Pope’s meeting with her, who’s to blame for arranging it in the first place?Â
This week, after days of obfuscation, the Vatican finally confirmed that Pope Francis did indeed meet with Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk who spent six days in jail for refusing to comply with a court order directing her to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Today, the Vatican went even further, distancing itself by labeling it a “brief greeting,” and stating the meeting “should not be considered a form of support of her position” by the Pope.
Davis and her current husband, Joe, met with the Pope in secret when they were in Washington, D.C., where Kim received the Cost of Discipleship award from the Family Research Council for denying gay couples their constitutional right to marry. According to Mathew Staver, Kim Davis’s attorney, the invitation to meet with Davis came from the Vatican a week or so before the Pope’s six-day visit to the United States, and not from American Catholic institutions.
Staver’s reliability on this point is questionable. The same day, Tuesday, that he announced Kim Davis met with the Pope, he also falsely claimed that 100,000 Peruvians had come together to pray for Kim Davis. It was later revealed that the picture he posted of the alleged event was actually a photo of a gathering from May 2014.
The New Civil Rights Movement has learned through a source within the Apostolic Nunciature, the Vatican embassy, that Kim Davis’ meeting with the Pope was arranged – contrary to theories espoused in the media – by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The USCCB is led by President Joseph E. Kurtz, the Archbishop of Louisville, in Davis’ home state of Kentucky, and by the Archdiocese of Washington led by Cardinal Donald Wuerl. Both institutions have actively opposed same-sex marriage. In 2009, Cardinal Wuerl signed the Manhattan Declaration, an ecumenical statement calling on Evangelical, Orthodox, and Catholic Christians to defy laws permitting same-sex marriage and other issues they claim challenge their religious freedom.
The USCCB has ties to organizations designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, including the Family Research Council and the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM). FRC President Tony Perkins has said about gay people, “They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful.†Perkins also says gay people are “pawns†of the “enemy.â€Â FRC’s Senior Fellow of Legal Studies, Cathy Ruse, was the USCCB chief spokesperson for human life issues for several years. (Full disclosure: Cathy Ruse is a personal friend.)Â
Cathy Ruse’s husband, Austin Ruse, is the president and director of C-FAM, and a blogger at the far right website Breitbart. In his most recent constituent email dated October 1, Ruse calls same-sex marriage, “a definition of marriage cooked up in the pits of hell,†and he supports Russian anti-LGBT laws that have led to an increase in violence against gay people in Russia.
Pope Francis’s messages while in the United States were mainly pastoral in nature, caring for the needs of the downtrodden and the less fortunate. Although he was said to be authoritarian and “kind of a jerk†in his first leadership role as the head of the Jesuits in Argentina, Pope Francis evolved into a humble man concerned about those living in poverty, immigrants, and those struggling to find a place in the world. Meeting with a controversial figure such as Kim Davis was out of character for a man who spent the entirety of his trip to the United States avoiding strong statements about American politics, especially on hot-button social issues like same-sex marriage.
Knowing that conservative American Catholic institutions arranged this meeting, and knowing that now the Vatican feels a “sense of regret” over it, arouses suspicion that the reasons behind it were political.
Kim Davis said she felt her meeting with the Pope “kind of validated everything,†but in today’s official statement by the Vatican’s spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Pope’s meeting with Kim Davis “should not be considered a form of support of her position.”Â
Davis’ statement is exactly what the anti-LGBT forces in the American Catholic church and other conservative Christians wanted her, and, more importantly, other Christians to feel. The Vatican today refuted that claim. But by showing apparent solidarity between the Pope and Kim Davis, conservative groups are hoping it will push more people to defy the constitutional rights of LGBT people, while these groups strive in the future for the Supreme Court to overturn its marriage ruling.Â
The battle for human rights did not end with the Supreme Court decision that marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed under the Constitution. It is raging between those who demand human rights and those who will stop at nothing less than religious totalitarianism. And the end is nowhere in sight.
Â
Image by Jeffrey Bruno/US Papal Visit via Flickr and a CC license
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President Donald Trump concluded his executive time Friday morning with a statement announcing he would end the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and laid out his requirements for a deal with Iran, before declaring, “I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.”
After a two-hour meeting with his advisors, Trump left without making a decision.
“It was not clear why Mr. Trump did not reach a decision,” The New York Times reports.
“In recent days, the sides have exchanged fire, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened a return to full-scale war,” the Times added.
Among Trump’s demands were that the Strait be reopened “immediately,” with no tolls imposed on traffic, and all water mines removed — although he noted, “we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.”
“Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’ Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President,” he wrote. Trump added: “No money will be exchanged, until further notice.”
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Were an agreement to be reached, the Times noted, “it could give Mr. Trump an off-ramp from a war that has driven up oil prices and grown deeply unpopular at home. It could also eventually allow Iran to regain access to frozen overseas assets and provide a route for Tehran to get billions of dollars of oil revenue flowing again.”
Even if the Strait reopened immediately, experts warn, replacing the lost oil could take months.
“The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a telephone interview with Iranian state media on Friday that current negotiations were limited in scope and did not include ‘the nuclear issue,'” the Times reports. Trump did specifically state that “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”
He also mentioned “nuclear dust,” writing that it “is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it.”
The president said that it “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and destroyed.”
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Image via Reuters
A federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump cannot rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reports. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Just weeks after he was sworn into office, Trump removed members of the board of the Kennedy Center and replaced them with allies and administration officials, including Richard Grenell, Pam Bondi, and Susie Wiles. The new board then voted for Trump to become chairman of the Kennedy Center.
In December, after the White House announced that the board of the Kennedy Center — the official, “living memorial” to the late president — had voted to rename the iconic cultural institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, several members of the Kennedy family took the opportunity to denounce the move.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, wrote: “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F Kennedy.”
She called the renaming “beyond comprehension,” “beyond wild,” “downright weird,” and “obsessive in a weird way,” while explaining that the Kennedy Center was named in honor of a man who was interested in the arts, culture, education, language, and history.
“Next thing perhaps he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial,” she said. “The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.”
May 17 is President John F. Kennedy’s birthday, he was born in 1917.
This article has been updated.
Image via Reuters
The Villages in Florida is deep red Trump country — it’s called the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. It’s roughly four hours to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, and it’s not unusual to see Trump flags on the backs of residents’ golf carts.
Trump visited The Villages just a few weeks ago, where one resident told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.”
“The Village are very Republican and very Trumpster,” said another.
“Trump 2028!” declared another, waving his fist.
But the tide appears to be turning in Florida, where several polls spell bad news for Trump. His approval is underwater in one poll from April, and one released on Thursday shows a majority of Florida voters hold a negative view of the president.
Still, some may find a letter to the editor in The Villages local news declaring “MAGA has abandoned core Republican principles” surprising.
The letter declares MAGA is “not conservatism,” but rather a “betrayal” that has “embraced indulgence.”
“The irony is cruel,” says the letter writer, Carl Young. “Those who once railed against ‘big government’ now defend its excesses when it serves their side. The philosophy of restraint has been replaced by the politics of spectacle. Rome is burning, and the arsonists call the flames freedom.”
Young scorches Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that he says “produced the highest deficit spending in history.”
Citing dystopian and totalitarian works by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Ayn Rand, he writes: “This is not renewal but regression. America has been dragged into an alternate 1984, where responsibility collapses and chaos parades as strength. The political temperature has risen to 451. The pigs now rule the farm.”
“These were never meant as prophecies. They were warnings,” he continues. “Atlas has finally shrugged.”
Image via Shutterstock
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