By Ann Rostow–
He’s Sort of Heavy
I’ve noticed that whenever a Pope makes even the most anodyne remark, a host of GLBT commentators jubilantly pounce on his words in an effort to manufacture a gay-friendly trend in Church law. Remember when the late Pope Francis said something like, “Who am I to judge?” Not judging is technically a top commandment in Christianity, and the Pope’s genial expression revealed next to nothing about his views on GLBT Catholics. Nonetheless, you would have thought the man cruised into a gay nightclub, ordered a frivolous cocktail, scanned the crowd, and then waved his scepter with a Latin blessing before hitting the dance floor.
The bottom line is that the Pope is elected to preserve tradition and history, tweaking the evolution of Catholicism perhaps, but not tossing it all out in a Trumpy fashion. So, an Associated Press report that Leo XIV said the family “is founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman” does not seem that disappointing. What do you think he’d say? He’s not the head of the ACLU. He’s the head of the Catholic Church!
Of course, I wasn’t raised Catholic, or anything for that matter, so I tend not to give a damn what the Pope has to say. But I have many more-or-less lapsed Catholic friends, some of whom seem a bit desperate for his unlikely embrace. That’s like waiting years for the vegan restaurant around the corner from you to put a ribeye on the menu.
Meanwhile, have you encountered the Pope’s brother? As The Advocate reports, “Louis Martin ‘Lou’ Prevost reportedly shared a post on social media that used an objectifying slur to attack U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and falsely labeled her a drunk. The post also fed into conspiracy theories that her husband had Grindr hookups.”
Say what?
Lou moved his Facebook account to private and confirmed that these were his own views, not those of the Pope. He then told Piers Morgan: “I wouldn’t have posted it if I didn’t kind of believe it.” Kind of?
The Advocate continued its rundown of posts from this moronic sibling. One comment suggested Barack Obama was “a racist who destroyed the country,” The Advocate wrote, while another used a “transphobic meme.” And it goes without saying that Prevost frere is a Trump fan. Trump likes to “stir the pot,” he told the Guardian. “He says things just to stir the pot, cause it’s fun to like get into some of these debates with people sometimes from the other side.”
What a buffoon! We assume Leo XIV does not share his brother’s infantile sensibilities, but you should know that the Pope has long been registered as a Republican in his county clerk’s office in Illinois.
Trans Troops Dismissed by High Court Conservatives
I just reviewed my previous column to see whether or not I covered the High Court’s anti-transgender military ruling. I guess that column was submitted just before the decision was handed down, so the answer was no.
However, I was chagrined to see that I wrongly assumed that the Republican Lt. Governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears, was white. “She sounds like a character out of someone’s first novel, set in the low country, and covering four generations of two different families, one Black and one white,” I wrote in my usual amusing fashion. “Winsome is the matriarch, who hides a racist heart under kind platitudes and sweet tea. I need a title with the word “Tide” or “Tides” in it.”
Oops. Sticking with stereotypes, I now assume that a Black woman does not harbor such prejudice, even if she’s a Republican. But who knows? It would be a good plot twist for High Tide at Newport News were she self-loathing. Earle-Sears is running for Governor this November, while a gay MAGA guy, John Reid, is running for Lt. Governor. Reid was accused of posting racy photos back in the day, and though Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried to make him drop out, Reid defiantly refused, much to the delight of his fellow Trumpers. Earle-Sears, in turn, backed Reid, albeit tepidly.
So, now that that’s cleared up, you’ve probably already seen the news that the Supreme Court will allow Trump and company to oust transgender troops while our legal challenges work their way through the courts. Courts in the Ninth Circuit and the D.C. Circuit have both put a hold on the transgender ban in cases we’ll nickname Shilling and Talbott, respectively. Talbott is pending in the D.C. appellate court, while Shilling’s trans-friendly ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Trump appealed the Shilling hold to the High Court, and on May 6, the six conservatives overturned the Ninth Circuit and gave the administration a green light to dismiss transgender troops during litigation that could take a year or so.
Two days later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that “TRANS is out at the DOD,” and called for trans troops to leave within 30 days. Reservists have 60 days. It’s not clear what Pete and his wife will do if people don’t resign, however. Nick Talbott, the named plaintiff in the D.C. case, says he won’t go and many other transgender soldiers are flying under the radar.
I mentioned Pete’s wife because I’ve read several articles about how he doesn’t do anything without his wife’s approval and how she accompanies him to meetings and work events. According to CNN, a former Pentagon spokesman, Chris Meagher, said the Hegseth situation is bewildering. “Not only is it unlikely that his wife has a security clearance, but she definitely does not have a need to know the sensitive classified information that Pete Hegseth is apparently sharing with several different text chains,” he said.
I guess Jennifer Hegseth used to be a producer on Fox, where Pete was a talk show person. She is Pete’s third wife, and came into the media spotlight as her husband was being accused of being a falling down drunk and an adulterous sleaze bag.
What Else Is New?
I’ve been skipping through the internet, trolling for GLBT stories, but I can’t focus on the ones I’ve seen so far. There’s a BDSM movie about a handsome gay motorcycle guy and his submissive sidekick that’s all the rage in Cannes. Pillion includes lots of graphic gay action and full-frontal nude shots of Alexander Skarsgard, so guys … we’ll meet you at the theater.
There’s a temporary block on an anti-GLBT law in Iowa. We’ll see where that goes. And Romania has overtaken Poland as the most anti-gay country in the European Union. I thought I saw that a centrist guy just upset a rightwing, nationalist Trump admirer in a presidential runoff last week, and I was wondering if the close election changed the pessimistic view. Unfortunately, I don’t have the emotional strength to probe the nuances of Romanian politics at the moment, and you probably don’t feel like reading about it either.
I can, however, tell you about the time my colleague and I went on a business trip to discuss technical specifications for a computer system (we ran a newswire in the late 1980s). We asked our hotel clerk where we could conduct a working dinner, and he sent us on a ten-minute walk into town. We were very pleased under the circumstances to find a restaurant right next door to the hotel, even though it specialized in Romanian food and was filled with Romanian ex-patriots. We settled in with the notebooks of specs that IBM had provided, but we were soon derailed by pitchers of Romanian wine, weird heavy delicious food that we couldn’t identify, and a violinist who came over and played right in my ear for an extended period of time. We persevered with our notes and questions for a while but eventually gave ourselves over to inebriation, serenades, and a tour of our waiter’s collection of icons, recently smuggled out of the country.
The next day, I tried to follow along with our tech experts. After a few pages, my notebook was stained with red wine and I had apparently begun to make big circles and question marks. Under a sentence warning users to turn off their systems when not in use, for example, I had written, “WHY??,” in heavy letters. The IBM experts kept glimpsing these notations and asking if I understood. Oh, and both of us were barely able to keep our eyes open. Ah, the misadventures of youth. It was the closest I’ll ever get to Romania.
I guess I could write about the continuing fight over a GLBT club at Yeshiva University, but that scenario has been dragging on for years. Been there, done that! Suffice it to say that the conservative university has found a way to clamp down on the gay student club despite court rulings, while the club will no doubt send the mess back to a judge somewhere and the merry-go-round can spin on. I don’t know. But it’s like the runoff election in Romania. Do we really want to understand more of the story? Or will a superficial glance at the headlines suffice?
I couldn’t agree more!
Paging Hannibal Lector
Speaking of headlines, here are two juicy items I stumbled over in my research: “French Pizza Chef Accused of Killing Man Before Dismembering and Cooking Body Parts in Pot of Vegetables: Reports,” from People, quoting Le Parisien. And “Men Killed and Eaten by Dog-Killing Arsonist,” from Truthfully.
Neither story has anything to do with our beloved GLBT community, but then again, both seem worthy of our attention nonetheless, because, well, just because! According to Le Parisien, pizza chef Phillippe Schneider, has confessed to killing 60-year-old Georges Meichler in what he claims was a burglary gone wrong. Then he allegedly dismembered the man and cooked his limbs in a pot of vegetables to “mask the odor,” according to The Telegraph (via Le Parisien).
Meichler lived in an “isolated home in the village of Brasc,” so I wonder why the odor would pose a problem. But moving beyond that question, Chef Schneider was also joined in this escapade by “his partner and an alleged gravedigger, who have both denied involvement in the crimes,” The Telegraph continued. Why “alleged” gravedigger? Does that mean that the third person was the one who (allegedly) dug a grave to dispose of the uneaten residue? Or does this person claim to be a gravedigger by trade, but might be lying?
I can’t rest without finding some more information, particularly since the story seems to have caught the attention of editors around the world. An account in The New York Post, always a reputable source, tells us that the killer chef was 69, and his partner was 45-year-old Nathalie Caboubassy, who is also on trial now even as she claims to be innocent. According to The Sun (via The Post), Schneider said that his attempt to poach body parts in a vegetable stew was based on “a religious ritual he learned about in Nepal and to cover the smell.”
“Another man on trial, a 25-year-old gravedigger allegedly roped in as an accomplice, said Schneider ordered him to cook the meat until it ‘falls off the bone’ and to tell anyone who asked questions that it was ‘food for the dog,’” we learn from The Sun. And a verdict is expected May 22, so you can discover what the jury thinks right now!
Honestly, I don’t have the stomach for the dog-killing arsonist. Perhaps we can explore that story next time.
Um, No
I have two complaints from our friends at One Million Moms. First, I see the Moms are bent out of shape by an Arm and Hammer commercial for Power Sheets laundry detergent, which uses the expression, “Get Your Sheet Together.”
But I was even more drawn to the Moms disdain for a Dude Wipes ad, titled, “Best Clean Pants Down.”
“In this ad,” the Moms warn, “several men are shown pulling down their pants and underwear in various public settings [which is] never appropriate.” Further, they go on, “the paint splatter used later in the ad grossly mimics another situation needing Dude Wipes.”
I have to admit that this is one of the few times I agree with the Moms. I may have written this before, but as a fairly easily grossed out person, I have problems with the ads for toilet paper, deodorants for your genitals, and some other commercial that showed women on the toilet getting their sheets together, if you will. We can’t unsee some of these images. Get them off the air!
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on May 22, 2025
Recent Comments