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Bishop Says Gay Couples Cannot Be Part of Parish Life; Does Rising Evangelical Political Power in Brazil Contribute to Anti-LGBT Violence?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…es of sexual orientation and gender identity (often abbreviated as SOGI in international contexts) are a threat to the way these people see the world. Never mind the science of gender or sexual orientation; this is dogma. In the Hindustan Times, Dhurbo Jyoti criticized the Indian government for abstaining from the vote: In not backing the resolution, New Delhi joined a clutch of African countries with a history of violence against gender and sexua…

Our Lady of Good Hope and Excellent Behavior: Why this Apparition and Why Now?

By Lisa Bitel

…ion by joining other denominations or leaving Christianity altogether. The number of priests and nuns was at an all-time low even before the recent sexual scandals, and the number of self-identified Catholics world-wide keeps declining. Many of those who remain in the Church ignore standard doctrines and believe what they want. How many Catholics disobey Church rules? About as many as the angels dancing on a pinhead. Believers know that Jesus prom…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

What in the Name of the Crusades are Tennessee Evangelicals Doing in Kurdish Iraq?

By Bill Berkowitz

…er and Iran. Since the time of its arrival in Northern Iraq, Servant Group International has widened its presence, establishing bases in Turkey, Liberia, Indonesia, Germany, and Norway. Can you describe how Servant Group International operates? What is especially distinctive about SGI—and its partners—is its development of a military model of evangelism (‘spiritual warfare’), which includes covert action tactics (‘tentmaking’), intelligence gather…

Malta Adopts Marriage Equality Over Objections of Catholics and Evangelicals; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nservatives’ anti-trans bus sparks protest, arrests The latest stop on the international anti-trans bus tour sponsored by HazteOir and CitizenGo was in Santiago Chile, where police arrested 35 people after clashes that broke out around the “Freedom Bus.” From the Washington Blade: Supporters and opponents of the “Freedom Bus,” which is part of a campaign that CitizenGO, a conservative Spanish organization, has launched with the support of evangeli…

Marriage Vote ‘Transforms’ Not-So-Catholic Ireland; Activist to Malaysian PM – ‘Love Is Not Terrorism’; LGBTs Find Growing Acceptance in Colombia, Not At World Meeting of Families; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…hing his Muslim bonafides and justify the Gambia’s increasing status as an international pariah. Just weeks after Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the newly adopted Anti-Homosexuality Act in August 2014, the Gambia adopted a law closely modeled on Uganda’s which included a life sentence for “aggravated homosexuality,” defined as including cases like when someone repeatedly has same-sex intercourse, when the accused is HIV positive, or whe…

Modernity’s Fraternity: What Dan Brown Gets Right

By Samuel Biagetti

…ive Freemasonry,” spread from Scotland to England, and then took off as an international movement. Masonic initiations included some amount of mild ritual hazing, intended to disorient the initiate and prepare him for entry into a new social and spiritual realm; in the 1600s and 1700s, these rituals created a buzz of fear and suspicion around the Masons, which only added to their popularity. Masonic lodges proliferated in America from the 1720s on…

In This Week’s LGBT Recap: Are Gay Priests Overdue for a Stonewall Moment?

By Peter Montgomery

…n office. UN AIDS profiled Nigeria’s Coalition of Lawyers for Human Rights International Organization for the Family: More on New Global Anti-LGBT Group American anti-gay activist Brian Brown, head of the National Organization for Marriage and the World Congress of Families, launched a new anti-LGBT group, the International Organization for the Family, last weekend: IOF says it “unites and equips leaders worldwide to promote the natural family.” I…

International Religious Freedom Battles Heat Up

By Sarah Posner

…placed to do the deed stealthily. He has his own close associations with a number of the Brotherhood’s top fronts and operatives in his home state of Illinois, in Washington and elsewhere across the country.” The “cromnibus” spending bill that passed this weekend included just a one year reauthorization for USCIRF, after a battle in the Senate over Durbin’s proposed reforms, which had included a proposed three-year reauthorization. USCIRF has clai…

Religious Traditionalists Resist Marriage Equality, Artist Questions What Is “Un-African” & More in This Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom.” OutRight Action International’s Jessica Stern, in a commentary posted on the eve of International Women’s Day, called for recognition that lesbian and bisexual women and trans and intersex people “face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination daily.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights published a statement welcoming recent progress on the human rights of LGBTI people in…