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Catholic Church Campaigns Against Gay US Ambassador; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ffington Post interviewed Emmett Claren, a transgender Mormon. Transgender Europe published an update on more than 2,000 reported killings of transgender people around the world in 2008-2015. India’s Humsafar Trust released a short video that delivers an anti-discrimination message in one and a half minutes. Two days before TDoV, Nisha Ayub, Director of SEED Malaysia, received a 2016 Woman of Courage Award from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry;…

Clashing human rights visions for LGBTs at United Nations; More Mixed Messages from the Vatican as Family Synod Begins; Timeline of Worsening Homophobia by Turkey’s AKP Party; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…he Gender Accordance Act, disregarding recommendations from the Council of Europe and decisions from the European Court of Human Rights. “I still can’t believe that this has happened” says Lalka Podobińska, Trans-Fuzja’s Vice-President. “I wanted to believe that since Mr. Duda’s presidential campaign claimed he was supposed to be ‘the President of all Poles’, he would ultimately understand that this Act does not harm the majority, but rather helps…

Catholic Bishops Meeting For Family Synod; South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church OKs Gay Weddings, Ordination; Court in Malaysia Deals Setback To Transgender Advocates; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ng media, challenging the laws through legal cases. Nancy Nicol writes: “A number of themes can be identified throughout this body of work that speak to profound discrimination and violence: random violence in public places; police harassment, extortion, custodial rape; ‘corrective rape’ against lesbians ‘to make them straight’; exclusion and violence perpetuated by friends, family and community; Church fueled hate; state fueled hate; employment d…

American Horror Story: Hotel and Monotheism’s Dirty Little Secrets

By W. Scott Poole

…as it created the cultural nightmare of the witch. The Strigoi in Eastern Europe began as a terror of creatures that are quite literally anti-christ. They live forever, created out of pain and suffering but reborn into a glorified reality, a kind of open mockery of Christ’s resurrection. A line appearing in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, “the blood is the life,” has taken on new meaning in vampire fictions ranging from its repetition i…

White People Dying Younger Because of…Moral Turpitude? Give Us a Break

By Peter Laarman

…aged U.S. whites to similar sharp spikes in mortality in post-World War II Europe and in post-1989 Russia. Quite obviously, the widespread failure-to-thrive in bombed-out postwar societies and again following the “free market” shock treatment administered to the Russians in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse was all about basic economic stress. It had nothing to do with men not knowing how to be men or women not knowing how to be women. In vi…

Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

Transgender Europe celebrated its 10th anniversary. In the U.S., the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in the country, affirmed its commitment “to the full equality, inclusion and acceptance of people of all gender identities and gender expressions. Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, fresh from playing a visible role at t…

The Man Behind Ben Carson’s “Secular Progressive” Fixation

By Neil J. Young

…involved in politics, they risked watching their nation turn into godless Europe, where secular progressives had replaced Christianity with socialism. Schaeffer’s message electrified evangelicals just as the Religious Right was starting to take shape. How Should We Then Live? became an instantaneous hit, sitting atop the New York Times bestseller list for more than two years. Evangelical seminaries, colleges, churches, and Sunday schools all inco…

My Congregation Tried to Help a Syrian Family Settle in the US

By Thomas Warming

…f Aylan’s family and the thousands of other Syrian refugees streaming into Europe. So, like everybody else, I teed the message up and sent it for a ride. But I had something that most of those other preachers didn’t: a way to help in the here and now. As it happened, we had been asked by the local office of a refugee resettlement agency to help with a Syrian family due to arrive in our community: a father, a mother, and a teenage daughter. We are…

Does Violence Always Win?: Learning From René Girard (1923-2015)

By Martha J. Reineke

…r holding a child who had not survived the dangerous passage from Syria to Europe elicited widespread compassion from Americans. But following the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, Governor Chris Christie and Dr. Ben Carson, Republican candidates for president, put a new face on the Syrian immigrant. Tapping into American anxiety about admitting to the US individuals who, notwithstanding their seeming innocence, are potential terrorists, Christi…

Conservative Cardinals’ Controversial Letter Cites Church Appeal

By Patricia Miller

…allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. A similar number were in favor of allowing cohabitating couples to receive communion. This isn’t surprising as one-quarter of all Catholics are divorced and 44% have cohabitated at some point. It’s true that the numbers among Catholics who attend church weekly are lower, 42% and 46%, respectively, but this just demonstrates how many people who still call themselves Catholic have been…