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UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

United Nations: Human Rights Council creates watchdog for LGBT rights The United Nations Human Rights Council voted this week to create its first-ever LGBT rights watchdog, a step that LGBT equality advocates called a major victory. Before the vote, anti-LGBT activist Austin Ruse had warned supporters: A major catastrophe is about to happen at UN Headquarters in Geneva. The sexual revolutionaries are about to defeat the forces of truth and goodne…

Pope Francis Praised for ‘Civil Unions’ Comment, But Justice Begins at Home—In the Vatican

By Mary E. Hunt

…ople have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it. What we have to have is a civil union law—that way they are legally covered. I supported that.” I highly recommend the film—the theology less so, though it’s all worth discussing. The most astonishing aspect of what’s now a global conversation on theology and civil unions—Elton John thanked the Pop…

Growing Catholic Resistance to Bishops’ Crusades

By Peter Montgomery

…know that not everybody out there agrees with the bishops.” Pointing to a number of studies that show that about 90 percent of Catholics don’t follow the church’s official teaching on birth control, McCaulley said the group thought that since the bishop is “always willing to meet with priests,” they could raise the issue with Zubik and ask him to meet with laypeople, as “we didn’t feel competent to speak on women’s issues.” In Washington State, m…

Warships, Animals, Pubs Eligible For Blessings From Church of England, But Not Same-Sex Couples; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ions in the East. These battalions have often been affiliated with the far-right and neo-Nazi groups that oppose LGBT rights. Because members of battalions were volunteering in the war, they could easily evade Ukrainian laws against attacks on LGBT people. Once veterans return home, “they can dictate whatever they want to see in ‘their’ city,” said Insight founder Olena Shevchenko. “They’re above the law, or they are the law.” Lebanon: Fallout fro…

Old Sins Cast Long Shadows: America’s Enduring Fascination with the Ten Commandments

By Jenna Weissman Joselit

…, there’s a whopper of a story here, I thought; one that went back quite a number of years and that encompassed matters of faith and ritual practice, material culture and daily life as well as the law. I then spent a number of years tracking down, unearthing and interpreting the many iterations of the ancient biblical passages that turned out, much to my surprise and delight, to be just about everywhere in the United States of the late 19th and ea…

Did North Carolinians Vote Against their Own Beliefs?

By Peter Montgomery

…ond that to punish same-sex couples and their families and deny them equal rights as citizens. The second saddest number comes with its own silver lining. Public Policy Polling reported on Sunday that most North Carolina residents believe that gay couples should have access to some legal protections. But because most voters didn’t understand just how extreme and far-reaching the amendment before them today was, they would vote for it to “protect”…

‘Religious Freedom’ Rally Sets Stage for 1st Amendment Collision

By Sarah Posner

…peddled by the Catholic Bishops and their supporters. Nettina claimed the number of abortions increase with greater access to contraceptives, a trope commonly used to assert that contraception fails and therefore does not decrease the number of unintended pregnancies. This claim echoes statements made by the Bishops themselves, as well as anti-contraception groups, that birth control doesn’t work and is harmful to women’s health. Hagen recommende…

The Role of Faith in the Lives of Abortion Providers

By Sarah Posner

…ey and Jan Schakowsky. The doctor said she is worried about the increasing number of restrictions on abortion states are implementing. (To get a sense how women’s access to abortion is shrinking across the country, take a look at this map assembled by the Guttmacher Institute.) Twenty-four hour waiting periods, for example, can cause a woman to miss the one day a week a clinic performs abortions, pushing the procedure off another week and making i…

Christian Media Battle Over Controversial Figure

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…n San Francisco, the World Evangelical Alliance, and the Christian Post, a number of these affiliates went on the defensive. No response was more immediate, or more aggressive, than that of the Christian Post. Different Standards At Work The day after CT’s article was published online, the Post published a long piece titled, “Sources in ‘Second Coming Christ Controversy’ Face Scrutiny,” followed days later by another with the less subtle headline,…

Conservative Christianity and Its Discontents

By Karl Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

…Judeo-Christian thinking that there is Someone there who gave inalienable rights.” Those principles had vanished in the 20th century and the government now rested in the hands of materialists and humanists. Within a year A Christian Manifesto had sold approximately 300,000 copies, winning the enthusiastic endorsement of Jerry Falwell, who distributed it to viewers of his television program. Evangelical historians dismissed Schaeffer as a propagan…