Religion Dispatches
…who has built his candidacy on his success as a businessman, like Donald Trump, or a policy wonk like Marco Rubio. His entire campaign is built on his biography as a God-fearing, America-loving success story with a calm and soothing demeanor. Now he’s fighting with the press, claiming that he did try to stab a friend (or relative) and confirming doubts about his claimed interactions with a high-ranking military officer and the nation’s most prest…
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…hat can unite ethnically-divided Latvia, where about 26 percent are ethnic Russians and even more people use Russian as their native language. Together, the three organisations lobby for changes in the laws to prohibit the “propaganda” of homosexuality, oppose adoption by foreign families, and fight against excessive power of the nation’s social services. In 2014, Kin held a press conference at which they announced each MP’s position on sexual min…
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…the Church of Ireland Gazette, a weekly and editorially independent church newspaper, told the News Letter the motion “ does not seek to change the Church of Ireland’s traditional teaching on marriage”, a position Canon Ellis said he supports. However, he did say: “I believe the church has to consider how it is going to relate in pastoral terms to churchgoers who are in same-sex civil marriages. I do not believe that such couples should be barred…
Read More…consider legislation decriminalizing homosexuality, reports the Seychelles News Agency. Homosexuality is criminalized under a law dating to British colonial rule over this island nation off the eastern coast of Africa in the western Indian ocean. The country gained its independence in 1976. According to the country’s 2010 census, the population is more than 75 percent Catholic, with various Protestant groups accounting for another 11 percent. Davi…
Read More…nal unions do indeed form. And they are not, he wrote, without their “constructive elements.” CNN’s Richard Allen Greene noted, along those same lines, that Francis wrote, “By thinking that everything is black and white, we sometimes close off the way of grace and growth.” Francis also says that “unjust discrimination” against gays and lesbians is unacceptable, a formulation used by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who have interpreted the…
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…less. Hungarian prime minister and authoritarian Viktor Orbán was quick to rush to Trump’s defense as well, a sentiment also expressed by the Kremlin, whose spokesperson Dmitry Peskov gets the “pot calling the kettle black” award: If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination… of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious. Matteo Salvini, Vice Prime Minister to Italy’s fascist Giorgia Meloni It’s…
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…6. Michael Lavers at the Washington Blade published his take on the top 10 international stories of the year; Heather Cassell at The Bay Area Reporter also published a recap of the year’s biggest LGBT stories, many of them international. Colin Stewart at 76 Crimes reported that “substantial advances for LGBT rights were achieved in 2016,” noting that three nations dropped anti-LGBT laws “amid anti-gay violence, arrests and setbacks that marred the…
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…reference to a global moratorium on the death penalty. For both Obama and Trump, so long as the death penalty is legal in the U.S., it takes this position.” “OutRight will call out the Trump administration on its many rights violations, its many abuses of power from LGBTI violations to xenophobia, but this particular instance is not an example of a contraction of support on LGBTI rights,” Stern continued. “It would be a mistake to interpret its op…
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…es—during which time the HPA will be organizing fans to destroy seven real world horcruxes (an evil magical object used to attain immortality). This campaign is designed to run as a parallel between the actions of Harry, who must destroy Voldemort’s seven horcruxes before the end of the final book in order to bring about Voldemort’s demise, and the actions of the HPA. In the five years since its creation the HPA has grown into a sophisticated and…
Read More…ing differences regarding ministry with gay and lesbian individuals. A new rule aimed at fostering trust among church decision-makers ended up facing considerable distrust and pushback. Advocates for LGBT inclusion in the church have protested and asked for a public apology for the way the debate has unfolded. New Zealand: Anglican Synod Fails to Approve Marriage Blessings for Same-Sex Couples Gay Anglicans and their allies were upset after an Ang…
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