Religion Dispatches
…od. Foolishly, I did not take his national identification card and his car registration — I just asked him to open the trunk of his car. He opened it with pleasure, and was about to drive off, when Muhammad, one of my neighbors, recognized him. “Oh, hello. Wait a minute — aren’t you the police officer we saw here yesterday?” Bashfully, he replied, “Um, yes.” Muhammad responded, with all the righteousness evident in his voice, “So, no work for you…
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…right to marry. The Court gave the parliament two years to amend the civil code; codifying the ruling would make Taiwan the first country in Asia to embrace legal marriage equality. Marriage equality has the vocal support of the president; the chairman-elect of the Kuomintang said in the wake of the ruling that “everyone is equal in the face of love,” a shift in position from his earlier description of same-sex marriage as “horrible and creepy” an…
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…s to same-sex couples even though the state legislature changed its Family Code last year to include marriage equality. Paraguay: Presidential candidate pledges support for marriage equality Finance Minister Santiago Peña, who hopes to become president, announced his support for marriage equality. A gay activist leader quoted by Hoy praised the move, saying that Paraguay is behind other Latin American countries in protecting LGBT citizens. “The ma…
Read More…lity, which is illegal on the island,” reports AFP. Sri Lanka’s 1883 penal code, a legacy of its British colonial rulers, makes sex between men punishable by 12 years in jail, although the law is rarely enforced. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said the cabinet had refused to endorse a provision in a proposed human rights plan that would have undermined the code. “There was a provision referring to the sexual orientation of individuals and we cl…
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…A group of lawmakers is reportedly preparing an effort to amend the civil code to make it legal for same-sex couples to get legally married. Japan: Sapporo preparing to register gay couples The city of Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, is reportedly beginning a process that will lead to legal certification of gay couples by the end of March 2018. Taiwan: Police plan road closures for pro- and anti-marriage rallies Police announced that roads around t…
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…airy-tale story of irreversible progress in LGBT rights is a very white American story. Americans of color have long known that progress is not linear. LGBT people from countries like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey, among others, can tell you what it feels like when attitudes make a U-turn. The laws in these countries are benign, compared to the many places in the world where homosexual behavior is punishable by imprisonment or even death, but that i…
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…e United States, where there are substantial Arab-American, South Asian-American, African-American, and Latino Muslim populations. Still, the subtext of a lot of political rhetoric about Islam is that there’s some characteristic Muslimness that inheres in the body, regardless of heritage. “The whole question is, who exactly are Muslims?” asks Zareena Grewal, a professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale and the author of Islam Is a…
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…follow through on his election-night promise to be “a President for all Americans.” That means it’s up to all Americans to stand up for their neighbors and friends, but especially the people of color, undocumented people, Muslims (and non-Christians in general) and queer folks that you don’t know. Because right now, we are terrified. If you have the privilege of being able to “wait and see” how the Trump administration comes after your family (and…
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…em. Latin America: Uruguay and Argentina top social inclusion index The Americas Society and the Council of the Americas released a report that calls Uruguay and Argentina the region’s most LGBT-friendly countries. Uruguay tops the Social Inclusion Index for the third year in a row. From the Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers: Gays and lesbians have been able to legally marry in Argentina and Uruguay since 2010 and 2013 respectively. Both countries…
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…ubt that homosexuality is seen as a crime. Article 427 of the Afghan penal code refers only to “pederasty” – a sexual act between males, one of them understood to be a youth or a boy. The act is punishable with “long imprisonment”. However Dr Niaz Shah of Hull University in the UK, an expert in Afghan and Islamic law, says that the penal code reflects the underlying Islamic principle that homosexuality is banned. “Islamic law allows only one form…
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