Religion Dispatches
…they’re doing so over the advice of religious opponents, who echo a famous Indian guru: the Buddha. On July 7, 1993, Mia Zapata, lead singer for up-and-coming Seattle band The Gits, left a bar to walk home alone at 2 A.M. She never arrived. At 3:20, a prostitute found her body in an alley, raped, beaten, and strangled to death. Two decades later on December 16, 2012, after boarding a minibus in Delhi, India, Jyoti Singh Pandey didn’t make it home…
Read More…ty that the definition of marriage is protected, sustained and supported.” India: Couple’s high-profile marriage in defiance of anti-gay law BuzzFeed reported last week on a gay couple that was married in a religious ceremony at the end of January. “A Sanskrit teacher conducted the ceremony in a traditional Marathi fashion,” the couple told BuzzFeed India. “And all the ceremonies including Mehendi, Haldi, Sangeet were performed….The couple faced a…
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…ather than saying something, no matter our religion. Costa Rica: Activists Promote Marriage Equality Bill Opposed by Evangelical Lawmakers Equality activists are promoting new marriage equality legislation, which is backed by deputies from different parties, though one of the lawyers supporting the bill acknowledged that it might be blocked by evangelical lawmakers who have to date prevented other attempts. Tunisia: Court Jails Students on Sodomy…
Read More…cheduled to be held in Moscow in 2014, though planning is now on hold. She promoted the anti-gay propaganda ban and the ban on Russian children being adopted by American parents. Feder told WorldNetDaily that Mizulina was “absolutely right” in her push to ban American adoptions because children could end up adopted by same-sex couples. “The Russians are very traditional people,” he added. “They have a strong religious orientation. They haven’t got…
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…and retak[ing] several Eastern European countries,” staring with Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.” Lack of action by the United Nations subsequently led to Russia’s occupation of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. President Obama “deepen[ed] U.S. ties and U.S. trade with Communist regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia.” In the Middle East, “in mid-2010 Iran launched a nuclear bomb which exploded in the middle of Tel Aviv…
Read More…toward the importance of the traditional family. He urged the bishops “to promote the family as a gift of God for the creation of man and woman created in his image and that ‘fundamental cell of society,’” of course, excluding same-sex relationships. The Pope also warned against modern day formations of marriage, lamenting that “today marriage is often considered a form of emotional gratification that can be constituted in any way and change acco…
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…kage itself as the realization of one people’s sovereignty. Estonia is for Estonians, and Austria is for Austrians. Most of the exceptions have been undone; Czechoslovakia is a thing of the past, and Yugoslavia’s implosion underlines the case. Belgium is destined to go down this road. Even the awkward and ultimately unsustainable political compromise that is today’s Bosnia suggests how hard it is to realize democracy and multiculturalism. But in S…
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…riest. And in traditionally Orthodox places, such as Ukraine, Finland, and Estonia, turf wars (ordinarily between Constantinople and Moscow) are evidenced by the presence of overlapping ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The consequence of both of these realities is that an ordinary Orthodox Christian in many parts of the world can now choose whether to attend a parish under one hierarch or another—and they have good reason to make such a choice. In fa…
Read More…new language that could undermine protections extended for transpersons in India.” More from the Hindustan Times: Activists and lawyers complained the bill encouraged corruption, was full of provisions open to abuse and directly opposed the spirit of a 2014 Supreme Court verdict that recognized the third gender and called for a raft of rights and measures for transpersons. “It is difficult to be calm and hopeful reading the bill. It stinks of call…
Read More…is in various ways, such as through exemptions in the law,” said Dr. Chow. India: Supreme Court Will Reconsider Sodomy Law Ruling BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder reported this week that a panel of judges on India’s Supreme Court will revisit the 2013 ruling that re-instated the country’s colonial-era sodomy law years after it had been overturned in a lower court. Canada: Alberta Conservatives Push to Drop Marriage Opposition From Party Platform The Conser…
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