Religion Dispatches
…icilia received the heartbreaking news while attending a conference in the Philippines. He recalls chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes after hearing the report, unsure of his next move. On returning to Mexico, Sicilia laid his son to rest. At the memorial he read a poem: The world is not worthy of words they have been suffocated from the inside as they suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs… the pain does not leave me all that remains is a w…
Read More…vorce, which voters did by a narrow referendum in 2011. (The vote left the Philippines and the Vatican as the world’s only countries with no provisions for divorce.) The law — which goes beyond those its fellow European Union members have passed — would allow for someone to change their legal gender through simply filing an affidavit with a notary without a significant waiting period, eliminates any requirement for medical gender reassignment proc…
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…en used to target activists and journalists in Russia. The bill’s sponsors promote it as a measure to “protect children from harmful information.” Member of Parliament Aldan Smayil said the legislation’s intent was ““to protect children from information that kills the feeling of warmth and humanity, which is harmful to the health and psyche, promotes violence and is, in short, spiritually devastating to the younger generation.” Finland: Marriage E…
Read More…f a memorandum from President Obama charging US foreign policy agencies to promote LGBT rights said that US efforts have been important to activists promoting equality and facing persecution around the world. Read the Washington Blade’s report here. On Wednesday, the Daily Beast hosted an event called Quorum: Global LGBT Voices that featured interviews with more than 25 activists from around the world to talk about “what is happening on the front…
Read More…straight. As psychiatrist Anjali Chhabria put it to Khan, “If I asked you today to not look at women, but consider men sexually, would you be able to do it?” Khan said he wouldn’t. “Then why expect that of a [homosexual] boy or girl?” she asked. Khan also did the nation a favour by clearing another prevalent misconception: yoga cannot change your sexual preferences. United Kingdom: Conservative Jewish Movement Backs Equal Marriage Masorti, a cons…
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…citizen, and their two teenage sons, both US citizens. Tan fled her native Philippines in 1991, seeking political asylum after her family was victimized by violence stemming from a family dispute over an inheritance; a cousin murdered her sister and mother and shot Tan in the head. Tan and Mercado have been together for 24 years and, she said, welcomed in their Catholic Church where they are active members. “We didn’t feel any kind of rejection in…
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…cribbage in the trenches, and the exotic surprises that Australia and the Philippines held for an Oregon farmboy. Of course, there was a good deal more to his war, but he didn’t care to talk about that. He was a proud veteran who would be buried in a Veteran’s Cemetery not far from the towns where he lived most of his life, but he was also a profoundly modest man. If he thought he belonged to the “greatest generation,” he never showed it. So it w…
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…ne. Humans should be mature enough to develop and maintain our own ethical code informed by scientific knowledge of its consequences, he argues, rather than rely on an ancient moral code inscribed in scriptural texts of human origin composed in a different era for reasons that no longer apply. Dawkins finally brings the story to where Rev. Adam Sedgwick feared that it would end 150 years ago when he read this pre-publication copy of Origin of Spec…
Read More…must have gotten the message because the event finally took place earlier today with the attendance of Mr. Satawake while still being officiated by Bishop Okolo. Meanwhile, Duque reports, Dominican Vice President Margarita Cedeño was forced to withdraw proposed changes to the country’s “Family Code” which would have “championed ‘traditional Catholic family models’” in legislation. “The bill drew withering criticism from left and right with newsp…
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…denying that Judaism is a religion (instead, it’s an ideology, or a legal code, or an international cabal), and emphasizing definitions of Judaism rooted in physical heritage. This nudge toward biology makes sense. For one thing, it’s easier to judge somebody’s identity based on ancestry than on beliefs and cultural traditions. The latter is pretty nebulous. The former is quantifiable. Also, bigots haven’t historically cared much about the person…
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