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Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…mixture of LGBT people, family members, pastoral ministers, and friends,” will meet with two Italian Christian LGBT groups, Kairos and Nuova Proposta, as well as a group of LGBT Catholics from England. The group is hoping that Pope Francis will respond to a request from New Ways Ministry’s Sister Jeannine Gramick that he meet with the piligrims while they are in Rome. The pilgrimage will be chronicled on the New Ways Ministry’s blog. Pope Francis…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…e Gods with the sort of unexpected intensity that comes once in centuries. Flash flooding, landslides, and rising waters stranded tens of thousands of visitors and destroyed roads, buildings, livelihoods, and bridges. It is too early to know how many people have died but the number will probably be in the thousands. The numbers may be low compared to global-scale disasters of recent years, but there is a wrenching poignancy to what is happening in…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…invested in graduate school and settled into my craftsman studio apartment with wood floors and a lovely claw-foot tub, I lost touch with the people who had set my life so wonderfully aflame. It happened slowly at first, but then with breathtaking acceleration tempered only by the emptiness that replaced it. The Grateful Dead’s Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who wrote “Operator,” and died in 1973 at the age of 27. Photo by Herb Greene from the UCSC Gratef…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…main character in 2001 novel Life of Pi, calls pi an “elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe.” “Like ‘pi’, life is not finite,” author Yann Martel explained in an interview. “And so I didn’t make the title ‘The Life of Pi’: I deliberately left out the definite article. That would have denoted a single life.” Similarly, the 1998 thriller Pi revolves around Max, a mathematician who tries desperately to find…

A Reforming Tradition Struggles With Change

By Brent Hege

…ld emerge as a result of the votes. As it stands now, one year later, a growing number of disgruntled Lutherans have ignored the Presiding Bishop’s pleas for reconciliation and are taking public steps to leave the ELCA or to remain with certain reservations. A dissenting group called Lutheran CORE (formerly Coalition for Reform, now Coalition for Renewal) met in assembly in September of 2009 to discuss the possibility of forming a new Lutheran chu…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…away in the Dust Bowl, reseeded a large part of the Great Plains, restored wildlife and built a system of over 800 state and county parks. They electrified an entire region of the country, bringing what had been America’s “Third World” up to 20th century standards. They created works of art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, ran nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taug…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

…health benefits plans? Kaiser found in fact that 10 percent of nonprofits with more than 1,000 employees have requested an accommodation to the contraceptive mandate, as did five percent of firms with between 200 and 999 employees. According to Kaiser, “many of the nonprofits who have sought the accommodation are likely health systems or educational institutions affiliated with the Catholic Church, which objects to birth control.” According to Ka…

Malta Adopts Marriage Equality Over Objections of Catholics and Evangelicals; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Gay rights activists say that some progress has been made in recent years, with surveys showing increasing tolerance, particularly among young people, and participation at Pride surging since the first parade in 2000, when only 50 attended. But the event’s growing profile has unnerved South Korea’s conservative Protestant church groups, which have millions of followers, enormous political lobbying power, and see homosexuality as a psychological il…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…ality as a “mental illness,” the change was widely reported as were the growing number of cities that added “sexual orientation” to anti-discrimination laws. By the end of the decade, reporters were filing profiles about a “hip” community with its own bars, clubs, music, and fashion as well as a distinctively uninhibited sexual scene. Journalists also covered an emerging religious backlash, coalescing in the 1977 “Save Our Children” campaign to re…