Religion Dispatches
…espite complaints by U.S. conservatives that it threatens Lively’s rights. India: Resistance to Re-Criminalization but Uncertain Future for Legislative Fix In a show of defiance against the Indian Supreme Court’s recent ruling re-criminalizing homosexuality, a record 5,000 people turned out for Mumbai’s gay pride celebration last Saturday. (See photos here.) The Voice of America explores the response of India’s gay community to the ruling: “Despit…
Read More…will visit Israel this week after a stop in India for the luminary-studded India Today Conclave—at which she will deliver a keynote address entitled “My Vision of America.” Palin’s trip to Jerusalem and Nazareth (just after Purim, Queen Esther’s big moment in the Jewish calendar) is probably no more than the usual Republican political stopover to show solidarity for Israel. To her loyal followers, Palin’s pilgrimage will be one more sign not only…
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…t of the regular centuries-old curriculum of all Tibetan Buddhist monks in India. Since the Dalai Lama was forced from China in 1959, India has graciously hosted him, the Tibetan government in exile, and thousands of Tibetans, including many monastics in new monasteries and nunneries. Unlike for Westerners, it is relatively common for Tibetans to become monks (even today, 1 in 10 Tibetans do). We just completed our second year of a five-year pilot…
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…ooting in Florida and identified them as members of the “LGBTI community”. Germany: Government plans to overturn convictions under sodomy law Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet approved legislation “to quash the convictions of 50,000 men sentenced for homosexuality under a Nazi-era law which remained in force after the war,” reports AFP, which says that about 5,000 of those who were convicted are still alive. Merkel has consistently opposed calls…
Read More…der community in performance of religious obligations like Hajj and Umrah. Germany: Study contrasts support for legal equality with lingering discomfort A study found that Germans are overwhelmingly in favor of protecting gay people from discrimination, including 83 percent who support marriage equality for same-sex couples. But the study found that some kinds of prejudice persist, with 38 percent reporting that they are uncomfortable seeing two m…
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…e-sex couple’s struggle to marry; trans women embrace Santa Muerte No Dresscode Required, a Mexican documentary about the first same-sex couple to be legally married in Baja California, won the John Schlesinger Award at the 2017 Palm Springs International Film Festival in January. The couple was married in January 2015 after months of delays and refusals by local officials to approve a marriage license even thought they had received a federal cour…
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…ording to the just passed redaction of article 148 of the Russian Criminal Code, “public acts expressing manifest disrespect for society and carried out with the goal of insulting the feelings of religious believers” could bring fines of up to 300,000 rubles (over $9000) or up to a year of imprisonment, or fines of up to 500,000 rubles (over $15,000)—or up to three years in prison if the act is carried out in a place of worship or a place otherwis…
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…But the center is an assertion, not a fact; an etiquette, not a place. Its code, its theology, is most fully embodied in Americanized Arminianism—a Protestant tradition of good works and propriety, “distinguished liberals” and polite realpolitik. “Arminian moralism,” notes historian Charles Sellers in his study of Finney’s age, The Market Revolution, “sanctioned competitive individualism and the market’s rewards of wealth and status.” It did not e…
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…gal equality: The government continues to retain Section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes sex between men. The law is sandwiched between codes that ban sex with corpses (Section 377) and sex with animals (Section 377B) in the Penal Code, indication of official attitudes towards homosexuality in the wealthy city-state. Convictions under 377A allow for two-year prison terms. In a bid to placate both liberals and conservatives, the governme…
Read More…egically At least two gatherings in the past week focused on the strategic promotion of LGBT equality abroad. On Friday, December 6, in Washington, D.C., the Center for Transatlantic Relations, which is part of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, hosted a presentation called “LGBT Rights: A Geostrategic Issue for Democracies.” The panel, part of a series of discussions on the topic, featured Elizabe…
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