Religion Dispatches
…pport for a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California. The San Jose Mercury News reported that “SurveyUSA said the Proposition 8 campaign remains too close to call because of potential statistical error, the new poll is the first that shows the measure gaining strength since late September and potentially pulling ahead.” On October 3, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Sandhya Bathija reported on sitting in on co…
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…esus to get his bride as in Jewish custom, as Jews, as Hebrews did for thousands of years, that custom was the tradition that God is working in now.” “My theology is the Lord says ‘be ye ready when I come,’” added Antoine. “We have to be prepared, we should always be ready.” Engle unabashedly credits prayer for George W. Bush’s presidency and his subsequent appointment of Supreme Court Justices who upheld the ban on so-called “partial-birth aborti…
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…a terrible death by Covid. The shooting massacres The shooting massacre in San Jose, which killed nine people, including the killer, is the latest in a seemingly endless string of massacres that America has witnessed since the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004, but especially since 2012 when a young man shot to pieces 20 kids in an elementary school in suburban Connecticut. The Republicans are the problem. They have blocked, time and a…
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…mons is organizing a “Stand Up to Youth Suicide March” at 6:30 p.m. at the San Francisco Civic Center. The march on Friday is in conjunction with Affirmation’s annual conference, which is being held in San Francisco this year and which will feature workshops on standing up to suicide, standing up for understanding and standing up for equality. With the prominence of LGBT suicides the past month, the march is sadly poignant and important. There’s m…
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…anted to ask you to say something more about that image of these beautiful sanctuaries, these worship spaces, that are empty, while a soup kitchen, massed with people, operates in the basement below. That’s a really interesting idea about what holiness is. Is holiness the thing that you don’t touch? Or is holiness covered with fingerprints? At St. Gregory’s we have the altar in the very center of the church—and we use it for holding coffee after s…
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…35-year-old woman, Ashli Babbitt, had flown to Washington from her home in San Diego at the behest of Donald Trump who urged his supporters to interfere with the electoral vote tally. She had served for twelve years, including being a security guard for US Air Force bases, and had risen to the rank of Senior Airman. Her husband, who remained in San Diego, described her as an enthusiastic supporter of the President, but not emotionally unstable. Li…
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…will “become the state’s second openly lesbian District Attorney, joining San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, a Republican who is unopposed in her reelection bid.” Perhaps the most surprising advancement came from Victoria Kolakowski, a transgender lawyer who has made it to the general election in her bid to become a Superior Court Judge in Alameda County, California. On her campaign website she’s very open about being transgender and not…
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…real argument, launched a personal attack on Judge Vaughn: “The ‘trial’ in San Francisco in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case is a unique, and disturbing, episode in American jurisprudence. Here we have an openly gay (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) federal judge substituting his views for those of the American people and of our Founding Fathers who I promise you would be shocked by courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marri…
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…in Mexico is thus naturalized and routinized—the grim backdrop for nightmarish dystopias represented in Hollywood films. With the Church, the state, and the global public impotent or simply unwilling to protect them, many of Mexico’s faithful have turned to so called “narcosaints.” From San La Muerte to Jesús Malverde to San Judas Tadeo, these marginal saints offer their protection to all of those made vulnerable by the current “narcoculture”: dru…
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…ing a lot of those things come up, come to the surface. So what happens in San Francisco, you know, is that black gay people stay in the neighborhood, keep going to black churches, just do it on the down-low. But white gay people ghettoize. They leave, and then go to the neighborhoods that are gay. And they buy gay businesses and they have gay clubs and they have gay theaters and gay paraphernalia. Because they leave. They have the privilege, firs…
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