Religion Dispatches
…k titled The Change Manifesto which according to the Institute’s Faith and Freedom Newsletter, “reminds us” that despite talk by the “presidential candidates … about reducing taxes, lowering gas prices and reforming Social Security…. none of that will matter unless we first restore the rule of law and abide by the Constitution.” “We are on the cusp of a new era of progress, but we can’t sit back and hope our elected officials will carry us there….
Read More
…those who feel that religions are invoking their religious rights—like the free exercise of religion & freedom of speech—to deny or challenge their own core beliefs & their access to basic constitutional rights.” If we go ahead and assume he was talking about LGBTQ+ rights advocates, it sounds pretty good. Like I said, the rhetoric was less overtly hostile and marginally more inclusive than his usual fare—a low bar, to be sure—and parts of it coul…
Read More
…period, indigenous scholar Pablo Tac (1822-1841), who was born in Mission San Luis Rey and went to Europe to study, dying tragically young. Or if I must reach back to the Spanish era, I would consider Tongva medicine woman, Toypurina (1760-1799), who led a revolt against the San Gabriel Mission in 1785. She was captured and tried, and during her testimony, she indicted the padres for their unjust treatment of native lives, lands, and cultures. Ne…
Read More…s. India: Materials targeting adolescents challenge gender stereotypes and promote respect The Health Secretary published materials designed to be used by adolescent peer educators on health issues. The materials aim to dispel gender stereotypes and promote relationships based on respect, reports Abantika Ghosh in The Indian Express: The legality of homosexuality may still be an open question for the judiciary and the Government is yet to change t…
Read More…mportant subject. Each Masorti community, together with its rabbi, will be free to decide whether to carry out these ceremonies and, if so, whether the relationships sanctified by them should be registered under English law as same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. Islam: Gay Imam on Engaging the Koran The German website Qantara, an effort by the German government and the Goethe Institute to promote dialogue with the Islamic world, has publishe…
Read More…the nation’s leaders are pulling back support for international efforts to promote the human rights of LGBTI people: “We currently have leadership that fails to represent the ethos of what the constitution says and the equality principles they have to uphold,” said Mmapeseka Steve Letsike, a lesbian activist who chairs the South African National AIDS Council’s Civil Society Forum. “We have leadership going out of this country putting their persona…
Read More…ves the signal that, in this city, love is the same for everyone,” cheered Marino Sindaco. (Translation courtesy of Google.) No cheers from the Catholic Church, which disparaged the move as an “ideological bluff.” Pink News reports that the editor of the website for the Rome diocese called the civil unions vote “a symbolic stage in an anti-family itinerary that opens up disturbing horizons damaging children.” Colombia: Conservative activist asks P…
Read More…Katherine Zappone, made a video for the Marriage Equality campaign that is promoting a referendum coming in May. According to Pink News, she and her partner married in Canada in 2003 but the High Court in Dublin refused in 2006 to recognize her marriage. Uganda: Magazine gives LGBTI Ugandans a voice The Advocate profiles Bombastic, a new magazine “by and for LGBTI Ugandans” and its editor Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera. Reclaiming messaging from anti…
Read More
…in full swing, hard-right strategists William Lind and Paul Weyrich at the Free Congress Foundation had a vision for the future of the American right. They argued that American conservatives, having successfully mainstreamed a free-market consensus, should pivot to the terrain of social issues, and adopt a “cultural conservatism” centered on family, education, crime, and morality, in order to shape public discourse. Needing a new enemy to rally th…
Read More…is may be the first time news has broken of women being arrested under the codes’ prohibition on lesbianism in Malaysia, said Justice for Sisters’s Thilaga Sulathireh. Scotland: Clergy Leaving Church of Scotland; LGBTs Debate Leaving UK The Scotsman reports this week that two more clergy members have left the Church of Scotland in protest of the denomination’s “continuing drift” from the Bible, including the naming of gay clergy. They have applied…
Read More