Religion Dispatches
…hreat of violence, and LGBT people in places like Uganda, where the mere disclosure of one’s sexuality brings state-sanctioned and often family-executed violence, are at real risk. Sexual diversity is not an American issue, or a middle-class one, or a white one. Sexual and gender minorities are at risk everywhere—in fact, especially when they aren’t white, middle-class Americans. Third, and relatedly, LGBT equality is a (I won’t say the) defining…
Read More…and about how our society protects or treats families. They’ve seen that discrimination exists if families headed by lesbian and gay couples are not treated the same as other families,” said DeBernardo. The bishops, however, intend to be out front when the marriage issue comes up for a referendum vote this fall. Polls show Marylanders are about evenly split on the issue and DeBernardo feels the key will be getting supporters to the polls. The oppo…
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…son I think it’s tops. I tend to like underdogs and faded glory. I live in Baltimore. Easter, for Catholics, is the most theologically significant celebration of the year. Easter, and its season, Lent, are about pain, sacrifice, and trying to correct one’s course before it’s (yikes) too late. I’m talking about death, of course—the great Catholic preoccupation. Not just death, but suffering, torture, abandonment. The great comedian Lenny Bruce nai…
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…plexity of these matters and strive to create forums in which to listen, discuss, discern, and pray. In short, our ways of being are as different from the Vatican’s as are our views. The Vatican knows this, is not pleased, but can’t do much about it. It is trying to put LCWR in the untenable position of having its every conference, publication, and public utterance subject to episcopal veto. The real aim, in my reading of the situation, is to repl…
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…y sterilize endoscopy equipment, placing some patients—6,387 who had colonoscopies at Murfreesboro; 3,341 who had colonoscopies at Miami; and 1,069 who were treated at the ear, nose, and throat clinic in Augusta—at risk of blood-borne infections. There have also been six positive tests for hepatitis B and 19 for hepatitis C at the three centers, the VA said. How long have we known about universal precautions? What’s wrong here? Perhaps the same th…
Read More…or Rashid unfairly attacks both opinions. First, Mr. Younus’s op-ed in the Baltimore Sun talks about the integration of Muslim and American identities — he does not assert that American Muslim youth are in an “either/or” situation. He also does not label the American Muslim community as “bad,” only those extreme individuals within that community who defame Islam by attacking America (e.g., Nadal Hasan, the Virginia Five, etc.). Second, Mr. Rashid’…
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…ns in a nearly unprecedented show of research strength. In the traditional science model, scientists around the world compete with each other for that one Holy Grail that will cure the disease and earn them prizes and a fat juicy patent or two. Realizing this model wasn’t working for staggeringly complex, but common diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, a couple of honchos who control a lot of the purse springs had a different idea. Let’s all…
Read More…t the church’s annual local conference, would amend the church’s Book of Discipline to allow pastors to perform same-sex marriages and ceremonies in member churches in jurisdictions where legislatures already have approved gay marriage laws, such as the District. The measure was not expected to pass by its sponsor, Washington’s Foundry United Methodist. The pastor there, Rev. Dean Synder, said the resolution was presented “as an occasion to have a…
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…fueling these attacks and contributing to suicides. The annual meeting in Baltimore of the US Catholic Bishops offered an opportunity to decry these horrendous events. Instead, the bishops chose to discuss “the defense of marriage,” their well-funded attack on same-gender couples. They fail to see that the Catholic community is embarrassed by their silence in the face of brutality and incensed by their push of a political agenda against marriage…
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…edom and a threat to all people of faith.” The administration, he added, discriminated against the USCCB “solely because [the USCCB] fundamentally respects the innate value and preciousness of an unborn child and refuses to be complicit in procuring his or her violent death by abortion.” Constitutionally speaking, though, the Republican claim that the HHS action amounts to religious discrimination is “very weak,” said Marci Hamilton, First Amendme…
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