Religion Dispatches
…ga guru Baba Ramdev for having made major advances in popularizing yoga in India. (Recently, Ramdev has made the outrageous claim that yoga can cure homosexuality—he also supports the Indian government’s ongoing criminalization of sex between consenting adults of the same sex—as well as the far-reaching claim that it could cure cancer.) Modi’s recent efforts to reclaim yoga for India are just one part of a much larger public movement to define yog…
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…s in cash at the Karmapa’s makeshift headquarters near Dharamsala in North India. The Central Government of India, following weeks of investigation, finally cleared Karmapa of any wrongdoing (the money they found had indeed been an accumulation of donations). Speculations abound on what really triggered the raid last month, and there are various conspiracy theories, though it now appears that local politics played a key role. After the money was s…
Read More…reating serious backlash among BYU students and faculty. Since then, Honor Code enforcement has been conducted through referrals—even third party referrals—of suspect students to a campus Honor Code office, a system of enforcement that has created significant opportunities for abuse. (When I was a BYU student, it was possible to make an anonymous third-party referral.) Honor Code enforcement on campus has been used to bait and target gays and libe…
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…give our people a future of prosperity and security the United States and India stand united.” He went on to praise the people of Mumbai, evoking Gandhi and particularly noting that the strength of India—like the strength of the USA—lies in diversity, which was on full display during those attacks when we saw “Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jews, and Muslims, protecting each other, saving each other, living the common truth of all the world’s great r…
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…ovie screens across India, the Supreme Court reinstated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which places homosexuality, alongside bestiality, as “against the order of nature.” What the ruling in practice has come to mean is that gay sex for the most part is permitted — the authorities turn a blind eye — but is criminalized on the books, which means of course that marriage, or even any social or legal acknowledgment of same-sex love, is a distant…
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…executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, who regularly travels to India for nonviolence trainings. In India, “their action is a little bit more spontaneous.” A New Revolution The March 10 National Uprising Day protest in Delhi was bigger than ever this year. Tempa Tsering, the official representative of the Dalai Lama, says more than 1,000 gathered in front of the United Nations’ office to mark the anniversary of the 1959 rebellion in Tib…
Read More…scrimination and harassment, they also have an important symbolic place in India.” The Times of India reports, The Rajya Sabha on Friday unanimously passed a private member’s bill seeking equal rights with dignity for transgenders, who are widely scorned, ostracised and ghettoised in the country. It was historic not only because it was the first private member’s bill to be passed in the Upper House in 36 years, but also since it might turn out to…
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…ustice system. The manner in which the legal and justice system operate in India is inconsistent with the obligations that the Indian state has under international human rights law to prevent violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Manvendra Singh, a 40-year-old gay man described as “India’s first openly gay prince,” is urging the decriminalization of homosexuality. Israel: Gay couple part of military ad campaig…
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…There were fliers portraying President of the current opposition party in India, the Indian National Congress party, Sonia Gandhi and Hillary Clinton as horned demons on a “witch hunt” to “get Modi” and his party for alleged involvement in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Modi governed the state during the violence that took the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims. In stark contrast, there were large posters displaying Trump in what a…
Read More…being that the majority of LGBTQ people in Africa live in extreme poverty. Finland: Thousands Quit Lutheran Church Over Pro-Marriage-Equality Archbishop Last Friday, lawmakers voted 105-92 to approve a citizens initative to allow same-sex couples to get legally married. Opponents used now-familiar rhetoric about children having a right to a father and mother. Kari Makinen, the Lutheran Archbishop of Finland, said last Friday that he supported the…
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