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…
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…hich he said are “against Islam,” reports Suzanne Lazaroo at The Star. The Malaysian Islamic Economic Development Foundation, the Malaysian Islamic Development Department, and the Federal Territories Islamic Department were among sponsors of a symposium on “Marriage Issues, Family Matters, Entrepreneurship and Management.” Kyrgystan: Commentary: Scapegoating NGOs, LGBTs Won’t Fix Economy Last week Franco Galdini, writing for The Diplomat, argued t…
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…
Read More…cerns [the march] would provoke clashes between gays and their opponents”. India: Census Documents Nearly 500,000 Hijra We reported in May that India’s Supreme Court had ruled in favor of allowing transgender people to identify themselves as a “third gender” on official documents. Less than 30,000 people used that designation in registering for the recent general election, but data released from last year’s national census – which included a third…
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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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…as what they say about Islam. JAKIM should withdraw the pamphlet, and the Malaysian government should stop spreading lies about LGBT people in Malaysia, and worldwide. Ireland: Marriage referendum campaigns heat up Catholic Bishop Kevin Doran, speaking at Holy Trinity Church in Dublin, said there is no obstacle to “a person of homosexual orientation getting married, just as a heterosexual person can” – just not to one another. “Marriage is not an…
Read More…bo praised the Obama administration’s “very beneficial” diplomatic efforts promoting LGBT human rights and slammed American evangelicals who continue to promote anti-gay attitudes and policies. The U.S. last summer cut aid to Uganda and imposed a travel ban against officials in the African country who are responsible for anti-LGBT and other human rights abuses. The Center for Constitutional Rights in 2012 filed a federal lawsuit against Scott Live…
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…
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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…
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