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I Know Why a Rain Dance Won’t End The Drought

By Johnny P. Flynn

…l Park which is exactly on a line from the San Francisco Peaks to the Hopi reservation. The day was clear, cloudless, until about one o’clock in the afternoon. Clouds began to roil over the peaks to the southwest and by two o’clock thunder could be heard in the distance. By 2:30 we were soaked to the skin by a “sudden” thunderstorm headed northeast to the Hopi reservation. I remembered it was the day of the Hopi Snake dance which is most often cit…

Holy Father, You’re Not Helping: The Problem with the Pope’s Plan to Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

By Katherine Kelaidis

…secration. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was free from Original Sin, is not a doctrine shared between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In fact, it’s only been an official part of Catholic teaching since 1854. While the Eastern churches agree with Catholics that Mary was free from personal sin, the fact that the Eastern church has never accepted Augustine’s teaching on Original Sin means that the doc…

Marriage Equality Vote Costs Conservative MP a Trip to Australia

By Peter Montgomery

…enth World Congress of Families conference, which is scheduled for Sydney, Australia in May. The letter telling Smith he was no longer welcome says the bill he supported “is at odds with the World Congress of Families’ definition of the natural family, marriage, and a child’s right to be raised by its mother and father.” The World Congress of Families is one vehicle by which American religious conservatives export their anti-abortion and anti-gay-…

Morality Police, Jihadists, Religious Competition, Grindr, & Americans Abroad: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Crimes reports that police in Beirut are using messaging apps on the cell phones of arrestees to try to entrap other gay men. In related news, the smartphone app Grindr, which allows gay men to find each other, announced it would permanently disable an option that allowed people to see their distance from other users. There have been reports that police in Egypt and Iran have used Grindr to hunt and arrest gay men. Jamaica: Activist Drops Challen…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…lectorate than it is with straight voters. LePen’s Party, which includes a number of openly gay officials, still pledges to roll back the marriage equality law in favor of civil unions. As AP notes, LePen is not the only nationalist leader who uses fear of radical Islamist violence to attract LGBT support: In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, shou…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…d because the Bible stipulates that marriage is between a man and a woman, Australian law should do the same. It is, of course, constitutionally and factually absurd to call Australia a Christian nation. Also, being a “Christian nation” didn’t work out so well for Ireland. To answer my son’s question, I suspect Ireland got “so cool” with gay people about the time the failings of the Catholic Church were exposed in that country: paedophilia, abuse,…

Religious Resistance to Bolivian Gender Law; US Religious Right Celebrates Court OK For Romanian Marriage Initiative; Will LGBTs Be Banned from Indonesian TV?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…y 80 countries, and at the time of the convention, it was still illegal in Australia, the UK, most of the United States, and most of Europe—in Australia and other former British colonies, these laws were a legacy of British colonial rule. When the United States began accepting gay and lesbian asylum seekers in 1990, some states still had anti-sodomy laws on the books. (The Supreme Court ultimately declared these laws unconstitutional in 2003 with…

In Sermon on Birth of the ‘Fatherland,’ Putin’s Patriarch Kirill Equates Invasion of Ukraine with Defense of Orthodox Faith

By Katherine Kelaidis

…the Russians’ prayers were likely more effective on a day dedicated to the Virgin Mary, implying that the Russian victory that day had been a direct result of the interventions of the Holy Mother. Not that the woman whom Orthodox Christians widely refer to as the Theotokos (the God-bearer)—i.e. the Virgin Mary, whose birth is the cause of the feast day—gets much attention the rest of the oration. Because she doesn’t. Instead, Patriarch Kirill rema…

Marriage Equality Coming To Taiwan In Spite of Religious Objectors?; Anti-Gay Ruling Sought By Indonesian Islamists Threatens Women & Poor Couples; LDS Church Launches New ‘Mormon and Gay’ Site; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e law, the government will be required to provide a replacement celebrant. Australia: US anti-gay group providing materials to anti-equality groups The Australian Family Association is reportedly distributing an anti-marriage-equality pamphlet published by US anti-gay group MassResistance, which recently announced that it has been providing materials to anti-equality groups in Mexico. Bosnia-Herzegovina: LGBT people challenged by ‘patriarchal and…

Museum of (In)tolerance for Divided City

By Shalom Goldman

…ision of an Israeli archeologist. The number of skeletons taken out of the site numbered between one thousand and fifteen hundred. According to Gideon Sulaimani, an archeologist who worked at the site before the court injunction went into effect “They call this an archeological excavation but it’s really a clearing-out, an erasure of the Muslim past.” In 1984, George Orwell’s great satire of totalitarian regimes, there is a maxim that speaks direc…