Religion Dispatches
…r than that. If the Pew survey tells us anything, it’s that the conversation isn’t likely to end any time soon. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $10 will help us pay writers, coders, interns, and editors. And will earn you our endless gratitude….
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…d from entering the monastic life. —Party officials ultimately decide who will or will not be granted “official status” as monk or nun. Large monasteries in the TAR often have an “unofficial” monastic population that can be up to half of the official number of resident monks—a kind of waiting list. Although residents of the monasteries, where they work and study, these unofficial monks and nuns have little status and no real privileges in these in…
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…ish to avail themselves of legal protections which in some countries are still only for the heterosexually married. I hasten to remind them that before same-sex marriage was available in the thirty countries where it’s now legalized, many of those countries offered (and some still offer) civil unions. Statistics are hard to come by, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the vast majority of couples who formed civil unions were same sex partners who…
Read More…, on the advisability of amendments to the bill; and 2) The development of ill will between the personhood lobby and the Republican representatives. To recap: In the past few weeks, Oklahoma house Republicans have been heavily lobbied by both Oklahomans for Life and Personhood Oklahoma (a state affiliate of Personhood USA). Those groups firmly opposed any amendment to the bill — even amendments that would protect access to IVF and birth control, a…
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…inated. […] During business hours today, 4,500 innocent American children will be killed. It is a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973’s Roe v. Wade.” More recent statements during a House Judiciary Committee meeting suggest that Johnson still views women and pregnant people, not only as incubators in God’s name, but as producers of future revenue sources: “Roe v. Wade gave constitutional cover to the elective killin…
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…at so long as they get rid of the contraception mandate, many bishops are willing to look the other way if millions are thrown off the insurance rolls. It’s likely that the bishops are holding their tongues because, while they don’t love the health plan—except for the part that would further limit abortion services by private health plans—they still hope to get several much-wished-for goodies from the Trump administration beyond the promised roll-…
Read More…in a new level of respect for minority groups,” he said. … Governor Lisa Phillips will now be asked to ratify the bill and make it law, giving people on St Helena the same rights as same-sex couples on Ascension, Tristan da Cunha and most other UK overseas territories outside the Caribbean. Speaking later in the traditional adjournment debate, Lawson Henry said it was a great day for St Helena. St Helena’s 2017 Marriage Bill does not compel minist…
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…l to the conservative Christian logic behind supporting a plaintiff like Phillips, or the willingness to turn “conscientious objectors” to marriage equality like Kim Davis into right-wing martyrs. “The cultural power and cultural availability of religious freedom as a legal argument shapes the way that people think about what their religion is,” she explained. “So it kind of encourages people to frame arguments in that way—so therefore baking a ca…
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…y a few local connections, but they showed up with their tools and their skills and a willingness to work. There was never a whisper of sneaking Jesus in the back door, if you will, of making the help they were offering be about anything more than the work of their hands. They pitched in helping organizers at a “tent city” in Kathmandu for people who’d lost or been forced from their homes after the quake, patched concrete at buildings that are par…
Read More…honours sodomy must drink from this barren and sterile brew in which boys will not grow into men and girls will not grow into women. The Zambia that would come out of this will not contain itself and the socio-cultural confusion would simply be unspeakable. Uganda: Does criminalization bill hinge on whether people ‘choose’ to be gay? As we have previously reported, President Yoweri Museveni has said he would not sign the infamous anti-gay bill pas…
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