Religion Dispatches
…ding up to this year’s election.“ (For more on Pray the Vote, go here) The promo for Craig Detweiler’s new book Into the Dark reads: “Detweiler, a well-respected film expert and media spokesperson on Hollywood and Christianity, examines forty-five twenty-first-century films that resonate theologically—from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Little Miss Sunshine—offering groundbreaking insight into their scriptural connections and theological applica…
Read More…Amir left behind his home and family a year ago and is currently living in Sweden. There, he hopes to register and expand his charity IraQueer, as it is illegal to do so in Iraq. He has received multiple threats from both officials and his friends because of who he is and the work he does. “It’s incredibly difficult being away from my family – I’ve been missing birthdays, everything – and the more work I do for IraQueer, and the more people know a…
Read More
…me foreign forces” he didn’t name. He also accused gay people of trying to promote themselves… Lokodo, a former Catholic priest who condemns homosexuality, has previously been accused to leading efforts to foil the public activities of LGBTI Ugandans. Serbia: Prime Minister names lesbian to cabinet Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic announced that he would appoint Ana Brnabic to his cabinet as minister for state administration, which would make her t…
Read More
…arriage throughout the country, as well as amendments to the Federal Civil Code to allow homosexual adoption, more than 1,000 organizations joined together to form the National Front for the Family (FNF). Heading up this front are the National Union of Parents, Family Network, ConFamilia, CitizenGo, HazteOir, Dilo Bien, and Mexico is One for the Children, among others. “Yesterday was a historic day in Mexico,” Dabdoub Giacomán emphasized on June 6…
Read More
…. So it’s more about representation and identity than it is about specific codes or laws.” Even though some political activists in Middle Eastern and North African countries promote “Islamic law” in reaction to the imposition of European-style government and legal systems on them, there is no single school of thought on what shari’ah, or divine law, is or means—and there is no single, accepted legal code. “If Islamic law were some book where you c…
Read More
…uples. The third criterion Dr. King identifies is that “an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” For same sex couples to have legal access just like heterosexual couples…
Read More
…l Justice Reform “has lambasted the Aceh administration’s Islamic criminal code bylaw, or Qanun Jinayat, saying it could potentially provoke discrimination and over-criminalization of LGBT communities and other vulnerable groups.” The Aceh province is governed by the conservative Islamist legal code. Notes the Jakarta Post: Qanun Jinayat imposes criminal sanctions on both Muslims and non-Muslims found to have consumed liquor, dated in public or ca…
Read More
…than their salaries might suggest. At issue is section 107 of the U.S. Tax Code, which contains two subsections pertaining to “the case of a minister of the gospel.” (The term was originally intended to refer only to ordained Christian clergy, but its meaning was later expanded by the Internal Revenue Service to include their counterparts in other religious traditions.) The first subsection, 107(1), allows a minister to exclude from taxable income…
Read More…are Anglican women bishops in the U.S., New Zeland, South Africa, Ireland, Sweden, and Germany. The consecration of Lane could exacerbate divisions in the Anglican Communion, as did the ordination by the Episcopal Church in the U.S. of an openly gay Bishop, Gene Robinson. (Anglican Mainstream, “an information resource for orthodox Anglicans,” featured on its website this week an article by Joseph Nicolosi, champion of “reparative therapy.”) In a r…
Read More
…all our traditions to justify both standpoints. It was the late Bishop of Sweden, Krister Stendahl, who noted that believers, like members of any human group, have the tendency to see themselves in reference to the “other” by comparing the best of one’s own community with the worst of the other community. And it was Jesus who said, “Hypocrite! First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in yo…
Read More