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3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…he bishops’ real objection to the contraceptive mandate was that it threatened to enshrine contraception as an essential health benefit, which was a direct threat to the Catholic Church’s promotion of natural family planning. As Archbishop William Lori, head of the USCCB Religious Liberty Committee recently told Crux, preventive services should only “pertain to preventing diseases and not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, und…

Five Social Media Trends that are Reshaping Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…y. 3. O Holy App With more than half a million apps now available for the iPhone or iPad, and maybe 232 for the Android, it’s clear that the number of religiously-themed apps is growing. Apps are available for adherents to just about any religious group you can think of (including Pastafarians), and have been developed for a large number of congregations, dioceses, and other religious organizations (though it’s hard to know what one is meant to do…

Pope and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Declare Shared View of Marriage & Family; Government & Muslim Officials Ramp Up Anti-LGBT Rhetoric in Indonesia; Australian Religious Leaders Ask Parliament to Act on Marriage Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…mmunity standards. Facebook’s censorship was not limited to KaosGL.org. Bianet’s news story on Facebook’s censorship of Kaos GL’s article that depicted the Brazilian gay couple who shed their clothes against homophobia was also censored. Peru: Policy break-up kiss-in protest Police in Lima turned water cannons on protesters who had gathered in the plaza de Armas for a “kisses against homophobia” demonstration. Sin Etiquetas, a Lima-based LGBT webs…

Swimming Against the Tide: Religious (Non) Affiliation Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Timothy King

…Pew’s forthcoming reports will provide greater depth to understanding the nature and significance of these changes. The release of these initial numbers makes one thing clear: the water is changing, and fast….

2017 Around the World: Progress and Persecution For LGBT People

By Peter Montgomery

…med for suggesting anti-LGBT attitudes may someday evolve President Nana Akufo-Addo said in an interview this fall that there’s no real effort to promote acceptance of homosexuality in Ghana, where it is a criminal offense. But NewNowNext reports that even his acknowledgement that the country may some day see the kinds of changes in attitudes toward LGBT people reflected in other part of the globe sparked criticism from political and religious lea…

Obama Caves on (Another) Contraception Exemption

By Patricia Miller

…ployers who seek to duck the contraceptive mandate will be small. But imagine a scenario where a larger number of employers seeks to escape a costly mandate, such as equal access to in vitro fertilization procedures for straight and gay couples, for supposedly religious reasons and hundreds flood HHS with generic opt-out letters that don’t identify a specific insurer. Or a future administration that is less dedicated to contraceptive access. It’s…

Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…n search of a case or an issue that would be a productive conversation partner with fatness. Another inspiration for the project was some reading I was doing in social theory and specifically the work of Pierre Bourdieu. In writing about social movements in general, and feminism in particular, Bourdieu says that movements for change need to focus not only on consciousness (and consciousness-raising) but to intervene in the bodily practices that ar…

Morality and Marriage Vigilantes and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…eal that the source of Marriage Alliance’s funding is an investment firm owned by a Sydney couple, Byron and Francine Pirola. Marriage Alliance recently filed its annual report with ASIC, and this document reveals Beronia Investments gave the group a $1.67 million loan in the last financial year. Crikey then obtained company documents from Beronia Investments, which revealed the firm has just two directors: Byron and Francine Pirola. Byron is a co…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…Muslims work predominately as businesspeople in the lucrative Free Trade Zone, one of the largest free trade ports in the world. In the city center, many residents are descendants of West Indian laborers on the Panama Canal throughout the twentieth century. The city has one of the highest rates of poverty in the country. Every year, a group of black Muslims in Colón hosts an event to celebrate Eid-ul-Udha, a holiday that marks the end of the annua…

Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…ing an international branch of Saddleback Church in Hong Kong (as well as one in Berlin and one in Buenos Aires), rethought his position after reading this post by Hong Kong Baptist Professor Sam Tsang: Does Warren mean that his staff is like the Red Guard woman here who persecutes him daily or does he mean that his staff is marching forward like good little Red Guard in the Cultural Revolution, killing of their kinsman in the process? Or does he…