Religion Dispatches
…In their paper, Ho and his coauthors write that “visitors may decrease the number of incense sticks burned and period of stay at temples.” In my travels, I did visit temples that tried to suggest limits on how many incense sticks people should burn. Some temples have tried to deal with this problem by extinguishing incense sticks after they have been burning for a while. Particularly in Hong Kong, I sometimes saw large buckets of water standing ne…
Read More…ght guaranteed in the country’s constitution. See journalist Rex Wockner’s site for ongoing reporting and analysis of the complex and shifting marriage landscape in Mexico. The Transgender Law Center and the Cornell Law School LGBT Clinic released “Report on Human Rights Conditions of Transgender Women in Mexico,” which documents “pervasive discrimination, hatred, violence, police abuse, rape, torture, and murder.” Kyrgyzstan: Anti-LGBT bill delay…
Read More
…churches in America to explicitly reach out to LGBTQ Catholics, became the site of near-daily funerals for AIDS victims. People gathered there to grieve, and the grief was nonstop. Fr. Anthony McGuire, pastor at the time, told Jesuit Fr. Donal Godfrey that “it was harrowing. I used to weep a lot at funerals. There was no break to it. It was one after another after another.” Sanctuaries have a long history in the often bloody struggle for equality…
Read More
…Christian businessmen have treated the American marketplace as a religious site—and a means to promote evangelical Christianity and its politics. Controversies surrounding Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, and bakers who refuse to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples are just the latest in a series of public skirmishes between self-described Christian entrepreneurs and the laws and regulations that govern American business. Indeed, as historian Darren…
Read More
…ose to panic. As far as I could tell, the TSA personnel and other security officials seemed know about as much as the passengers about what was happening—all around me, I sensed a complete failure of nerve. A black woman wearing a security vest crouched outside on the tarmac hiding, behind a luggage container, sobbing uncontrollably. Why was I the only one reaching out to her? I tapped her on her shoulder and said “Give me a hug.” She clung to me…
Read More…t decade, especially against transgender citizens. Mexico: Catholic Church officials rallying opposition to president’s equality proposal Catholic Church officials have called for a marches in September opposing President Enrique Peña Nieto’s proposed constitutional changes on marriage equality. Legislative officials have continued to make it clear that they are not terribly interested in acting on the president’s initiative. Activists appealed to…
Read More
…he immorality of homosexuality). Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, a number of Christian denominations and churches found that they really had to discuss the HIV/AIDS crisis, because it was a pressing local and national concern. And to do so, they had to talk about sex, including homosexuality. It turns out, the things they had to say about AIDS and about sex proved far more diverse than Christian Right rhetoric pronouncing AIDS as “God’s wr…
Read More…jailed for refusing to marry a gay couple. The story came from a fake news site. Not like Jon Stewart fake news. Or even Onion fake news. Actual fake news. “By the way,” Stetzer added, “if you are a pastor you should already know that no one can make you officiate anything. In fact, you can refuse to officiate an interracial marriage. You’d be an idiot and a racist, but you wouldn’t be arrested.” The other “story” Stetzer highlighted claimed “a so…
Read More
…gelicals and Trump. As early as August 2015, the independent Catholic news site Crux noted that Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration stance put him at odds with Catholic bishops who were lobbying Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Writing in National Review earlier this summer, the political scientist Michael J. New commented that Trump’s “Catholic problem” likely stemmed from Trump’s harsh rhetoric on Latino immigrants who many Ame…
Read More…s will come to nothing. The non-partisan GovTrack, an open government data site, puts the likelihood of HR 153 becoming a law at zero percent. This bill will never come to a vote, probably, disappearing into the Ways and Means committee never to be heard from again. The question is: why aren’t Republicans supporting it? Religious conservatives are rallying around religious liberty issues, including the rights of churches to get involved in politic…
Read More