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Judge Rules Law Prohibiting Picketing Outside Military Funerals Unconstitutional

By Julie Ingersoll

…e the trip from the Midwest to the west coast to protests to at Comicon in San Diego where they were met with a mocking counter-demonstration. At issue is the right of families of the deceased to mourn in private against what is clearly political speech—although legal efforts to stop the church’s protests were not raised when the target was gays but only now the target is the families of soldiers. Of course, if you watch South Park (or if you are…

Texas Board of Education Wants to Change History

By Lauri Lebo

…professor and chairman of the history department at Texas State University-San Marcos; and Lybeth Hodges, professor of history and government at Texas Woman’s University, all provide the panel with solid mainstream advanced academic credentials and educational experience. In their expert reviews, Kracht, de la Teja, and Hodges offer reasonable suggestions for curriculum updates; while the other three offer suggestions that reveal a bizarre politic…

Patron Saint of AIDS/HIV To Be Canonized

By Susan Henking

…ill be shown at a church in Detroit shortly after the canonization, and in San Francisco thereafter.) Today, there are institutions organized to address AIDS/HIV that are named after the Belgian missionary, including Damien Ministries. Indeed, Damien Ministries is celebrating its 20th year of caring for persons with AIDS/HIV. And, what some claim to be the world’s only Roman Catholic chapel memorializing persons who have died from HIV/AIDS, at Mon…

Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?

By Nathan Schneider

…thirties, he finally settled down as an actor, writer, and producer in the San Francisco theater scene. It was there that Talen met Sidney Lanier, an Episcopal minister whose own antics were dramatized in the play-turned-film The Night of the Iguana, by his cousin, Tennessee Williams. At the time, remembers Lanier, he was “mostly traveling in the opposite direction from the Church.” After seeing Talen perform, Lanier took him out to lunch and said…

“Ex-Gay” Therapy Revealed in Prop. 8 Trial

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…to change.” Those are the words Ryan Kendall uttered in a federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday as the trial over whether or not to overturn Proposition 8 that stripped gays and lesbians of their right to marry in California, got into its second week. Kendall took the stand to recount his harsh treatment in an “ex-gay ministry.” His deeply religious parents forced him into so-called “reparative therapy” after finding a note that Kendall had…

Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…ian ethos in black America. These theologically conservative communions outnumber and overwhelm the influence and theological visions of Christian traditions that are stereotypically progressive such as the United Church Christ and the United Methodist Church. The stark reality is that the overwhelming majority of black Christians have more in common, theologically, with Southern Baptists, the Church of God, and the Assemblies of God than with Epi…

Ian Buruma on the Political Excesses of Religion

By Lisa Webster

…nd to set a new kind of conversation in motion. When we met last month in San Francisco, I began our conversation by commenting on the scope of the book. Buruma, best known for his expertise on Japan, told me he’d written partly to contest the idea that religion doesn’t matter in the political life of East Asia. “It’s a different kind of religion,” he explained, “the idea of spiritual authority still plays a big role.” And, while it operates more…

‘Rome is Gay’

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tographic exhibit depicting similarly uninterpretable male intimacy was in San Francisco a few years ago. It was entitled Dear Friends, and a video essay by Richard Rodriguez walks the viewer brilliantly through the impossibility of knowing now how men one hundred and fifty years ago imagined themselves so touched by their closest friends. They lived before the Freudian revolution, you see. So they didn’t think of sexuality, just sex. And they pre…

Will California Outlaw Divorce?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ulment, but it must be for cause like bigamy, fraud, or incest. But as the San Diego News Network reports: “I don’t want to be married to you anymore” doesn’t count. While the anti-gay marriage people may roll their eyes at such a suggestion, Marcotte’s measure makes several points clear. First, heterosexuals, who fight tooth and nail to keep gay people from getting married, make a mockery of the institution every single day, from Britney Spears’…

Beyond Adam and Eve

By Becky Garrison

…he Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco recounts how this gay-positive church struggled with how to welcome a very attractive transgender woman who walked through their doors in the mid 1980s. Some straight men in the congregation felt odd when they learned the woman they’d felt attracted to had been born male, while some women did not want to share the bathroom with her. After a month or so this pe…