Deals 1 800-299-7264 Cheap Flights from Shanghai to San Francisco – United Airlines | Search Results | Religion Dispatches

Peru’s Civil Unions Bill Killed as Bishop Calls Sponsor ‘Faggot’; Germany Fines Men For Trying To Force Gay Muslim Teen Into Hetero Marriage; LGBT Global Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…rce Gay Muslim Teen into Hetero Marriage The father and two uncles of a gay 18-year old Muslim man were fined for trying to force the then-15-year-old boy into Turkey to try to force him to marry a woman. Joseph Patrick McCormick writes at Pink News: Three Lebanese men have been fined by a Berlin court for allegedly attempting to force a 15-year-old relative into a straight marriage…. The associated press reports that the complaint details that in…

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Orlando Massacre; Legal Gray Area in Jordan Amid Rising Fundamentalism; Push and Pull on LGBT Human Rights at UN; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ant to reach that level. And it’s already given to us,” he added. Yet, half-a-century since legalisation, LGBT+ rights in the country remain a gray area. Madian Al Jazerah is a LGBT+ activist and the owner of Books@cafe, a LGBT+ friendly space. “Although there’s no law that criminalises, there is no law that protects the LGBT+ community,” he said in an interview. When there is physical abuse to the community, police treatment isn’t fair or equal,…

Church=State in Putin’s Orthodox Empire?; Evangelical-Orthodox Anti-Gay Alliance; Malaysian Court Protects Transwomen; Catholicism (Still) Declining in Latin America; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…orts that a marriage equality bill in New South Wales failed last year on a 19-21 vote. Anthony Fisher, recently installed as Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, said he has a “consciousness” of “the struggles of people with same-sex attraction,” saying, “Our concern should be there to help them rather than to be adding to their problems…” Bangladesh: Hijras Celebrate Third Gender Court Ruling On Monday, more than a thousand transgender hijras led the…

The Uncertain Post-Obergefell World of Religious Exemptions

By Sarah Posner

…cise or free speech rights of business owners, Avakian wrote. He cited the United States Supreme Court in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, a 1995 case in which the court found that “modern public accommodations laws are well within the State’s usual power to enact when a legislature has reason to believe that a given group is a target of discrimination, and they do not, as a general matter, violate the First or F…

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…riages, and Christians, Druze and Muslims all marry through their own state-sanctioned and publicly funded religious legal systems. Guam: Officials looking to market as wedding destination for Asian couples Two hundred same-sex couples have married in Guam over the past two years, reports The Guam Daily Post. The story says the Guam Visitors Bureau is researching the potential market for same-sex couples in the Asia-Pacific region. Taiwan: Local g…

Evangelicals Call Christian Zionist Uncritical “Support” for Israel “Appalling” and “Intolerable”

By Sarah Posner

…sider your interpretation of Scripture, for the sake of God, humanity, the United States, and, yes, Israel itself, the Land and People we both love. Rick Perry is not a Gushee-Stassen evangelical. In his speech this morning in New York, he portrayed the Palestinians as the sole aggressors, and the Obama administration as appeasors. “Simply put, we would not be here today at the precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama Policy in the Middle E…

LGBT’s, Opponents Prep for Vatican Synod; UN Rights Council Adopts LGBT Resolution; Brazil’s Evangelicals Eye Presidency; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…uzzFeed’s Lester Feder reports that a Russian official has charged that the 17-year-old boy was illegally put up for adoption and “handed over to a homosexual American couple.” But an attorney with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center said the Russian government “is completely mischaracterizing the history of what’s gone on here and the legal posture of the case.” An HBO Documentary, “Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia,” will be released on Mo…

London’s ‘Big Gay Iftar’ And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…remism on the cultural rights of women. The deadline for submissions is May 19. The United Methodist Church’s judicial council ruled that a lesbian bishop’s election violated church law which holds that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Foreign Affairs published “The Global Backlash Against Gay Rights: How Homophobia Became a Political Tool” by Omar G. Encarnación. The article examines the pushback against ga…

Religion in Tension on World AIDS Day

By Susan Henking

…persist in homophobic attacks on gay men and lesbians and emphasize foreign-mission-based attention to HIV/AIDS, while turning a blind eye to the pandemic’s ongoing significance as a form of social injustice in the United States. These attitudes are an important part of sustaining the virulence of AIDS/HIV in people’s lives. While Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church is certainly an extremist in claiming that “God Hates Fags,” he is not the only…

Gun-Wielding White Couple Make Perfect Protagonists for Republican Convention’s ‘Great American Story’

By Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry

…American Story” is necessarily bound up with whiteness, Christianity, state-sanctioned violence toward “unruly” minorities, and access to firearms to ensure self-protection. Americans who embrace Christian nationalism and want to see it privileged in the public sphere are much more fearful of the changing demographic and political landscape of the United States. Expect to see much more of this throughout the rest of the Republican National Convent…