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Will Francis’ Statements on Women and Gays ‘Make a Mess’ Inside the Church?

By Mary E. Hunt

…point on the matter, underscoring that gay men, even if celibate, were not welcome in the priesthood. In November 2005, the Vatican, through the Congregation for Catholic Education, published the Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders, with the following central message: …this Dicastery, in accord with the C…

Should We Accept The Apology of an Ex-Gay Ministry?

By John Blevins

…omething to behold!). They may not be reconciled to my being gay, but they welcome me and my partner, our two sons, and the lesbian couple with whom we co-parent our children as members of their extended family. They—and I—finally decided that we would rely more on loving each other than figuring out who was right and who was wrong. That simple, hard decision has indeed reduced fear in our family, so I’ll watch and wait to see if that is what driv…

Nearly Half of LGBT People Claim No Religion

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…sbyterians, Episcopalians, the United Church of Christ, and Unitarians all welcome LGBT people not just in their pews, but in leadership roles and even in the pulpit. As Peter Montgomery has already pointed out, the religious presence at Washington, D.C.’s gay pride parade has increased this year, showing a willingness on the part of many religions to really love LGBT people as they are. Judging from the survey, then, these kinds of huge doctrinal…

Free Arabs: Satire, Disobedience, and Disclaimers

By Nabil Echchaibi

…among other things. As a critical space, Free Arab should be commended for promoting individual rights and civil liberties in the Arab context. The site’s work is also significant because it tries to locate secularism as a vernacular practice, a lived experience in a part of the world exclusively defined by a narrow religiosity and a perpetual combative relationship with the West. The founders believe the remarkable political achievements and unce…

Finding Love—and Dogma—in Unexpected Places: Jeff Chu’s Gay Christian Odyssey

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…fear. One of my goals was to meet the members of Westboro as humans. Their welcome could not have been warmer. We had pizza with them. By “we,” I mean me and my photographer and videographer. (I called them my “human security blanket” because I didn’t want to go by myself.) It’s a little unnerving, the ease with which they used words that, to me, would be considered offensive—and just slipping in the word “fag” into every other sentence, that’s no…

The Curious Case of Mormons and LGBT Rights

By Alan Michael Williams

…ge off the table, LGBT politics in Utah does not “advocate domesticity and promote consumption under the name of equality politics.” It engenders grassroots, cross-party dialogue that takes into consideration the needs of various households—single, gay, straight, and other. This community-based politicking was embodied by the 2009 “Common Ground Initiative” (CGI) formulated by Equality Utah. Although the CGI is no longer Equality Utah’s stated mis…

Four Changes Evangelicals Must Make

By Richard Pierard

…I, as a historian, am reasonably well-informed, and the opportunity was a welcome interruption from the incessant bombardment of election propaganda and the absurd claims so-called Christian politicians were then making. Once again, in the U.S. election campaign, our evangelicals—including among them many of “my” Baptists—were promoting a slew of “social issues,” but precious little “gospel.” Self-proclaimed and media-designated evangelicals…

New Pope, Old Message for LGBTs

By Peter Montgomery

…rio Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, seems likely to be a welcome progressive voice on economic justice issues and an unsurprisingly conservative voice on doctrinal and social issues. In Argentina, he was a strident but unsuccessful opponent of marriage equality for same-sex couples, which he reportedly called “a destructive pretention against the plan of God… a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive t…

Stephenie Meyer, Mormon Feminist?!

By Joanna Brooks

…s her a Mormon feminist! And to which, as a fellow Mormon feminist, I say: WELCOME, STEPHENIE! It takes guts for a Mormon woman to call herself a feminist. It really does. There are few religious communities in the United States where feminism is more hotly debated or purposefully misunderstood than in Mormonism, and few American churches have a stronger historical record of opposition to legal equality for women. There are plenty of people skepti…

Are Women “Secondary” in Catholic Church?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…der-biased religious tradition in the West, it seems worth considering how welcome women really are in Christian churches across the denominational spectrum. As mainline churches continue to decline in overall membership, Americans believe the Catholic Church is out of touch, and as the religiously unaffiliated continue to grow in number, how women—the majority of active church-goers—experience the church is hardly a secondary concern. Gendered ch…