Religion Dispatches
San Francisco was bedlam last night after the Giants broke a 53-year drought to win the World Series; you could hear the sound of the streets from way up in the hills over the Mission district. And near the ball park? Forget it. But amid the din, and my own rarely-elicited hometown pride, I found myself wondering about those elderly nuns who have been praying for so many years for the Texas Rangers. They’ve had a few minutes of fame this season,…
Read More
…tentionally took a detour. I was south of Santa Cruz heading north towards San Francisco and I just had a craving for that ride along the coast, the famous Highway One. Earlier this year when I spent a month in Australia, including a stint at University of Melbourne, I took a day tour along the Great Ocean Road. I learned that its architect of it had been inspired by our own Highway One. Both are stunning testaments to the majesty of God’s creatio…
Read More…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…
Read More
…otomayor from the Bronx, Ruth Bader Ginsburg from Brooklyn. Breyer is from San Francisco. What kind of diversity is this—either in geography or life experience? The linking of Jewish socialism and gay rights is also part of the agenda. Nathanael Kapner, writing for Truthseeker, says, “THE THIRD ZIONIST JEW, who is alleged to be a lesbian, is about to be installed to the bench of the highest court in America. If confirmed, (and this is likely given…
Read More
…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…
Read More…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’…
Read More…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…
Read More
…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…
Read More…r couples, attempting to bypass challenges before the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco sponsored by marriage equality advocates. No announcement has been made on whether the court will review the case. Meanwhile, four years after a bare-knuckle battle to pass the California anti-marriage equality Proposition 8, and in the shadow of a presidential campaign in which a Mormon candidate and his conservative Catholic running mate echoed the same sort…
Read More…n in employment decisions by grantees.” After the 2011 hearing, Scott told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko that Holder was “obviously ‘embarrassed to try to explain the policy’” and that Obama could repeal the OLC memo via executive order but had made no effort to. The responses to Scott’s question finally reveal the straightforward answer CARD has long sought. Although it was unclear at the time exactly how the Obama administration wa…
Read More