Religion Dispatches
…’s refusal to serve a lesbian couple at their commitment ceremony. The New Mexico Supreme Court held that the state human rights law, which prohibits discrimination based on, among other things, sexual orientation in public accommodations, did not violate the photographer’s Free Speech or Free Exercise rights, nor did it violate the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The photographers sought review from the United States Supreme Court on o…
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…them to wealthy settler colonists who pursued their own unjust logics. And Mexico controlled California for only a short while before U.S. imperial aggression severed Alta California from Mexico, and finding gold in its mountains, U.S. colonists invaded the land and rapidly transformed Alta California into a state, extending and expediting the population decline and attempted cultural genocide of native peoples. It is precisely the place of Califo…
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…ea, Australia, and across Latin America and the borderlands of America and Mexico. The number of apparitions in the U.S. seems to keep rising, but not because of Belgian immigrants to Wisconsin. What seems to be an increase in apparitions is probably a jump in reports of apparitions and manifestations of the Virgin. Rumors of miracles and visions now fly around the globe via the internet, rather than moving locally through the whispers of neighbor…
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…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…
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…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…
Read More…t him. In what the Polish media are calling “the Biedron effect,” a record number of candidates also came out publicly before the local elections, which took place in two rounds over the last two weeks. None of the others won seats, but gay rights activists are still hugely encouraged by the change. Their poor showing can be attributed largely to the fact that they were mostly young first -time candidates with left wing parties, which saw little s…
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…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…
Read More…not qualified to speak to Nigerians in the capacity they are doing today. Mexico: Marriage equality continues to spread Marriage equality continues to spread in Mexico via federal court orders, or amparos, issued on behalf of couples or groups of couples seeking to marry. The amparos instruct local authorities to issue licenses but do not generally eliminate the underlying local laws until there have been five rulings against a state. This week 6…
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…Senate and is signed by the president, it will become law in January 2016. Mexico: Congress calls on states to get in line with marriage equality Mexico’s federal Congress, following up on a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of Justice, called on state legislatures to reform their civil and family law to ensure recognition of the right of same-sex couples to get married. On July 10, 20 same-sex couples were married on the beach in Acapulco. Th…
Read More…ld the lower court ruling against the mother and upholding Peleg’s wishes. Mexico: Marriage equality keeps moving forward We have occasionally reported on the long march toward marriage equality that has been taking place in Mexico’s complicated court system. Individual couples and groups of couples have been able to win federal injunctions, known as amparos, requiring local officials to grant them marriage licenses. But those amparos do not requi…
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