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Sacred&Profane: The “Cult” of Oprah Inflames Religious Right

By Gary Laderman

…s darkest hours after the 9/11 attacks. Oprah hosted the national memorial service after the tragedy, an intimate, familiar, trusted face who could lead Americans in the socially urgent rituals of death that did not exclude the expression of multiple religious traditions but, on the other hand, were sacred actions in their own right irrespective of the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and others who participated in the ceremonies. Oprah is on…

Marriage Equality Coming To Taiwan In Spite of Religious Objectors?; Anti-Gay Ruling Sought By Indonesian Islamists Threatens Women & Poor Couples; LDS Church Launches New ‘Mormon and Gay’ Site; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ristian protesters organized by the International Christian Torch Vanguard Service and Ministry Association protested outside legislative chambers: While many protesters held placards and occasionally broke into chants in support of “family values,” raised hands and speaking in tongues were also prevalent, with protesters closing their eyes or looking to the sky in apparent prayer, on one occasion spinning in circles while dancing to a hymn. “We’r…

A Catholic House Divided Over Reproductive Health Care: Bishops Launch a New Campaign

By Frances Kissling

…ows full well that opposition to providing contraceptive and sterilization services is not the same as insuring those services, has joined the bishops in this fight. More importantly, it remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will understand that it is quite possible that many Catholic hospitals would have no moral problem covering their employees for contraceptive services should the administration stand firm. Some may in fact ferven…

Tutu’s Daughter Marries Woman & Loses Anglican Priest License; Romanian Anti-Marriage Activists Get 3 Million Signatures; Australian State Apologizes For Harmful Sodomy Laws; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ding to Iranian law, all male citizens are required to report for military service at age 18 and must serve a consecutive 24 months period. Homosexuals and transsexuals are not required to serve in the military. Prior to the ratification of the new regulation, both categories were exempt from military draft under a section of the law which classified homosexuality and transsexuality as a mental disorder. However, after the ratification of the new…

As Hobby Lobby Heads to SCOTUS, Let’s Ditch Kosher Butcher Analogies

By Sarah Posner

…r (1985), another unanimous decision – a religious exemption would require customers, employees, or competitors to bear a heavy cost in the service of another’s religion, something the Court has understandably been loath to sanction. That said, though, it’s hard to imagine (a) the government requiring kosher butchers to sell pork, except in the conservative imagination where the government persecutes religious believers and (b) in any case, why th…

Norwegian Catholic Church May Stop Civil Marriages; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tizens.” Australia: Australian Christian Lobby Partners With Anti-Equality American Evangelicals Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, reported the Sydney Morning Herald on April 16, was scheduled to “share a stage at the Australian Christian Lobby’s annual conference with a radio host who compared the advancement of gay rights to the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany.” The event that weekend featured American religious right figures Eric Metaxas and…

The Democrats, The Gays, And The Evangelicals

By Sarah Posner

…he White House cares about, One News Now, the (notoriously slanted) “news” service of the American Family Association reported just before the election that White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Director Joshua DuBois reached out to David Jeremiah, a California megachurch pastor who declared in an AFA news story that Obama “is a dangerous person” because he’s moving the country toward “socialism.” The pair reportedly agre…

Turn on the News: Why Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Faith Doesn’t Matter (But Amy Coney Barrett’s Did)

By Daniel Schultz

…prisingly, Graham’s words drew condemnation. Jacob Lupfer at Religion News Service derided the use of faith as a “gotcha question,” while Americans United for the Separation of Church and State’s Rob Boston called the line of questioning “inappropriate.” Rather than frame the story in terms of church and state, Peter Smith, writing for the AP, led with another angle: so what is Jackson’s faith? Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has put her religious fai…

LGBTQ Methodists on Whether the United Methodist Church Will Ever Affirm LGBTQ People

By Tris Mamone

…he would be allowed to serve as a liturgist for the church’s second Sunday service. Still, McWilliams has hope for the UMC’s future. “There are studies that have shown that American youth are 70 percent pro-LGBT,” she tells RD, “and I should imagine the ratio is similar in the church. Women’s acceptance to Annual Conferences and to Ordination both took 20 to 30 years, as the older, more conservative generation passed on the mantle to the younger p…

Why the King Hearings Should Matter to Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…e Smoot trials and the King hearings as well. Kathleen Flake, professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University and author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, writes that unlike the King hearings: The Smoot hearings had some basis in fact: the LDS Church was breaking the law against polygamy. The merits of that law, of course, are questionable, but there’s no question th…