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A Catholic Turnabout on Abortion or More Sympathy for the Bishops?

…ns where there are differences, which is the hallmark of clear thought and sanity, you can judge different issues differently. Thomas Aquinas put it simply: “Human actions are right or wrong according to the circumstances.” If the circumstances are different, your moral judgment can be different. And the circumstances of all the cases Steinfels hauls out from his store of non sequiturs are really and crucially different. A judgment on one does not…

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Catholics Talk About Sex

…lues to provide comprehensive sexual health information. The University of San Francisco Health Promotion Services and Loyola University Chicago provide information about contraception and STI prevention. Georgetown University allows H*yas for Choice to provide information and condoms to students in Red Square, a “free speech zone” on campus. These institutions are in the minority. In a survey of Catholic Universities, only 12% of colleges say the…

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Spiritual Envy: Michael Krasny’s Agnostic Quest

…ht. When the play was first performed, one of the early productions was at San Quentin and those prisoners really related to it in a very deep and profound way. Because so many of us are in this kind of limbo, whether we’re behind bars or not; we’re waiting for something to happen in our lives. The Gestalt psychologists taught me the importance of being in the moment and thinking about just being in time. I felt it important to talk about being in…

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Same-Sex Marriage: The Cure for Unemployment (Worries)

…alifornia, a lightly-populated, largely agricultural desert county east of San Diego, appeared as the only governmental entity in the state of California to seek standing as a proponent in the case to overturn Proposition 8. Whether or not the County has the standing to participate in the appeal is up to the panel of judges to determine. (Attorney Robert Tyler, appearing on behalf of Imperial County deputy clerk Isabel Vargas, proved himself embar…

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Beyond Adam and Eve

…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…

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‘Rome is Gay’

…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…

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In Praise of Gay Republicans

…alled,” in Mormon parlance) to serve as a leader in an LDS congregation in San Francisco.” All of these changes have been made because LGBT people were faithful to an institution that has historically despised and rejected them. Progress comes from making changes within, not protesting outside the doors. I completely understand the mindset of those who would question my membership in a club where many of its members wish to eliminate me altogether…

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Isaac Asimov’s Niece Covers the Rapture

It’s fitting that Nanette Asimov, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and Isaac Asimov’s niece, covered the failing of the Rapture for her newspaper. She details the story of a man who drove across the country with his family from Maryland to celebrate the event in the empty parking lot of the Family Radio station in Oakland, California, where this whole ridiculousness began. There is no gloating, or smugness in Asimov’s words, only a simple recou…

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Church and State in Mexico: A Political Party Wavers on Women’s Rights

…nce 2008, 17 states have passed similar measures—most recently in Baja and San Luis Potosi just last month. The wave of legislation began in reaction to a groundbreaking 2007 Mexico City law allowing abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. But it swelled as PRI leaders, seeking to gain conservative support in the 2009 elections, began forming alliances with local church leaders. Undoubtedly, Mexican politics has become more religiously conse…

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Controversial “Bishop of the Poor” Dies at 86

…udying at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bishop Ruiz led the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas from 1959 to 2000. In the 1990s he served as mediator in an attempt to end the conflict between the Mexican government and the indigenous Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas. Though he was asked to step down as mediator for supposedly favoring the Zapatistas, the tentative truce between the two groups has been sustained since 1998. He is…

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