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Gay Rights Org Delivers 150,000-Signature Petition to LDS Church

By Joanna Brooks

…tactical shift from the Church strategy in California in 2008, when Mormon officials and operatives depicted the legalization of same-sex marriage as a direct threat to Church doctrine and practices and mobilized members in their defense, to a position more like that adopted by the LDS Church in Argentina last summer, when members were not officially deployed or pressured into anti-same-sex marriage political activism and were instead counseled to…

Controversial LDS Conference Talk Edited for Publication

By Joanna Brooks

…over matters of rank, authority, and theology. Those who have watched LDS official discourse on homosexuality evolve since the 1980s felt that Elder Packer’s talk on Sunday represented something of a throwback, a departure from a slow movement towards acknowledging the feelings and experiences of LGBT people and those who love and serve them. The editing of Elder Packer’s talk appears to represent an effort to bring his message into harmony with…

Washington Post Blogger “Proud” To Have Shared Stage With Geert Wilders

By Sarah Posner

…n one of the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, a U.S. embassy official in the Netherlands summed up Wilders for President Obama as “no friend of the U.S.”: The Wilders Factor: Golden-pompadoured, maverick parliamentarian Geert Wilders, anti-Islam, nationalist Freedom Party remains a thorn in the coalition’s side, capitalizing on the social stresses resulting from the failure to fully integrate almost a million Dutch Muslims, mostly of…

The Religious “Right” to Denounce Homosexuality

By Sarah Posner

…Martinez, in which the CLS argued that Hastings Law School should grant it official recognition as a club, even though it required “members and those wishing to hold leadership positions in the club to be professing Christians and to disavow ‘unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle,‘” in violation of the school’s non-discrimination policy. Although CLS lost that case at the Supreme Court, it was one in a long line…

Could The “Grand Old Party” Now Be The “Gay Old Party”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…staggering. For instance, the Montana Republican Party in June “adopted an official platform that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997.” Reaction to such backward thinking is strong even in Montana: “I looked at that and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” state Sen. John Brueggeman, R-Polson, said last week. “Should it get taken ou…

The (Mostly Catholic) Anti-Abortion Roe v. Wade Schlep

By Mary E. Hunt

…t, LifeWatch, a group that has roots in the United Methodist Church but no official standing, sponsored a worship service before the march. Reports indicate that a mere seventeen people were in attendance, including some who are pro-choice. It was a day for papal flags, banners like “Archdiocese of Chicago,” handmade life-size crosses, and even a gold crozier that someone brought along to add gravitas, or maybe just in place of a cane. It was hard…

Pro-Gay Marriage Mormon Keeps Faith Despite Church Pressure

By Joanna Brooks

…eir votes to deny other people marriage?” Her two-minute video made the website, then the local news in Salt Lake City, and within days an official at LDS Church headquarters placed a concerned phone call to Melanie S.’s local clergy. Three times her bishop met with Melanie to discuss the video. Because she had affiliated with “Mormons for Marriage,” he questioned whether or not Melanie and her husband should be allowed to keep their temple recomm…

Possible Heir to Dalai Lama Cleared of Corruption Charges

By Tsering Namgyal

…phers, indiscriminately taking in whatever was fed to them by intelligence officials, police, and local politicians. Journalists seemed to become the medium through which any analyst and former official with a view on Tibet and China could fire a cheap shot. The Indian government’s assertiveness vis-à-vis China is refreshing (though achieving it at the expense of refugees and Buddhist monks who fled China at 14 to get an education smacks of bad ta…

Confession Fail: iPhone App Controversy Muddies the Sacramental Waters

By Elizabeth Drescher

…s released in January with the development support from a local priest and official at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as an imprimatur from Bishop Kevin C. Rhodes of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Maureen Dowd has described the weirdly variant age, gender, and station-appropriate (if you’re Roman Catholic, at least) catalogue of possible sins that make up the “Examination of Conscience” and “Confession” opt…

Meet Wyoming’s Anti-Shari’ah Crusader

By Sarah Posner

…amic Relations, Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange wrote: the amendment conveys an official government message of disapproval and hostility toward [the plaintiff’s] religious beliefs, that sends a clear message he is an outsider, not a full member of the political community, thereby chilling his access to the government and forcing him to curtail his political and religious activities. Further, the Court finds the consequences – the condemnation – that pl…