Montana GOP policy: Make homosexuality illegal
HELENA, Mont. – At a time when gays have been gaining victories across the country, the Republican Party in Montana still wants to make homosexuality illegal.
Pluralism Sunday is May 2, 2010
Friends of Christian Pluralism: Pluralism Sunday is on May 2! Get your church or local group to join in the celebration of religious diversity. On PLURALISM SUNDAY, churches celebrate elements of other world faiths in their sermons, litanies, and music; many feature speakers and singers from other faith traditions. Click more for more information and to sign up your church or group.
Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans
.... Many of these migrants, overwhelmed by the heat, rough terrain, and lack of water, can’t make it. They often come poorly prepared, unable to carry enough water and sometimes wearing little more on their feet than sandals. The Sonoran Desert is filled with cacti and brush that tear apart feet, rocks and crevices that twist ankles—especially in the dark when most of the migrants travel. Sometimes a guide will lead a group. Anyone, injured or otherwise, who can’t keep up is frequently left behind.
Humanitarian Victims or Christian Martyrs: What’s in a Word?
Progressive religion is being called now to bear witness, and to claim solidarity with people who lose their lives in service of others. This ground must not be ceded.
Millennium Development Goals: time to get serious
Amid U.S. election fever, wacky pastors, and assorted other events, it's easy to miss the momentous opening of the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. It happens on September 20 in New York, as about 150 heads of state and others converge on the United Nations for the annual shebang of the General Assembly. New York is always a chaotic scene when the General Assembly meets. But there's a special challenge for 2010.
Wrong Then, Wrong Now: What Yesterday’s Anti-Catholicism Has in Common with Today’s Islamophobia
For the past few months, I’ve been doing some research in New York newspapers on the anti-Catholic vitriol the Irish faced in the nineteenth century. It’s been hard to avoid noticing how similar those attacks are to the biting comments being made against Islam and the backers of a Muslim community center proposed for a lower Manhattan building near the World Trade Center site.
Virtual Book Burning and Its Consequences
Dove World Outreach pastor Terry Jones’ threatened Qur’an-burning has received a disproportionate amount of media attention, including hand wringing about whether there should be media attention given to small time pastors who use such tactics precisely to gain such media attention. And yet the lightning speed at which the threat, the negotiations, and the withdrawal of the threat occurred suggests another level of complexity to the iconography of the book which may be new.
Military Gay Ban Rejected: Federal Judge Rules That ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Violates Free-Speech Rights
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ruled that the policy, which bans the military from asking about a service member's sexual orientation but requires the discharge of those who admit to being homosexual, violates service members' First Amendment free-speech rights and their Fifth Amendment due process rights.
Palin Goes ‘Hopey-Changey,’ But Don’t Call it Political
Palin’s event, combined with Glenn Beck’s non-political political rally, raise flags with respect to faith-based groups’ exemption from non-discrimination regulations. The insistent rhetoric suggests that some high-profile conservatives may be positioning themselves to receive public dollars for activities that are only non-political by the narrowest possible definition. At the very same time some religious right leaders have been crying “foul” at the use of taxpayer dollars to fund activities they oppose.
Beyond Adam and Eve
Christians reach out to the transgender community
When people discuss the rights of lesbians and gays in contemporary U.S. culture, and across religious denominations, the abbreviation "LGBT" is used as a shorthand: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. But are transgender people really being taken into account? What's the state of the struggle, where transpeople are concerned?