Obama names Medal of Freedom recipients, including Harvey Milk …
President Obama, attempting to spotlight those who have acted as “agents of change,” today announced that he will bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, on a cast of living and deceased figures widely known in politics, the arts and sciences, sports and social movements.
The 16 honorees named by the White House today include Harvey Milk, the San Francisco city supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated. They include the late Republican Congressman Jack Kemp, a football legend as well, and the ailing Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The president’s choices, who will be honored at a White House ceremony Aug. 12, include American civil-rights activist the Rev. Joseph Lowery and South African freedom fighter Desmond Tutu. They include a pioneer in sports for women, tennis star Billie Jean King, and the first woman on the Supreme Court, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
They include actor Sidney Poitier and singer Chita Rivera.
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Obama names Medal of Freedom recipients, including Harvey Milk …
They include actor Sidney Poitier and singer Chita Rivera.
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‘Two-Track’ Church Suggested by Archbishop of Canterbury
PARIS — The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said profound differences among the world’s 77 million Anglicans over gay clergy and same-sex unions could divide their church into a “two-track model” yielding “two styles of being Anglican.”
The formula could avert a formal breach between liberals and conservatives but bring new strains in the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and American Episcopalians who resolved this month to open the door to ordaining openly gay bishops and to start the process of developing rites for same-sex marriages.
Archbishop Williams insisted that the issue should not be debated “in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican.”
In a lengthy message published Monday on his Web site, the archbishop offered a detailed and nuanced response to events at the Episcopal convention in Anaheim, Calif., this month when gay-rights advocates in the United States chalked up major victories over conservatives on sexual issues. The Episcopal Church is the official branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States.
The developments were seen by liberals and conservatives as likely turning points in the history of the divided Episcopal Church, reflecting the profound rifts over sexual issues within Anglicanism — the world’s third largest network of Christian churches after the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The differences have crystallized around the Episcopal Church’s consent in 2003 to the consecration of the church’s first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.
The Episcopalians had agreed to a moratorium on the election of gay bishops, but it was lifted at the convention in Anaheim.
The archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, which is composed of 38 provinces worldwide. The Episcopal Church claims about 2.3 million members.
In his message, Archbishop Williams repeated his view that “a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority” of the full Anglican Communion, any more than a blessing for a heterosexual couple living outside marriage would have.
That, in turn, means that as long as the broader church “as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”
The issues have confronted the archbishop with deep divisions not simply between liberals and conservatives in the United States but also across the broader church with its many followers in Africa, Britain and elsewhere. Four conservative dioceses in the United States and many individual Episcopal churches have broken away from the national denomination to forge alliances with conservative Anglican groups such as the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
Archbishop Williams said: “There is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.”
The archbishop has promoted the idea of covenant — described by some analysts as a kind of good-behavior guide for churches — to overcome the rift.
“This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure,” the archbishop’s message said. “But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure.”
The message continued: “It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are — two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude cooperation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion.”
See Anglican Sees ‘Two-Track’ Church @ New York Times
- Archbishop warns ordination of gay clergy could lead to two-tier … guardian.co.uk
- Anglican Head Warns Of Two-Tier Church After Gay Vote On Top Magazine Archbishop of Canterbury responds to General Convention actions on … Austin American-Statesman
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Pastor, D.C. Church Offer Gay African Americans A Message of Acceptance and Responsibility
In the middle of a sermon, Bishop Rainey Cheeks felt his medicine bottle bulging in his pocket and realized he hadn’t taken his pills. He paused in the pulpit and faced the congregation in his tiny storefront church.
“Excuse me,” Cheeks remembers telling his parishioners last year as he poured three pills into his hand. “This is my HIV medicine. I’m going to take it now.”
As he washed down the pills with water, Cheeks saw some members staring with wide eyes. Everybody knew that their pastor, an imposing man with flowing dreadlocks who once competed in taekwondo championships, is gay. But not everyone knew that he is HIV-positive.
“Go ahead, Rev,” a few congregants urged. But most shrugged and waited for the bishop to swallow and get on with delivering the good word.
Inner Light Ministries in the District’s H Street corridor might seem like a traditional black church, with fiery sermons, electric gospel music, a soulful choir and a congregation that sways and claps in rhythm. But it is hardly that.
See Pastor, D.C. Church Offer Gay African Americans A Message of Acceptance and Responsibility
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Report Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
A new report has found an estimated 200 transgendered persons were murdered from January 2008 to June 2009; which is enough to say that every three days a transgendered person is killed somewhere in the world.
The project was started by the international group Transgender Europe (TGEU) and the journal ‘Liminalis’ in an effort to track and combat violence committed against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and questioning (LGBT) community.
The project compiled at least 121 murder cases from 2008 and another 83 murder cases for the year-to-date. Preliminary results show that the murder rate for transgendered people is a global problem, effecting North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
“Furthermore that the number of reports of murdered trans people is increasing in the last years,” the report warns. “The majority of cases have been reported from Latin America and North America.”
The report shows Brazil is by far the most dangerous place in the world for the transgendered community. In 2008, 59 people were murdered while another 23 murders were reported so far this year. Last year, 16 transgendered people were murdered in the United States, the second most dangerous place on Earth.
While the report is an effort to document all crimes, even its authors admit to the limitations of compiling a survey while countries continue to avoid reporting hate crimes.
See Report Warns Murder Rate Against Transgendered People Is Rising
AHN
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SCLC SPLIT OVER GAY MARRIAGE: Los Angeles office at odds with national officials.
*Civil Rights Movement icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a group of Black activists who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1959.
Even after King’s assassination in 1968, the SCLC remained one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations. But now the group’s cohesion is under threat. The issue which could potentially split the organization is same-sex marriage.
The Atlanta, Georgia-based leadership of the group has threatened to suspend or remove Rev. Eric P. Lee as head of the Los Angeles SCLC chapter because of his outspoken support for homosexual marriage.
But Lee and supporters in the L.A. chapter are fighting back essentially arguing that the national board does not have the authority to remove him. Lee is also thought to be seeking support from other SCLC chapters around the country.
Officially the national board says it is neutral on the gay marriage issue but in reality, the group dominated by Black Southern ministers is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Their view appears to be backed by a large majority of African Americans. An Edison/Mitofsky exit poll found that 70 percent of Black voters supported California’s Proposition 8 last fall. The proposition banned gay-marriage in the state.
A similar national online survey conducted recently by Taylor Media Services found 72 percent of Blacks opposing same-sex marriage which was supported by a slim majority of whites. Hispanics were evenly split on the issue.
SeeS CLC SPLIT OVER GAY MARRIAGE: Los Angeles office at odds with …
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On Gay Issues, Obama Asks to Be Judged on Vows Kept
WASHINGTON — President Obama defended his policies on gay rights on Monday, telling an audience of gay men and lesbians that he remained committed to overturning the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule and that he expected to be judged “not by promises I’ve made but by the promises that my administration keeps.”
Mr. Obama made his remarks at a reception in the East Room of the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 uprising that gave rise to the modern gay rights movement. Joined by his wife, Michelle, the president directly addressed criticism from gay and lesbian leaders that he had not been a forceful advocate for them.
“I know that many in this room don’t believe progress has come fast enough, and I understand that,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African-Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half-century ago.
“We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”
Many lesbians and gay men supported Mr. Obama’s election, but their leaders have grown increasingly impatient and critical of him as president.
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Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
New research has challenged the long-standing belief that HIV and AIDS in Africa primarily affect heterosexuals. A study published on the website of the British medical journal Lancet found that men who have sex with other men are up to 10 times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to be infected with the virus — which suggests that the fight against AIDS on the continent may be undermined by widespread homophobia.
Researchers from Oxford University, the Population Council of Ghana and the Kenya Medical Research Institute reviewed AIDS studies conducted over the past few years and concluded that male-male sex was a major blind spot in AIDS research and policy in Africa. Men having sex with other men is far more common in Africa than is socially acknowledged, owing to widespread hostility toward homosexuality, and the phenomenon there is underreported in research and largely ignored in public-health responses to the pandemic. The researchers compiled statistics from a small but growing number of studies conducted in various African countries in recent years that included estimates of HIV prevalence among men who have sex with other men. (See pictures from Africa’s AIDS crisis.)
See Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
TIME
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Aids: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds
The role of gay sex in the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS in Africa has been long ignored, say the authors of a new study in the medical journal Lancet.
While most transmission of the virus in Africa is heterosexual, 19 recent studies of African men who have sex with men show that they have “considerably higher” infection rates than other adult men in their respective countries, said the authors, who were from Oxford University and research institutions in Ghana and Kenya.
These men also have less access to prevention and care; most African countries have allocated no money to gay men, and homosexual sex is illegal in 31 African countries, in four of which men risk the death penalty.
See Aids: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds
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Philip Hensher: Forget about a ‘cure’ for homosexuality
It grows increasingly hard to tell the difference between bishops of the Church of England and Paris Hilton. Bishops used to be thoughtful, retiring people, happy to spread the word of God through bring-and-buy sales, the Mothers’ Union and the occasional sermon. Nowadays, some of them have been bitten by the bug of publicity, and they just can’t seem to shut up.
One bishop in particular has been an absolute gift to the media on slow days for news. With no story whatsoever in sight, the office intern is instructed to call up Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, and ask him for his opinions on – well, it hardly matters. He will strike a moral pose, and many of us will wonder where on earth he gets it from. He is, frankly, a perfect scream.
In 2000 he said that having children in a marriage was not an “optional extra” and there was “a real lack” if people decided not to have children. Last year, he said Islamic extremism was turning parts of our cities into “no-go areas”, and complained about the amplified call to prayer. He has also denounced multiculturalism as “newfangled and insecurely founded” and in 2007 announced he wouldn’t be going to the Lambeth Conference, in protest at a gay bishop in America.
In a few months he is retiring, 10 years early, to set up a confederation of fundamentalist churches. In the meantime, he has been going round shedding a few more flaky ponderings like psoriasis. The latest, revealed in a newspaper interview, is on the subject of homosexuality, and it amazes me that Dr Nazir-Ali has taken so long to get round to his African colleagues’ favourite subject. Dr Nazir-Ali said: “The Bible’s teaching shows that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the way to express our sexual nature. We welcome homosexuals, we don’t want to exclude people, but we want them to repent and be changed.”
See Philip Hensher: Forget about a ‘cure’ for homosexuality
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Granderson: Critiques of Obama put gay African-Americans in a bind
Complaints by LGBT leaders over a perceived lack of movement on LGBT issues by President Barack Obama risk alienating African-American gays and lesbians from the gay-rights movement, according to writer LZ Granderson. He writes, “Hearing that race matters in the gay community may not be comforting to hear, but that doesn’t make it any less true.” CNN
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