Condemnation for bishop who called for gay people to ‘repent’ Independent
The Bishop of Rochester has been accused of pandering to hate and homophobia after calling on homosexuals to repent. Michael Nazir-Ali provoked outrage among gay groups when he urged Church leaders to stick to traditional values instead of being swayed by “culture and trends”.
While calling for the “traditional teaching” of the Bible to be upheld, the Bishop said of homosexuals: “We want them to repent and be changed.”
His controversial remarks were published just hours after more than half a million people, including the Prime Minister’s wife, Sarah, took part in the Gay Pride parade in London.
Sharon Ferguson, of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, condemned Dr Nazir-Ali for making comments that she said would encourage hatred.
“It feeds to the more fundamental individuals who are looking to have their opinions ratified and speak hatefully and behave hatefully,” she said.
“His comments are likely to cause more of a schism within the Church of England. He’s saying their [gays and lesbians] sexuality is a sin. It’s not. It’s a gift from God. God made us all.”
She added: “He is telling people ‘You have to repent’ for something they have no control over. It’s like asking someone to repent because they have blue eyes.”
Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, said he was “shocked” at the level of anti-gay prejudice voiced by the bishop. “Homophobia is a social and moral evil, just like racism. Bigotry, even in the guise of religion, has no place in a compassionate, caring society,” he said. “I call on the bishop to repent his homophobia. His prejudice goes against Christ’s gospel of love and compassion.”
Labour MEP Michael Cashman accused the Bishop of Rochester of being “selective” about which parts of the Bible he upheld. “When he calls for the closure of all the banks, finance houses and credit card companies because of what it says in the Bible about usury, then I’ll take him seriously,” he said. “Until then, unless he can say anything good, he should shut up.”
In his comments, made to a Sunday newspaper, the bishop said homosexuals should be welcomed into the Church but that a person’s sexual nature could only be correctly expressed in a heterosexual union within marriage. His remarks reopened the row over homosexuality that has for years threatened to tear the Anglican Church apart.
He made them on the eve of today’s official launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans at Westminster Central Hall in London where he is expected to speak in support of the organisation. The UK branch of the Fellowship is regarded by many liberals within the Anglican movement as an attempt to create a church within a church with the aim of heading off moves to ease rules on homosexuality. Dr Nazir-Ali is to step down in the autumn and he is expected to play an important part in the Fellowship’s activities.
The Very Rev Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark and a prominent liberal, was so alarmed by the the impending departure of Dr Nazir-Ali from the See of Rochester that he described it as “clearly a move towards a sectarian alternative church intentionally designed to create turbulence in the Anglican Communion”.
Canon Chris Sugden, of the Fellowship, said a message from the Queen will be read out during the ceremony but a Buckingham Palace spokeswoman called it nothing more than a “standard response” to the many requests made to the monarch each year. “It isn’t endorsing anyone’s point of view,” she said.
Zeal of the convert: The Bishop of Rochester
*Michael Nazir-Ali has been one of the most vocal and controversial of bishops of the past decade and has rarely been afraid to speak out.
He was a leading contender to become Archbishop of Canterbury when George Carey stood down but has found himself at odds with Rowan Williams, the incumbent.
The issue of homosexuality has been one of the biggest causes of friction between Dr Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, and the liberal wing of the Anglican Church.
In 2008 the rift was so marked that he boycotted the Lambeth Conference, a meeting of Anglican Church leaders held once a decade, because of the row over homosexuality. He is part of an evangelical wing urging the Church to stick to a traditional interpretation of the scriptures regarded by liberals, especially on the issues of homosexuality and women priests, as backward.
This year he announced he would step down as Bishop of Rochester in September to allow him time to concentrate on representing the Church in parts of the world where Anglicans are a minority religion or oppressed.
Born in Pakistan to Catholic parents, he converted at the age of 20 and holds dual British and Pakistani nationality. Appointed the 106th Bishop of Rochester in 1994, he was the first non-white diocesan bishop in the Church of England. Since then he has been a frequent critic of the rise of Islam in Britain.
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Gay soldier may be discharged
Syracuse - A military administrative board recommended on Tuesday that a National Guard officer who publicly announced he was gay should be discharged for violating the military’s policy against homosexual conduct.
Lieutenant Dan Choi would be the first New York National Guard member discharged for violating the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Fanning, a spokesperson for the New York Army National Guard, said.
Choi, 28, appeared here before a Federal Recognition Board, a panel of four military officers, which deliberated for four hours before deciding to recommend the army no longer recognise him as an officer.
Choi, a combat veteran who on Sunday was a celebrity grand marshal in San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade, said it amounted to firing him “for nothing more than telling the truth about who I am”. See Gay soldier may be discharged
Independent Online
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The New York Blade Suspends Publication
The New York Blade, one of the two major gay and lesbian newspapers in New York City, has laid off its editor in chief and suspended publication, the chief executive of its publishing company said on Wednesday.
“Everyone was let go, but the people on The Blade know that they may come back if The Blade is coming back,” said the executive, Matthew Bank, of HX Media, which was formed in 2005 by the merger of The Blade and HX Magazine.
The moves came on Tuesday after HX was sold to undisclosed buyers. The Blade, a biweekly paper with a free circulation of 22,000, was left with an uncertain future.
“It doesn’t have an issue scheduled until a week from Friday.” Mr. Bank said. “There are a lot of things that can happen between now and then.”
The decision to suspend publication comes at a particularly active period for journalism concerned with gay issues: the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots and the gay pride parade on Sunday, the proposed same-sex marriage bill in the State Senate and discontent over the Obama administration’s performance on gay-rights issues.
“It is an incredibly exciting time for gay journalism,” said Kat Long, who had been editor in chief of The Blade since February. “It’s important that gay papers are around to document it.”
Paul Schindler, editor in chief of Gay City News, the rival New York City gay newspaper, said The Blade had “made good contributions over the years.”
See New York Gay Newspaper Suspends Publication
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The Gay Movement, After Marriage New York Observer -
On the night of June 26, two days before the gay pride parade would overtake Manhattan in honor of the 40th birthday of the Stonewall riots that are popularly imagined as the birth of the gay rights movement, a group numbering a couple of dozen mostly gay men and women found themselves crammed into the parlor floor of the West Village townhouse of John Connor, a former banker who lives with his companion, the designer Steven Gambrel.
It raged and stormed outside, while inside, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly gay person to win that office, thanked the group for coming.
They’d been summoned either because they had money or because they had influence in the “gay movement,” such as it is today, and the organizers of this affair needed their money and influence to stage a large national march for gay rights in Washington, D.C., this October.
The mood was intense, and hardly celebratory, despite the tremendous progress toward legalizing gay marriage in New York State that many of the attendees had been involved in.
“We want results,” Ms. Quinn said. “We want them now. We don’t want to be told any longer that we have to wait. ‘Cause look, in Albany? They said they couldn’t do marriage at the beginning of the session—that they had to get other business done first. And now it’s exploded in Albany. If they kept their promise from Day 1, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
See The Gay Movement, After Marriage
New York Observer -
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Se3nate Power struggle impedes New York gay marriage vote
New York’s annual Gay Pride parade was a colorful celebration of 40 years of progress toward civil rights for gays, but once the dust settled, gay couples who wish to marry in New York state remain thwarted.
A bill to legalize gay marriage in the state that saw the dawn of the gay rights movement is mired in political stalemate in the state capital Albany, where Democrats and Republicans are battling over control of the state Senate.
“I had hoped today’s march would have been a bit of a wedding march. It’s not,” Christine Quinn, the gay speaker of the New York City Council, said at Sunday’s Gay Pride parade. Held annually, this year’s event marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village, which triggered the modern U.S. gay rights movement.
“We are disappointed. … But I know there have been other times our community has been disappointed and you need to keep fighting,” Quinn said at the start of the parade, which organizers said drew more than a million people.
Gay couples can marry in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa and will be allowed marry in Vermont starting in September and in New Hampshire from January. Other states offer same-sex unions that grant many of the same rights as marriage.
See Power struggle impedes New York gay marriage vote
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How long has Seattle supported gay rights?
Seattle: 1st in gay rights
Seattle has been at the vanguard of gay rights for at least three decades. Remember Anita Bryant? While she was getting cities across the county to repeal gay rights ordinances in the 1970s, Seattle voters held the line — the first city in America to vote in favor of gay rights. The City of Seattle adopted a fair employment ordinance in 1973 which specifically prohibited discrimination against gay people in the workplace, followed by a fair housing ordinance in 1975. But in 1978, Initiative 13 attempted to repeal the ordinances. It went down in defeat, and Seattle voters successful stopped the national movement to turn back the clock of gay rights. Since then, the cities of Tacoma, Spokane, and others followed suit; Seattle has elected openly gay city council members for decades and is considered to have one of the largest gay populations in the nation.
– Leonard Garfield
Sunday’s gay pride parade marks the event’s 32nd year. See photos from the event here.
Learn more about Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry at seattlehistory.org.
See How long has Seattle supported gay rights?
Seattle Post Intelligencer
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Gay parents along with kids celebrate in annual parade
SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade, some in provocative costumes and outfits, but an increasing number of them pushing strollers. “I feel like I’ve seen twice as many children as I saw last year,” said Joseph Bowik, who is a father to two children with his husband, David Bowik. The Pride Family Garden, a small park cordoned off near City Hall to give parents a respite and an area for their children to play, saw more than 600 families last year, a record that appeared set to be broken during this year’s parade, organizer Meredith Fenton said. “Probably the biggest thing we’re hearing about this year from kids is the word ‘backlash,’”‰” said Fenton, who is the program director for Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE), which joined the park effort. “With Prop. 8 passing and the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s so much talk about gay rights, but what people keep asking is, ‘How will the kids of gay parents turn out?’ Those people are all asking about us.” San Francisco and Alameda counties are home to the second- and third-most same-sex couples who are parents in California, after Los Angeles, Fenton said. Diana Castillo, 18, moved to Oakland this summer for an internship at Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere. Raised by her birth mother and her mother’s partner, she said growing up with two moms made her grateful.
See:
- Gay parents along with kids celebrate in annual parade San Jose Mercury News - -
- Video: Gay pride on the streets
- Remembering Stonewall: 40 Years Later Gay Wired Gay Pride Parade Marks 40 Years After NYC Uprising WDIV
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Thousands turn out for Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade
About 2,000 participants in a gay pride parade have marched peacefully through Jerusalem.
In past years, the gay pride event in the holy city provoked violent protests, even stabbings, by ultra-Orthodox Jews and extremists. But this year, except for one egg-throwing incident, there were no clashes.
Police said they arrested the egg-tossing protester. Others put up signs and demonstrated in an ultra-Orthodox section of Jerusalem, far away from the parade See Thousands turn out for Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade Ha’aretz
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Mexico City Gay Pride Parade Draws Thousands
MEXICO CITY – Thousands of Mexicans marched peacefully through central Mexico City in the 31st Gay Pride March at which they demanded improvements in gay rights, watched over by some 1,500 police.
All transpired in calm at Saturday’s parade, Mexico City police department spokesmen said.
The annual march by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgender individuals and transvestites began at midday at the Monument of the Angel of Independence and it ended at the Plaza de la Constitucion later in the afternoon.
The participants this year called for maintaining a “separate” profile weeks before the general elections in which the lower house of Congress will be renewed, six governors and 606 mayors elected.
They also demanded improvements in security, health, sexual education and policies of equality to minimize the problems of discrimination that they still face in Mexico. See
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Gay marriage now key issue for Corzine
Gov. Corzine has made “marriage equality” for gays and lesbians a prominent piece of his reelection campaign, taking another step in his conversion on the issue and encouraging gay-rights advocates who hope to see same-sex marriage approved in New Jersey this year.
In public speeches and private appearances, Corzine, who as recently as 2006 said he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman, has touted his support of same-sex marriage.
In raising the issue, he has tried to draw a bright-line divide with his Republican opponent, Christopher J. Christie, who has said he would veto a bill allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed.
“We believe that government should allow people the freedom to marry whomever they love,” Corzine said in his general-election kickoff speech June 2.
At a gay-pride parade days later in Asbury Park, N.J., Corzine referred to his campaign and told cheering revelers: “Marriage equality is on the ballot. Are you going to help us make it come to pass in New Jersey?”
His campaign posted a video clip online showing the event.
See Gay marriage now key issue for Corzine
Philadelphia Inquirer -
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