Corvino: Coming out advice
One of the best bits of advice I ever received while coming out was from a nun.
That’s right—a Catholic nun. Not even a lesbian nun, as far as I can gather. Sr. Julie was one of my theology professors in college, and she was one of the …
How Far Will Mormons Go to Fight Gay Marriage?
If a gay marriage question is put on the California ballot in 2010, it will put the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at a seriously interesting crossroads.
It has been three or four decades since the Mormon Church chose a low profile in American politics, after its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and theological hostility to black Americans, spurred an anti-Mormon backlash. The Mormons are among the most persecuted of American sects, and highly sensitive to criticism.
The church’s low-key strategy seemed to work. There are still some Mormon-haters in evangelical Christian circles, but for the most part the Mormons are accepted and admired, and church membership has soared. Mormon politicians like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman are regarded by mainstream America as legitimate presidential timber.
Mormon watchers were surprised, then, when the church hierarchy took such an active role in the passage of Proposition 8 in California, limiting marriage to a man and a woman. Gay Americans were surprised as well. They didn’t expect the church to embrace gay marriage, but neither did they predict that the Mormon Church would emerge as a resolute and politically-active foe, whose support for Prop 8 was perhaps determinative. Some of the resultant anti-Mormon rhetoric has been vicious.
Now that Prop 8 has been upheld by the California Supreme Court, gay rights groups say they will put gay marriage on the ballot in California again, and mount a full scale effort to win public approval, perhaps as soon as 2010.
That will put the ball back in the church’s court. The family is at the center of Mormon theology. But the national political trends are running against the church. Younger Americans—even young evangelicals—are more than willing to see their gay friends get married.
Opposing gay marriage in Utah (as the church did in 2004) is one thing, but taking a lead public role in a national campaign to deprive a persecuted minority of a right shared by all other Americans is another. It would be seen as a sign that the days of low-key tactics are over, and that the current Mormon leaders are prepared to give, and get, the political bruising that occurs when religion mixes with politics in America.
Check out our political cartoons.
Become a political insider: Subscribe to U.S. News Weekly, our new digital magazine.
See How Far Will Mormons Go to Fight Gay Marriage? U.S. News & World Report* Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
| Published by |
 |
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-far-will-…
Brian Normoyle: Gathering Storm: Miss California Trying to Redefine Traditional Breasts for the Rest of Us
For many thousands of years, across every culture and continent, women have known traditional or “natural” breasts to be those that God — or nature — gave them. To think otherwise flies in the face of millennia of human history and spiritual doctrine. Prejean’s Bible repeatedly reminds us we are made in God’s perfect image while warning us against exchanging the “natural” use of our bodies for those deemed “unnatural.” And, while one could argue the rights to privacy and personal freedom are inherent in our nation’s founding democratic principles and that every American has a right to his/her own life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, organizations like NOM — for whom she’s now a spokesperson — Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council repeatedly admonish us that life in America would be better if theology and biblical doctrine were the primary determinant of civil law and personal liberties.
While someone else was footing the bill, Prejean made the choice to defy her God’s perfect design and creation of her and to rebel against the intended and “natural” purpose of her mammaries: namely, the nursing of babies rather than the visual attraction sufficient enough to win a vanity contest. Moreover, if her teeth aren’t capped, I’m betting they were braced; and I’d also put money down on the fact that Prejean has, at some point, performed other “unnatural” acts with her organs like chewing gum, wearing eye-glasses, enjoying a Diet Coke or two or even… um… er, well, you get the idea.
So, Carrie, you may find full civil equality for all Americans to be “unnatural” and not “Biblically correct,” but, frankly, neither are your Jugs for Jesus and your Caps for Christ. “No Offense.” See Brian Normoyle: Gathering Storm: Miss California Trying to Redefine Traditional Breasts for the Rest of Us
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/brian-normoyl…
Ruth Gledhill: Sorry bishops, but a diocese is not a church.
Dr Williams wrote: ‘The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such. Those who are rushing into separatist solutions are, I think, weakening that basic conviction of Catholic theology and in a sense treating the provincial structure of The Episcopal Church as if it were the most important thing – which is why I continue to hope and pray for the strengthening of the bonds of mutual support among those Episcopal Church Bishops who want to be clearly loyal to Windsor.’
So the Anglican Communion Institute bishops, who along with Fulcrum and the people over at Covenant form a sort of neo-orthodox trinity trying to find a way to be at one and three all at the same time, could be forgiven for believing they are merely being true to Windsor and doing what the Archbishop of Canterbury has wanted all along.
But are they? I’ve got some seriously bad news for them.
Apparently the sands have shifted. That letter to Howe was written in 2007. Now is 2009, nearly two whole years later. The covenant is in its third draft and there can be no doubt, reading it, that when it speaks of ‘church’, as it does many times, it means a national church, or a province.
Ecclesiastical polity is a many-layered complex thing. Even when we imagine we’re still in the land of Richard Hooker it is changing all the time. Yet on one level, that of true polity, it remains exactly the same as it was in Hooker’s day.
I have it on good authority that things are deemed to have moved on rather substantially, but some things cannot change, otherwise we truly will not be a ‘proper church’, not even an ecclesial community, but just a rather drippy federation.
There is absolutely no way the ACI bishops will be enabled to perform some sort of subtle non-schismatic ecclesiological split manoeuvre on The Episcopal Church, leaving their orthodox dioceses at the centre of a covenental Communion along with Cantuar and the conservatives, with the liberal pro-gay majority forced to dance around on the edges in some ‘outer circle’ of recognition.
Whichever side you’re on, either you’re for them or against them, folks. It just will not be possible for either side to have it both ways if the Covenant is to work. It’s called having your communion and eating it too.
See Sorry bishops, but a diocese is not a church. Times Online Blogs
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/ruth-gledhill…
Faith forms a bond for a lesbian priest and a Mormon father of three
Who could have foreseen what would happen between the Mormon filmmaker and the lesbian priest?
Not Douglas Hunter, even after he took a leap of faith and trained his camera on the Rev. Susan Russell.
And maybe not even Russell, who had undergone a remarkable transformation from one-time suburban soccer mom to priest and outspoken champion of gay rights.
But the friendship that took root when Hunter asked Russell to play the central role in his documentary about same-sex marriage and theology would lead two people from different worlds to a new understanding of themselves and their faiths.
“We’re all telling the same stories about God’s work in our lives,” said Hunter, 40, a father of three from Pasadena who discovered Russell on the Internet.
Technology may have provided the bridge, but it was an ancient religious calling that drew Hunter to Russell, a senior associate priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.
Hunter felt a religious obligation to cross the same boundary Jesus is said to have traversed 2,000 years ago when he spoke of embracing the outsider.
No group was further outside Mormon circles, Hunter thought, than gays and lesbians. Mormonism, he knew, viewed homosexual acts as sins, and Mormons would become among the most generous supporters of California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that was approved by voters last fall.
See Faith forms a bond for a lesbian priest and a Mormon father of three
Los Angeles Times – CA,USA
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/faith-forms-b…
Episcopal conservatives win key battle over gays
(McLean, Virginia) Nearly a dozen conservative church congregations in Virginia have won a lawsuit in which they sought to split from the U.S. Episcopal Church in a dispute over theology and homosexuality.
The final rulings came from a Fairfax County judge who said the departing …
Episcopal conservatives win key battle over gays
(McLean, Virginia) Nearly a dozen conservative church congregations in Virginia have won a lawsuit in which they sought to split from the U.S. Episcopal Church in a dispute over theology and homosexuality.
The final rulings came from a Fairfax County judge who said the departing …
Conservatives Win Roun d Va. Court Case to Split From Episcopal Church – Appeal expected
A Fairfax County judge made the final rulings Friday. He said the departing congregations are allowed under Virginia law to keep their property as they leave the Episcopal Church and realign under the authority of conservative Anglican bishops from Africa.
The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia argued it was the true owner of the church property and that the congregations’ votes to leave the Episcopal Church were invalid.
The diocese said it will appeal the rulings.
| Published by |
|
Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/conservatives…
