Hundreds of pro-gay church leaders crossed the Nashville Statement’s “line in the sand” by rejecting it as heresy, and issued counter-manifestos claiming homosexuality is holy.A group of over 300 pro-gay Christians and LGBT advocates have endorsed and published a counter manifesto called Christians United in direct response to the Nashville Statement.
Source: Church Leaders Reject Nashville Statement | The Daily Caller
For years, I cared what anti-gay Christians thought about me. Deeply. I spent countless hours arguing the finer points of scriptural history and interpretation with them – especially the “clobber passages” – those six or seven passages that they claim unequivocally condemn homosexuality. I cared so much that I created an Whosoever, an online magazine – back in 1996 with the mission of arguing against anti-gay Christians and equipping my fellow LGBT Christians to do the same. I even wrote a book, Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians, to help others who deeply cared about what anti-gay Christians believed and said cope with the ongoing battle for our right as LGBT Christians to actually exist.
Now, two decades after starting that magazine and nearly 10 years after the book’s publication, I have no more fucks left to give.
Full report: Religion Dispatches
Evangelical leaders in the U.S. released “The Nashville Statement” earlier this week to make clear their opposition to LGBT equality. A prominent Catholic priest has responded by affirming the goodness of LGBT people. The contrast between these two statements reveals just how far Catholic LGBT issues have come.
“The Nashville Statement,” drafted by the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, issues a series of affirmations and denials about sexuality. These include rejecting marriage equality and denying that “adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”
Full report Bondings 2.0
The Rainbow Catholics InterAgency for Ministry (RCIA), a coalition of LGBTI affirming Catholic groups and pastoral organizers, this past week released a statement of concern about harsh messages that have begun appearing in the lead up to the nation’s non-binding plebiscite on marriage equality this fall.
On last Thursday, Bondings 2.0 reported on a neo-Nazi poster bearing hate speech that appeared in Melbourne. The poster cited a Catholic priest’s discredited research that claims children with same-gender parents suffer disproportionately higher rates of abuse and addiction than those raised by heterosexual parents.
We also reported on Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart’s threat that he would fire church workers who entered civil same-gender marriages should that become a legal option. Archbishop Timothy Costelloe has since clarified those remarks, though not before a major Catholic healthcare provider released a statement affirming its LGBT employees.
Full report: Bondings 2.0
Dear Anthony,
Like many Australian Catholics, I am disturbed by your identification of your personal views on marriage equality with those of the Catholic Church. No one questions your right to hold such views, but many are concerned when you identify them—or allow others, such as journalists—to identify them with the teaching of the Church. You must be aware that, as Archbishop, journalists will take what you say as authoritative and as pitching “the Catholic Church in a heated battle against Labor and key backers of the Yes campaign”, as reported in The Australian on 14/8/17. You may be involved in a “heated debate” with the Labor Party and the “yes” campaign, but most Australian Catholics are not.
Yes, I know that similar views to yours were expressed in the 2015 pastoral letter of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference entitled Don’t Mess with Marriage. It has been widely rumoured that you were the substantial author of this document. Be that as it may, it is significant that the pastoral contains only one reference to scripture, simply referring to the two becoming “one flesh”. I would have hoped that you would have trawled through the bible to provide some basis for your views on marriage. The scriptures are normative for us as Catholics, surely?
The theological content of the Don’t Mess document is negligible and it fails to recognize that marriage historically has taken several forms within the Christian era and that the church only became involved in the marriage business in the late-eleventh century. Prior to that it simply followed societal norms, which were largely based on inheritance of land and clan ties, and the remnants of Roman civil law.
Full letter published at : John Menadue – Pearls and Irritations
Die beiden großen Konfessionen Australiens haben sich im Kampf gegen die Öffnung der Ehe für gleichgeschlechtliche Paare zusammengetan: Die anglikanische Diözese und die katholische Erzdiözese von Syndney haben am Montag gemeinsam mit homophoben Lobbygruppen wie der “Australian Christian Lobby” (ACL) und der “Marriage Alliance” die “Coalition for Marriage” gegründet. Sie wollten damit für die “schweigende Mehrheit” sprechen, die am Ehe-Verbot für Schwule und Lesben festhalten wolle.
Source: queer.de
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students in British Catholic schools will likely feel safer this coming academic year, thanks to a new set of guidelines for educators aimed at reducing bullying directed toward sexual minorities. The publication of these guidelines is a milestone in Catholic outreach to the LGBT community because they are the first initiative to counter bullying that has been produced by a Catholic bishops’ conference.
Toward the end of the last school year, the Catholic Education Service of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, in partnership with St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, produced Made in God’s Image: Challenging Homophobic and Biphobic Bullying in Catholic Schools. The 36-page booklet offers a solid Catholic rationale for countering such bullying and, practically, it provides a series of eight lesson plans for discussing respect for lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals with middle school children. (Transgender people are not mentioned in the general sections of the document, bullying against them is mentioned briefly in the lesson plans.)
Source: National Catholic Reporter
One year ago, a gunman opened fire in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., killing 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. This week, Father James Martin tells us why he was disappointed with how many church leaders spoke about the attack (very few uttered the word “gay”)—and what he’s doing to change the conversation within the church between the hierarchy and L.G.B.T. Catholics. (This being the prolific Jim Martin, there is a new book involved.)
Hatred, violence and exclusion are not Christian. It follows that nor is homophobia. Here is some good news on combating faith based homophobia from a Caribbean bishop:
Bishop Holder for support of LGBT
Anglican Archbishop Dr John Holder (right) addressing the media. He was accompanied by Rev Dr James Tengatenga (centre) and chairman of the communication committee of the Barbados Diocese Sam Wilkinson. (Picture by WILLCOM.)
ONE OF THE REGION’S most prominent Christian leaders has denounced the actions of members of the faith who ridicule and condemn those in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.
At a press conference yesterday, he held fast to the province’s position that every human being should be treated as a child of God irrespective of their sexual orientation.
And he described as “sad” Christians who ridiculed other human beings and “give the impression that they are children of the devil and not children of God”. (WILLCOMM)
– See more at : NationNews Barbados
Multiple reports are surfacing that Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s profile was found on gay dating apps, that he had tried to pick up men and that on prior occasions he had patronized the Orlando club in which he massacred so many on Sunday (June 12).
If this is true, it matters a very great deal.
It might move the motivation for Mateen’s horrific act to a very different and psychologically more complex place in which one man’s inability to reconcile himself with his sexuality cost 49 other people their lives — and then cost him his own life.
It might end up making the motivation of the horrifying Orlando massacre look more like: I want you. God says I can’t want you. So I must kill you.
Source: Religion News Service
