In a major reversal of policy, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said that children of LGBT parents may now be blessed and baptized in the faith, and that same-sex couples in the LDS Church will no longer be considered “apostates.”
This landscape is familiar, strewn with ash and blood. We’ve been here before, too often, seeking the living, counting our dead. I know the terrain, can pick my way stumbling over the bodies, the stench of fear and hatred lingering in the air; the thoughts and prayers; the headlines and statistics.
As a Jew and as a human, I have been saddened and angered today by the awful shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. And I wonder at the unending number of shootings in a country that is supposed to be a beacon of freedom and justice and ask myself: When will we have had enough?
Numerous LGBTQ advocacy and youth organizations have just filed “friend of the court” briefs in the first appeals court case that will decide whether taxpayer-funded child service agencies may cite their religious beliefs to discriminate against prospective foster parents and youth in care.
Ellen DeGeneres and her sponsor, Shutterfly, have given $25,000 to a fund set up by students at a Catholic school in support of their former guidance counselor, who was placed on leave from her job for being married to another woman.
A group of pastors in Maine has failed in its efforts to remove books they feel “promote homosexuality” and are “risque and immodest” from a local library display set up for—wait for it—Banned Books Week, the annual event to draw attention to the harms of censorship and celebrate the freedom to read. And for some of the library’s staff and patrons, the issue was very personal.
This weekend is Passover and Easter, as well as April Fool’s Day, making things pretty busy for my fun-loving interfaith family. On top of all that, my spouse Helen and I are celebrating our 25th anniversary. I’m finding a lot of resonance in all four occasions.
The tension between religion and LGBTQ identities is often portrayed in black and white—but a new memoir shows us the many nuances in one woman’s journey to reconcile her Catholic faith with her love for another woman as they fall in love, have children, and navigate parenthood.
When spouses Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin wanted to become foster parents for a refugee child, they were told by the child services agency that they could not apply because their family structure did not “mirror the Holy Family.” Now, they’re suing the agency’s parent organization, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the funder of its program to place refugee children, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
As a growing number of states allow child welfare agencies to discriminate against LGBTQ prospective foster and adoptive parents and LGBTQ youth in care, a new campaign is fighting back—but it needs our help and our stories.
