Category: Religion

Presbyterian minister rebuked, praised for performing same-sex unions

LGBTQ Nation • Friday, August 27, 2010 • Filed under: California, Religion • Comments (0)

A retired Presbyterian minister was found guilty Friday by a church tribunal of presiding at the marriage of same-sex couples in 2008 and will be censured, pending an appeal.

The six-member panel announced its verdict in the case of the Rev. Dr. Jane Spahr, of San Francisco, who was accused of violating church law by performing 16 gay and lesbian ceremonies.

Spahr

After a four-day church trial that was equal parts Scripture lesson and celebration of marriage, a panel of church leaders from the Presbytery of the Redwoods voted 4-2 that Spahr should be censured because she “persisted in a pattern or practice of disobedience.”

But the six-person panel voted unanimously that the 68-year-old lesbian’s actions did not disrupt the “peace, unity and purity of the church” and praised her “faithful compassion” and her 35-year ministry to gays and lesbians throughout the country.

In its ruling, the panel called upon the church to re-examine its “fear and ignorance that continues to reject the inclusiveness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” Continue reading…

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Gay priest witch hunt snags three on video in nightclubs

Kelvin Lynch • Friday, July 23, 2010 • Filed under: Religion, World News • Comments (0)

The UK’s Daily Mail is reporting that three Catholic priests were caught on tape having sex in Rome’s gay nightclubs.  The news has reportedly “shocked … the devoutly Catholic country”.

Video still allegedly showing a gay priest having sex in a Roman nightclub

A reporter for Panorama magazine, who works for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (who happens to own all Italian media), had a “gay accomplice” help him scope out Catholic priests in Italian gay bars.

Panorama said, “By day they are regular priests, complete with dog collar, but, at night it’s off with the cassock as they take their place as perfectly integrated members of the Italian capital’s gay scene.”

Well, all except for one, whom the magazine called Carlo, who “willingly put on his cassock to have sex with the reporter’s gay accomplice.” Continue reading…

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Memphis church bans gay softballers, says it won’t condone their ‘deviant’ lifestyle

LGBTQ Nation • Saturday, June 19, 2010 • Filed under: Religion, Sports, Tennessee • Comments (1)

A softball coach in Memphis says she has been banned from a local church softball league because she is gay.

Jana Jacobson said officials from Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, TN, disqualified her team from competing in their adult women’s softball league because it would send a message to their congregation that they condone her “deviant” lifestyle.

Jacobson said she registered, paid the entry fee and attended an organizational meeting. Later, a church official called her seeking another meeting. At that one, officials began questioning whether she was gay. When she said she was, they told her the team could not play.

Jacobson’s team, which has both gay and straight players, had been playing only one night a week and applied to join Bellevue’s league when they learned they were admitting non-church teams.

Jim Barnwell, Bellevue’s director of communications, has said the church has no plans to comment on Jacobson’s version of events.

Will Batts, Director of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, said he’s disappointed but not surprised at Bellevue’s decision, “I get that a private organization needs to have rules but this one seems to be based on fear and ignorance.”

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Ted Haggard, cured of gay ‘compulsions,’ to launch new inclusive church

LGBTQ Nation • Wednesday, June 2, 2010 • Filed under: Colorado, Newsmakers, Religion • Comments (0)

Haggard

Ted Haggard, the disgraced pastor who resigned from his ministry in 2006 amid an embarrassing gay sex scandal, was back in his home town Wednesday to announce he was starting a new church in Colorado Springs.

According to the AP:

Haggard said his new venture would not be a megachurch like New Life Church, the congregation he founded in 1985 and then left in 2006 after a male prostitute said Haggard paid him for sex.

Haggard said he doesn’t know how many people will attend his new church, but he said the ordeal he and his wife, Gayle, went through has prepared them to help others.

“I have an incredible heart for broken people,” he said. “I think we’re qualified to hold people’s hands” in times of trouble.

Haggard, once an outspoken opponent of gay marriage, resigned as the head of his 14,000-member megachurch and as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in 2006 when male prostitute Mike Jones said that the pastor had been paying him for sex for the last three years and had bought methamphetamines from him. Continue reading…

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Retired minister facing church trial for performing same-sex unions

LGBTQ Nation • Tuesday, March 30, 2010 • Filed under: California, Religion • Comments (1)

Spahr
(Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

A retired Presbyterian minister faces prosecution by her own church — for the second time in four years — for officiating the marriages of same-sex couples.

The Rev. Jane Spahr, 67, presided over 16 other same-sex unions during the five-month period in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal in California.

The Presbyterian church asserts that while the marriages may have been legal under state law, they were “expressly prohibited” by the church.

The constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) defines marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman. The church’s Supreme Judicial Council has ruled that ministers can bless same-sex unions as long as the ceremonies are not called a marriage and don’t mimic traditional weddings. Continue reading…

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Student play depicting gay Jesus planned at Texas university

LGBTQ Nation • Wednesday, March 24, 2010 • Filed under: Education, Religion, Texas • Comments (0)

A class project depicting Jesus Christ as gay has hit a nerve in Stephenville, Texas.

Tarleton State University is adding security for expected demonstrations Saturday when students perform the production, called “Corpus Christi.”

The play, by Terrence McNally, opened in New York in the 1990s, and student John Jordan Otte chose the script for his advanced directing class.

Otte said he understood that the play would likely create controversy, but he never imagined this level of anxiety.

He said he wants to convey the turmoil that gay Christians sometimes experience and create a sense of acceptance, tolerance and unconditional love.

The play, which has stirred controversy on campus and in the community, features the Jesus character named Joshua kissing Judas during their prom at Pontius Pilate High School and performing a same-sex marriage for two of his disciples. Continue reading…

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Catholic school denies children’s enrollment due to gay parents

LGBTQ Nation • Wednesday, March 17, 2010 • Filed under: Colorado, Religion • Comments (0)

A lesbian couple is speaking out after a Catholic school in Colorado banned their two children from re-enrolling because they are gay parents.

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput said the decision by the Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Boulder not to let the children re-enroll conforms to church teachings.

The parents have chosen to remain anonymous but released a statement through the organization Boulder Pride:

“There are divorced parents, children of parents born out of wedlock, non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics. Their eligibility has not been questioned. There seems to be a subjective rating system of which sins are more unacceptable.

“Perhaps our biggest objection to the school’s decision is that we think that it is wrong to punish a child for who the child’s parents are. We do not think this reflects what Jesus would have done.”

The school decided that the two children, whose ages are unknown, could not continue at the school despite having attended the pre-school there for three years.

According to the couple, both of their children have been baptized, and attend church regularly at Sacred Heart.

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Roseanne Barr blames Mormon church for Marie Osmond’s son’s suicide

LGBTQ Nation • Friday, March 5, 2010 • Filed under: Celebrities, Religion • Comments (2)

Barr

In a post on her blog Thursday, outspoken comedian Roseanne Barr has pulled no punches in her comments on the recent suicide of Marie Osmond’s son, Michael Bryan (a.k.a. Blosil), saying it had nothing to do with depression, and everything to do with the Mormon church’s position on homosexuality.

Writes Barr:

Marie Osmond’s poor gay son killed himself … because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that “depression” is a lie!

Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter! Hey, I want her and all the gay kids in the world to know that they are just fine being gay and that they deserve love and respect instead of insults and rebuke! I have gay people in my family and my circle of friends and I am kicking bigot ass and taking names!

Barr adds that she knows so many Mormon kids who were gay and committed suicide, and that she “just cannot and will not stay quiet in order to not offend bigots anymore. It is all so terribly depressing.” Continue reading…

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Anne Hathaway says she left Catholicism in support of her gay brother

LGBTQ Nation • Friday, February 5, 2010 • Filed under: Celebrities, Religion • Comments (0)

Actress Anne Hathaway has revealed her family left the Catholic church and became Episcopalians after her brother came out.

Hathaway, with Jake Gyllenhaal in a scene from Brokeback Mountain

The Devil Wears Prada star grew up as a Catholic in New Jersey but when Hathaway’s brother Michael told the family he was gay, they decided to leave their faith.

Hathaway told GQ magazine: “The whole family converted to Episcopalianism after my elder brother came out. Why should I support an organization that has a limited view of my beloved brother?”

Hathaway, who also co-starred in Brokeback Mountain as Jack Twist’s wife, said that the Episcopal church isn’t perfect for her either.

“So I’m… nothing (no denomination),” she said, “Fuck it, I’m forming. I’m a work in progress.”

Hathaway’s interview appears in the March print issue of the British edition of GQ.

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LA Episcopal diocese elects first openly gay bishop

LGBTQ Nation • Sunday, December 6, 2009 • Filed under: California, Religion • Comments (0)

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that kept gays out of its highest ordained ministry, a move that deepened divisions between liberals and conservatives in the faith, reports the LA Times.

Glasspool

Glasspool

Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates. She is a canon, or senior assistant, to the Diocese of Maryland bishops.

Glasspool’s election to fill one of two openings for suffragan, or assistant, bishop followed the selection Friday of the Rev. Canon Diane M. Jardine Bruce, 53, the rector of a San Clemente church.

The two became the first women elected as bishops of the diocese in its 114-year history.

Last July, the Episcopal Church voted at its national convention in Anaheim to open the top echelons of the church to gays and lesbians.

Home to 70,000 Episcopalians across six counties, the diocese is widely viewed as one of the most liberal in the U.S. church. Its primary bishop, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, is an outspoken advocate for the rights of gays in the church.

Full story at the Los Angeles Times.

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