Category Archives: Global

AP: A Myanmar court sentenced seven Muslims to prison Tuesday – one of them to a life term – in the killing of a Buddhist monk amid deadly sectarian violence that was overwhelmingly directed against minority Muslims but has not led to any criminal trials against members of the country’s Buddhist majority.

Piero Tozzi at Turtle Bay and Beyond: Ten years ago, the late, great American jurist Robert Bork wrote a short book entitled Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges. He described how the “American disease” of judicial legislating—activists using constitutional courts “to outflank majorities and nullify their votes” on controversial social issues—was becoming a global phenomenon.

AP: Senior members of the Church of Scotland voted Monday to let some congregations choose ministers who are in same-sex relationships – an important compromise that must still pass further hurdles before it can become church law.

Christian Institute: In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, 17 ministers and one archbishop expressed their concern about the consequences if the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is passed in its current state

Catholic Culture: Italian President Giorgio Napolitano called for a “firm and constant commitment” to battling prejudice against homosexuals, as Italy observed “Anti-Homopobia Day” on May 17.

Catholic Culture: Pro-family activists in Croatia have collected well over 200,000 signatures on a petition calling for a referendum to amend the country’s constitution and define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Telegraph: David Cameron will rely on Ed Miliband’s help to force gay marriage laws through Parliament and in return accept a Labour plan to consider civil partnerships for all.

Breitbart: The United States on Monday denounced what it called a spike in anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe and Asia, pointing to restrictions and violence against Muslims including the faith’s minority sects.

CNSNews: As the State Department prepares to release its annual report on international religious freedom Monday, a key issue for many Americans concerned about religious persecution is whether it will blacklist a handful of particularly egregious violators – or, as in previous years, ignore the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

AP: Israeli police say vandals have spray-panted slogans on the home of one of the leaders of a liberal Jewish women’s group that has angered ultra-Orthodox communities over its demands for equality of worship.

AP: Czech President Milos Zeman is being criticized for refusing to grant a university professorship – the nation’s top academic title – to a critic of his, allegedly because the man is also a gay rights activist.

Religion Clause Blog: Today’s Deutsche Welle reports that in Afghanistan’s Parliament, lawmakers have withdrawn a bill that would have instituted a number of protections for women.  The action came after  religious parties complained that the proposed law was un-Islamic.

Daily Mail: Thousands of anti-gay protesters, including Orthodox priests, picketed a gay pride parade in Georgia today, with some threatening to lash homosexual activists with stinging nettles . . . In extraordinary scenes that saw chaos spread through the capital, those occupying the street held posters reading ‘We don’t need Sodom and Gomorrah!’ and ‘Democracy does not equal immorality!’

Christian Institute: The Government has said it will consider whether to allow heterosexual couples to have a civil partnership rather than a marriage, at a cost of up to £4bn. Equalities Minister Maria Miller hopes the promise of a review will buy off votes and give a smoother ride for the same-sex marriage Bill.

The Independent: report published by the Office for National Statistics revealed that the percentage of people following a Christian faith dropped from 71.7 per cent in 2001 to 59.3 per cent in 2011. More than one in 10 under 25s in the UK now describe themselves as Muslim.

The Raw Story: “Raising a child today costs millions of dollars,” he told AFP. “In this modern world, people enter into relationships and don’t necessarily want to have a child and so should not be burdened with the costs of raising a child.”

Fox News: An Egyptian Coptic cleric who was mistreated during Orthodox Easter services is threatening to sue.

Devex: The legislators called on heads of state gathering at both meetings in June to recognize family planning and sexual and reproductive health rights as “fundamental” to gender equality and development. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health and the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development last week gathered over 50 parliamentarians from across the world to show a united voice in making sure the powerful clubs of wealthy countries talk about family planning during their meetings next month.

Washington Blade: The Puerto Rican Senate on Thursday approved a sweeping bill that would ban anti-LGBT discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and government services in the U.S. territory. The 15-11 vote took place after lawmakers for several hours debated Senate Bill 238 that Sen. Ramón Nieves Pérez introduced in January.

AP: The survey, released on the International Day against Homophobia, is important, she said, because “for the first time, we see how much fear there is still around.”

AP: Thousands of anti-gay protesters, including Orthodox priests, occupied a central street in Georgia’s capital Friday, with some threatening to lash with stinging nettles any participant in a gay pride parade which was to take place there.

Forum 18: China does not allow religious communities to run schools for children, even though regulations do not forbid the provision of religious education to minors. Nor is religious education provided in state schools. For students beyond school age, only state-approved religious groups affiliated with China’s five state-backed monopoly faiths are allowed to apply to set up institutions for the study of their faith or training of clergy, Forum 18 News Service notes. Restrictions are especially tight in Tibet and Xinjiang. The state limits the number of such institutions and their size. Establishing new colleges is cumbersome and long drawn out, even when successful. Their curricula must include “politics” and “patriotic” education, as defined by the state. The state also discourages religious activity on general university campuses. These restrictions reflect the authoritarian state’s desire to control religious groups, including by intervening in the training of their leaders and the level of education of their members.

AP: Portugal’s Parliament has passed a law allowing same-sex married couples to adopt their partners’ children, but lawmakers rejected legislation granting gay couples the same adoption rights as heterosexuals.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: According to the UNFPA, 100% of “unmet need” for contraceptives is attributable to lack of access. But is that really true? The facts say otherwise.

NPR: There’s growing pressure in Australia for the government to legalize gay marriage after New Zealand became the 13th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage earlier this month.

Reuters: In France, the path to radical Islam often begins with a minor offence that throws a young man into an overcrowded, violent jail and produces a hardened convert ready for jihad

Christian Concern: David Burrowes, Tim Loughton and Jim Shannon are amongst the MPs who have tabled an amendment to the Marriage (Same Sex) Couples Bill to allow a public vote to be held on the same day as the 2015 general election.

Middle East Forum: The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

AdelaideNow.com: During consultation the council received feedback from 119 residents, through written submissions and a survey. About half (61) wanted the prayer to remain while 58 respondents wanted the reference to the “Almighty Father” removed.

Catholic Culture: Halki seminary, opened by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1844 and closed by the Turkish government in 1971, remains closed despite calls by President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and others to reopen it.

Christian Institute: Two severely disabled men are pushing the courts to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide, while a ‘carefully timed’ Bill proposing a similar change was tabled in the House of Lords today.

AP: In the judiciary’s latest face-off with Egypt’s Islamist rulers, the country’s top council of judges decided Wednesday to suspend its participation in a government-backed judicial reform conference following a renewed push by lawmakers on a controversial bill that would force thousands of their colleagues into retirement.

CNSNews: Two months after the Obama administration released $250 million in aid to Egypt in what Secretary of State John Kerry called “a good-faith effort to spur reform,” the country is witnessing a surge of anti-Israel sentiment, much of it stoked by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

AP: Hard-line Iranian lawmakers have petitioned authorities to bar two prominent presidential contenders – a moderate former president and a protege of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – from running in next month’s election in a further sign of intense political jockeying over the final ballot list.

Catholic Culture: US embassies abroad are preparing to celebrate Gay Pride Month in June, even in countries where homosexual behavior is outlawed.

Catholic Culture: During a visit to China, Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has been urging government officials to approve the Russian Orthodox Church as a “recognized religion.”

Catholic Culture: Islamists who recently marched on the nation’s capital wish to “topple the government” and “trigger chaos by means of violence,” the nation’s leading prelate told Aid to the Church in Need.

AP: Brazilian notary publics must register same-sex civil unions as marriages if the couple requests it, the country’s National Council of Justice said Tuesday.

Christian Institute: The Government is not going to offer armed forces chapels the same protections as the Church of England in its plans to redefine marriage.

LifeSiteNews: France’s “Terri Schiavo” shall live. A young man left to die of hunger because his doctor decided his quality of life after a car accident would no longer improve is being fed and hydrated again since Saturday, when his father and mother and two of his siblings obtained an emergency ruling. That ruling ordered the hospital where he is staying to restore all normal care.

AP: An Egyptian Christian teacher detained over charges of insulting Islam has been released on bail on Tuesday, her lawyer said.

Telegraph: A British schoolgirl was murdered by health workers in India in a failed attempt to harvest her organs, her parents have claimed.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: Family planning agents are investigating China’s most famous film director for reportedly having 7 children with 4 women. If guilty of breaking China’s laws, Zhang Yimou could face $27 million in fines.

Christian Concern: The Court of Appeal is this week hearing the cases of two paralysed men who are seeking to change end of life laws.

Christian Institute: An MP has praised a cross-bench Peer’s attempts to curb the growth of quasi-legal systems in the UK, which discriminate against women.

Guardian: A group of Conservative MPs has proposed a referendum to allow the public to vote on gay marriage in one of several amendments aimed at watering down the bill to legitimise same-sex weddings. More than 100 MPs may support the call for a referendum, sources said.

Washington Post: Egyptian security officials say a Coptic Christian who stabbed his wife for converting to Islam has killed himself by jumping out of a fourth-story courthouse window.

LifeSiteNews: Some 40,000 pro-life marchers at the March for Life in Italy received a surprise when Pope Francis joined them — driving down the street in his popemobile where the Marcia per la Vita was taking place.

CNSNews: Hong Kong’s top court granted a transgender woman the right to marry her boyfriend Monday in a watershed ruling that falls short of allowing same-sex marriage.

Filistrucchi, Lapo and Prufer, Jens, Nonprofits are Not Alike: The Role of Catholic and Protestant Affiliation (April 26, 2013). TILEC Discussion Paper No. 2013-013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2259051 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2259051

Religion Clause Blog: Naharnet today reports that a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar has sentenced two men for helping a young woman, identified only as “the girl of Khobar”, convert to Christianity and flee to Sweden.

Boston Globe: Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to release a Coptic Christian schoolteacher held for contempt of Islam.

LifeSiteNews: Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists has been accused of bias and submitting “seriously flawed” and even “fraudulent” evidence to the government’s consultation on the gay “marriage” bill.

CNN: Zambian police rearrested two men this week on charges of engaging in homosexual acts “against the order of nature,” a rights group said.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: About one-third of the Human Rights Office’s overall expenditures is paid from its regular budget, she explained, while two-thirds comes from extra-budgetary sources. Nordic countries – especially Norway – are unabashedly aggressive in pushing abortion. Now they are outsourcing – or laundering – their promotion of homosexuality through a UN agency.

The Times: High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge is unapologetic about his Marriage Foundation’s efforts to keep families together.

Christian Institute: Christian printer Nick Williamson explains why he is standing up to the bullies who are trying to force him to print a gay magazine.

Christian Institute: The Government thinks supporters of traditional marriage are just “dinosaurs” who should be “frogmarched” towards a new concept of wedlock, Lord Carey says.

Religion Clause Blog: In Israel today, Women of the Wall held their first prayer session since a court decision (see prior posting) vindicating their right to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall wearing prayer shawls (traditionally worn only by men).

Andrew Harrod at The Legal Project: Yet again depictions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad are causing controversy. The French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo has published a special edition released in January 2013 entitled La Vie de Mahomet, 1ère partie: Les débuts d’un prophète (“The Life of Muhammad, Part One: The Debut of a Prophet”; part two will follow in June 2013). Press reaction in both France and Germany, however, has not been uniformly welcoming, demonstrating once more a media aversion to open examination of Islam.

Public Discourse: Uncover and halt the activity of illegally functioning places of worship”; “Uncover and halt the distribution of religious literature and informational materials of religious content in non-approved locations”; “Uncover and halt the carrying out on the territory of the country of illegal missionary activity.” These are three of 74 measures in a draft Plan to implement Kazakhstan’s proposed new State Programme to Counter Religious Extremism and Terrorism for 2013-2017, in its final stages of preparation and seen by Forum 18 News Service. The State Programme with its Implementation Plan would require video-cameras in all places of worship and teaching on “traditional religions” to become a compulsory school subject. The General Prosecutor’s Office in the capital Astana – which is preparing the State Programme – refused to discuss it with Forum 18. “Religious activity across the board will be more and more restricted,” one member of a religious minority told Forum 18.

Christian Post: The mass exodus of millions of Christians from one part of the Islamic world to another as the result of persecution by Muslims has reached epidemic proportions, says a Middle East and Islam expert. In fact, Christians may completely disappear from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt, warns the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Global Post: A Conservative MP says anti-abortion activists need to support political candidates who share their views if they want abortion laws changed.

Radio Free Europe: Georgia faces a serious and growing demographic problem. According to the United Nations, the ratio of newborn boys to girls in 1991 was 105 to 100. By 2000, it was nearly 110 to 100. And in 2011, it was almost 114 to 100.

Christian Institute: A Christian-run GP surgery has been criticised for posting a notice saying some of its doctors do not prescribe the morning-after pill on grounds of conscience.

Charles C. Camosy at Washington Post: The church, in part because Catholic institutions would be compelled to do these abortions, has reacted strongly against the measure. The Irish Bishops, for instance, point out that abortion, “is never a remedy for suicidal ideation and therefore should never be cited as a justification for the direct killing of an innocent human being.” There is even talk of excommunication of Irish lawmakers depending on how this all plays out.

C-FAM: Lawyers and doctors last week denounced the highest human rights court in the Americas for meddling with science and failing to protect human life. Last December, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization, known as IVF. In order to rule that way the court had to weigh in on the law and science of when human life begins. It decided the IVF ban infringed the right to privacy, personal autonomy and sexual and reproductive health.

Big News Network: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has decried Buddhist monks’ attacks on Muslims in Myanmar, saying that killing in the name of religion was “unthinkable”.

Globe and Mail: While the Christian faith continues to dominate Canada’s immigrant profile, its proportion has been steadily fading. Where more than 78 per cent of immigrants to Canada prior to 1971 identified themselves as Christians, that proportion has dropped to 47.5 per cent among those who arrived over the past five years, the survey found.

World Magazine: In the spot, broadcast over major channels in the East African nation during commercial breaks until it was pulled in March, two Kenyan women walk to a market and linger over vegetables, talking about their families. One complains that she is tired of putting up with her alcoholic husband who does not satisfy her sexually. She confesses she has a lover on the side, who even has a name in the ad, Mbugua. Her friend advises her to always use condoms with Mbugua—leading to the campaign slogan “Weka Condom Mpangoni” or “include a condom in your planning” in Swahili.

Rod Dreher at the American Conservative: Do, do, do read Andrew Doran’s TAC essay today about how US Mideast policy toward Iraq and others is destroying Christianity in the land of its birth. Note well this . . .

Baptist Press: More than 52,000 letters have been written to American pastor Saeed Abedini, commending him for his strong demonstration of faith as he languishes in an Iranian prison. The Web-based campaign was launched by the American Center for Law and Justice ahead of Abedini’s 33rd birthday May 7.

The Telegraph: Terminaly ill patients will be able to ask their doctor for a lethal dose of drugs to end their lives as part of a major new push to change the laws on assisted suicide.

Reuters: Suspected members of the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram armed with machineguns laid siege on the north-eastern town of Bama on Tuesday, freeing over 100 prison inmates and leaving 55 people dead, the military said.

Christian Institute: A pro-family group in New Zealand has been notified that it will lose its charitable status because it campaigned in support of traditional marriage.