Category Archives: Religion

Delta bans U.S. Jews from Flights To Saudi Arabia

I really don’t believe this….

This is a U.S. Airline!!!

Someone at the Delta Airlines and in the U.S. Government needs to step up and speak up about this…all I can think about is Hitler’s special laws for Jews.  This is so wrong I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face.

And I am sick of the U.S. Government and U.S. Businesses cozying up to the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, in general, because of their oil and money.

I’ll never forget Bush, Jr groveling and practically kissing the ring of the Saudi’s and then strolling around happily, literally, hand-in-hand with them when they came to visit him.

Oil and money really are trumping everything else today.  That’s got to stop.

Apparently standing up against something that is wrong on principle is a long lost American trait.  Now our government and businesses are acting like hookers who’ll lay down and do anything for the right price.

If these are the conditions of doing business with Saudi Arabia, then Delta should be forced to just say no….

Jews and Israelis, or passengers carrying any non-Islamic article of faith, will not be able to fly code-share flights from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia under Delta Air Line’s new partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines that is set to begin in 2012.

Although Delta announced in January that the Saudi airline would join its SkyTeam network next year, the implications of the deal only came to light recently, according to people who have scrutinized the details.

Saudi Arabia, which is governed by strict Islamic law, requires citizens of almost every country to obtain a visa. People who wish to enter the country must have a sponsor; women, who must be dressed according to Saudi standards of modesty, must be met at the Saudi airport by a man who will act as a chaperone.

Saudi Arabia bans anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport from entering the country, even in transit. Many Jews believe the kingdom has also withheld visas from travelers with Jewish-sounding names.

Religious items such as Bibles that are not related to Islam may be confiscated at the airport.

Colby M. May, senior counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal group founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, said his office is trying to determine if the agreement runs afoul of U.S. law.

“The very idea that there is a common carrier airline service that would deny an American citizen in America access to their services because they are Jewish or have religious items such as a yarmulke, a cross or a priestly collar, is deeply disturbing,” May said.

May said he is “trying to get answers” from Delta.

“They have not responded in a way that answers the question,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll do so.”

In a statement to Religion News Service on Thursday (June 23), Delta said it “does not discriminate, nor do we condone discrimination against any protected class of passenger in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, or gender.”

The airline, which did not deny the new policy, insisted that it has no control over who may fly to Saudi Arabia.

via U.S. Jews Not Able To Fly On Delta Flights To Saudi Arabia.

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The Penis Patrol

Okay….if you are tired of hearing about Anthony’s Weiner, but want to continue to grow your knowledge in this general area, here is someone who has done much more research on the subject of penises in public life than anyone could ever possibly care to know.  He seems to see them everywhere….

I can’t quite believe this is real, but it is…

Anderson Cooper covered it, so it must be….

This continues to raise the question that has puzzled me for years:  Why are so-called “Straight Christian Men” so obsessed with Penises?

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Doomsday Preacher Wrong in More Ways Than One – Leonard Pitts Jr.

Beautiful column from Leonard Pitts…

He points some of the things I don’t understand about these people focusing on the End of Times…

I still say we should all embrace this life- and not just focus on what happens next….

We’ll find out that answer eventually.

But the tendency to focus on the end is like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. It suggests mortality is a thing to be feared. Granted, one would never think this, much less say it when death breaks hearts and overflows eyes, when it strikes without warning or lingers above a sickbed, when it takes away the very young or the very loved, but a case can be made that mortality is really a gift of sorts.

The understanding that life is finite lends a bittersweet urgency to this business of living. Seasons change, years pile upon years, hair turns to silver and then to memory and in all of it, there is an undercurrent: get done what you came here to do, give the gifts you meant to give, do the good you’re able to do, say what you need to say, now, today, because everything you see is temporary, the clock is ticking and the alarm could go off any second.

Camping had it wrong in more ways than one. He told people to get ready for the end. Better they should live ready for the end.

The key word there being, live.

via Doomsday preacher wrong in more ways than one – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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Married Couples in less than Half of US Households

When are people going to finally face the fact that the “Ozzie and Harriet”, “Father Knows Best”, “Leave it to Beaver” world is gone?

If it ever existed in the first place…

The Conservatives keep harping on Family Values, but I always ask “Whose Family?”

My family of two Gay Men, a dog and two cats?  A family of 2 twentysomethings too financially insecure to think about a house and kids?  A family led by a single mother with children she has to feed, clothe and take care of alone?  A family of two women with children?  A family of one elderly American living alone?

Let’s get real here….

If you are going to talk about Family Values, it’s time to think about what a Family really is….

There are many kinds of Families…

Not all are what some  political Conservatives with an agenda want to force a Family to be…

Three mornings a week, when Becky Leung gets ready for work, her boyfriend is just getting home from his overnight job. When her mother drops hints about her twin sister’s marriage, she laughs it off. And when she thinks about getting married herself, she worries first about her career.

Leung, 27, cohabits in a Portland, Ore., townhome with her boyfriend but has no plans yet to wed, a reflection of the broader cultural shift in the U.S. away from the traditional definition of what it means to be a household.

Data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows married couples have found themselves in a new position: They’re no longer the majority.

It’s a trend that’s been creeping along for decades, but in the 2010 Census, married couples represent 48 percent of all households. That’s down from 52 percent in the last Census and, for the first time in U.S. history, puts households led by married couples as a plurality.

via Married couples in less than half of US households – Yahoo! News.

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King James Bible Beats Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga

Interesting article…

Evangelical Christians always seem to think they are being victimized by popular culture.

Well, FaceBook is popular culture and this seems to indicate Christianity is doing just fine…

The Bible beat out Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga for the second week in a row to remain the most-visited page on Facebook. Pretty impressive for a book that is often maligned as a stodgy, outdated rulebook.

Facebook users are flocking to Facebook.com/TheBible to show their love of Scripture, posting messages like “we know stars like Bieber and Gaga…but talk about someone who created the solar system…GOD.”

The timing for the popularity of the Bible’s Facebook page is particularly appropriate. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the most-published book in history, the King James Bible. While usage of the King James Bible has certainly waxed and waned during the past 400 years, its influence has reverberated across the English-speaking world and has permeated nearly every corner of culture. From literature to law, praise to politics, the King James Bible has shaped the way the world speaks and writes.

via Bible Beats Bieber 42911.

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I Was a Right-Wing Evangelical Pastor — Until I Saw the Light

Wonderful article from Jason Childs in Church and State Magazine reprinted at Alternet…

This has always been my position:  People need to break out of their bubbles if they want to recognize bullshit and lies when they see it and hear it…

Once you get out and about in the world, you find people have much more in common than they have in differences…

I was a Liberty University-trained evangelical pastor. I was sure that I was right and that every other person not of my faith was going to burn in hell forever. I was taught that we as Christians should take this nation back, only to find out later that we never had it to begin with.

After five years of teaching this homophobic, divisive message that has hurt so many millions of people in our world, I went through a divorce. The Southern Baptist Convention will not let you remain in the ministry after a divorce, so I had to think of something else to do with my life. After several years of selling cars, I decided to become a truck driver –; you know, see America and all that jazz.

Well, I did see America, and the country I saw was very different from the one I was taught about by Jerry Falwell and my mentors at Florida Bible College. What I found was that this nation is filled with people from all walks of life, and from every different culture. I met thousands of people, from the beautiful forests of Washington state to the bayous of Louisiana. I found that these folks are not the wicked sinners I was taught about. They are just good-hearted Americans from all faiths and cultural backgrounds, trying to pay their bills, care for their families and have a few good times with their friends and lovers.

I began to notice a change in me as well. I started reading a lot of books that were not on the seminary reading list and listening to NPR as I was driving 10 hours a day. It was a great second education. I decided to return to Alabama and work to help all of the people of my great state, and to protect them from the oppression I was once a part of propagating.

More:   I Was a Right-Wing Evangelical Pastor — Until I Saw the Light | Civil Liberties | AlterNet.

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Pope Shuts Down Famous ‘Party Monastery’ with ‘Prancing Nuns’

Another “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” item….

Don’t these people watch “The Borgias?”

From Rawstory.com:

ROME – Pope Benedict XVI has shut down a famous community in Rome that organised dances by a former nightclub dancer nun and hosted VIPs like Madonna, earning the disfavour of the Vatican.

The closure of the monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which holds some of the Church’s most prized relics, was reported by Italian dailies La Stampa and Il Foglio.

The reports said the community of Cistercian monks based at the church for more than five centuries was being transferred to other churches in Italy.

Contacted by AFP, the Vatican did not deny the reports.

The basilica had become a hub for the “Friends of Santa Croce”, an aristocratic group, and had been criticised for some unorthodox practices including dances in which nuns pranced around the altar.

One of the nuns who performed at the church, a former disco dancer, can be seen in a YouTube video performing a modern dance with a crucifix.

The basilica’s longtime abbot, Simone Fioraso, a flamboyant former Milan fashion designer, was already moved out of the basilica two years ago.

via Pope shuts down famous ‘party monastery’ with ‘prancing nuns’ | The Raw Story.

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The REAL Rapture Comes On October 21

This gives him a little more time to fundraise and milk publicity…

From News One:

Harold Camping, the preacher who incorrectly predicted that the world would end on May 21st 2011, is now claiming that the false doomsday was merely a warning, and that the end will in fact come on October 21st 2011.

“We’ve always said May 21 was the day, but we didn’t understand altogether the spiritual meaning,” the persistent leader stated during a 90 minute message.

Camping, who incorrectly predicted the world to end back in 1994, says he will no longer post billboards and messages about Judgment Day.

“The world has been warned,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

via Harold Camping: The REAL Rapture Comes On October 21 | News One.

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King James Version Is The Only Bible With Power To Unite

Interesting article….

It should remind some of the Religious Conservatives- who won’t listen anyway- that there are multiple interpretations and translations of the Bible…

I think some of the other versions simplify things too much and take away the mystery…

None have the poetry of the King James Version.

As a work of literature, it’s magnificent.

I’ve actually read that version cover to cover…

You may pick yourselves up off the floor now…

Most of the Bible translations crowding American bookstores lack the KJV’s gravitas and spiritual substance, Jeffrey said, and their sheer variety fractures Christian unity.

The need for the KJV itself was prompted by a related situation, Jeffrey argues in a forthcoming book, “The King James Bible and the World It Made.”

In King James’ England, the Bishops’ Bible, favored by Anglicans, prevailed in churches, while the Puritan-preferred Geneva Bible was read in homes. Dissonances between the two versions sowed theological doubts and divisions. Hoping to paper over those divides (and supersede the anti-monarchical Geneva Bible) King James seized on the idea of a new, unifying Bible.

“One could be forgiven for thinking that a similar case for a common Bible in English is far stronger now than it was then,” Jeffrey writes.

Jeffrey and other scholars acknowledged, though, that such a task would be difficult.

“Another translation could be created, but it would never have the cultural uniqueness and authority that the KJV had,” said Timothy Larsen, a Wheaton scholar and author of a book about the KJV’s influence on the Victorian era. “Too many choices would have to be made.”

Bible translation is inherently theological, Larsen said, and getting contemporary Christian camps on the same page, so to speak, would be next to impossible.

As a result, Bible use is more democratic today, with no one translation wearing the crown, which some experts say is a good thing.

“The variety of ways in which the Bible allows for different translations demonstrates that it is a living, amazingly enduring document,” said Kristin Swenson, a religious studies scholar at Virginia Commonwealth University.

via King James Version Is The Only Bible With Power To Unite.

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NC Faith Leaders Stand Up for LGBT Equality — Equality North Carolina

I’m always pleased to find evidence that all Religious leaders aren’t like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson…

I really have to be reminded of that sometimes as those guys, and similar opportunists and zealots, really created a negative image or organized religion for so many of us….

I’m also particularly pleased to see the diversity in this group…

We’ve come a long ways from Jesse Helms….

Thanks to my friend Kirk for originally sending this to me…

As anti-LGBT forces once again used religious reasons to justify their support of a ban on marriage equality on the outside, inside Rep. Brandon, and the statewide coalition of religious leadership standing beside him, took on these claims directly, citing the religious and historical context for opposing anti-LGBT legislation like the constitutional amendment current circulating the North Carolina legislature.

“The Bible has been used in this nation to support slavery, segregation, laws against interracial marriage, and to deny women’s rights,” Brandon said, adding that he’s a Christian himself. “Jesus was a compassionate person. And Jesus would not be having a rally outside right now.”

During the hour-long press conference, five faith leaders, flanked by other people of faith and state legislators, publicly spoke to the specific harms of Senate Bill 106/House Bill 777:

“This extreme legislation will only cause needless pain and suffering,” Rev. Anthony Spearman is pastor of Clinton Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Hickory said of the proposed amendment. “It sends a message to major employers that North Carolina does not welcome a diverse workplace,” Spearman said. “It tells young people who are gay they’re second class citizens, unworthy of basic dignity and equal treatment…It is not fair and it is certainly not just.”

“Martin Luther King Jr. said the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice,” said Rev. Stephen Shoemaker from Charlotte’s Myers Park Baptist. “We’re here to say today it also bends toward inclusiveness.”

“Don’t let those selling fear on the cheap, buy your hearts,” said Rev. Dr. Amy Laura Hall, ordained elder, United Methodist Church in Durham. “I appeal to you, dear children of God, charged with leading us in North Carolina, please do not block the true recognition of gay and lesbian families in North Carolina as what they are…families, with all the vulnerability, need and intimate trust that go with the word ‘kin.'”

“We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equality to gay and lesbian couples,” said Ari Margoils, assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Or in Raleigh.

“This, I would like to suggest, is our moment,” said Bishop Tonyia Rawls of Unity Fellowship Church in Charlotte. “We will in this moment in time acknowledge what type of a state we really are.”

During the press conference, it was announced that clergy and congregation members from all denominations could sign on with a statewide faith coalition, joining more than 300 faith leaders who have already publicly opposed this type of discriminatory legislation.

via NC Faith Leaders Stand Up for LGBT Equality — Equality North Carolina.

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