BBC NEWS | Americas | US Church backs same-sex marriage The UCC (United Church of Christ) has passed a resolution in support of gay marriage. It’s a “mainline” denomination – mostly of the Congregational flavor. They’re running the well-received “God is still speaking, you’re welcome here” ads. My own national church will be running some pretty cool ads in August. Yay us! The mainline churches are starting to take that light out from under the bushel at last. But we still have to get over the general ickiness of talking to people about church stuff. I’m as guilty of this…

Ironically, by overreaching with the state marriage amendments, the right wing may have provided the gay movement and progressives with an ideal starting point for just such a campaign. By showing the sheer number of households affected by such broad constitutional amendments, progressives can demonstrate just how narrow and extremist the pro-marriage agenda is. Defense of marriage amendments not only enshrine discrimination against gays and lesbians in state constitutions; they also severely curtail the freedom of intimate association exercised by Americans in nonmarried households–gay and straight alike. Indeed, a recent decision by a federal judge striking down Nebraska’s defense of…

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Jerusalem gay march ban set aside Well, that’s good and joyful all right. A judge came down hard on the Jerusalem mayor’s unilateral banning of this year’ Gay Pride parade. Not only will it go on, but the city of Jerusalem will pay 30,000 shekels to the gay and lesbian center to underwrite the vent, plus another 30,000 shekels just for good measure, and they have to line the parade route with banners. So there, nyah. It’s good news, much better than those crotchety old religious clerics of various faiths who came together last…

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Keith Choate and Mark Ceneri turned to each other, grinning. Then they embraced. State representatives had just voted 85-63 to allow same-sex civil unions, something Choate and Ceneri had been waiting for since they became a couple five years ago. The state Senate passed a similar measure last week. “We wanted something that was meaningful,” said a beaming Choate. “We wanted something that was real.” The House action on Wednesday came after more than six hours of debate, much of it centered on adding a definition of marriage – the union of a man and a…

But the Scottish bishops said: “We are conscious that as a church we are much indebted in our life both to a significant presence of persons of homosexual orientation, and also those whose theology and stance would be critical of attitudes to sexuality other than abstinence outside marriage. “We rejoice in both.” Thank God for Scotland the brave. Their bishops consecrated the first American Episcopal bishops in the years immediately after the Revolution, when we weren’t exactly on speaking terms with Britain. Then we all got over it. Then they consecrated the first Episcopalian woman priest in 1994. We’re all…

The bishops have repeatedly called us to listen and dialogue. When we debate, we are listening only for those parts that we can use to make our case. When we dialogue, we are seeking to understand the other person’s experience. We don’t have to agree with it. We don’t pass any judgement on it. We quiet our own internal chatter and attempt to be fully present to the other person. Are we willing to do this? Let’s try. We’re listening over at Holy Moly. At least, we though we were, and then a few weeks back our eyes were opened…

Darn it, I think I missed a really good episode of the Simpsons. I ran across a reference to it in Cathleen Falsani’s religion column in the Sun-Times: Hey, remember when divorce was a sin? Not just a sin, but the sin. The big, controversial, sexy one. The one everyone was preaching about and arguing over. The one that threatened to destroy morality, culture, and, eventually, humanity as we know it. I started to ponder the demise of divorce, and the rise of same-sex marriage as the sin du jour as the “parental warning” flashed across my television screen before…