Thursday, August 31, 2017
Christians United Condemns The Nashville Manifesto
The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) put together the document. It includes a preamble and 14 articles on human sexuality.
It blatantly discriminates against the LGBT community and affirms the beliefs of a heteronormative society. The statement also condemns Christians who support the community.
People were quick to criticize the manifesto and 150 religious leaders who signed it. They especially took issue with the document’s release during Hurricane Harvey.
However, other members of faith are explicitly standing up against it.
Christians United is a new manifesto signed by over 300 religious leaders, educators, and activists. Anyone can sign this statement at the website.
It too includes a preamble and several articles. These, however, preach ideas of acceptance and inclusiveness.
Its first article, for example, reads:
‘WE AFFIRM that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God and that the great diversity expressed in humanity through our wide spectrum of unique sexualities and gender identities is a perfect reflection of the magnitude of God’s creative work.
WE DENY any teaching that suggests God’s creative intent is limited to a gender binary or that God’s desire for human romantic relationships is only to be expressed in heterosexual relationships between one man and one woman.’
In a time when more LGBT people are being killed in the United States, declarations like the Nashville Statement are especially heinous, if not altogether surprising.
A show of defiance against such discrimination is crucial.
The Liturgists, a self-described ‘collective of artists and creators who create sacred art and experiences for the spiritually homeless and frustrated’, released their own statement on the matter.
In it, they express the belief ‘all people have full autonomy over their bodies, sexual orientations, and gender identities, and the diversity of identities reflects the creative power of a loving God’.
And they also ‘stand in solidarity with LGBTQ folks, and commit to standing alongside them in the work of resisting those who persecute them’.
While the Nashville Statement certainly had its share of supporters, many slammed it. Several people now are also criticizing the Christians United and Liturgists statement, but numerous are also supporting them.
Mayor Of Hell Bans Heterosexuals
When YouTube star Elijah Daniel decided to become the mayor of Hell, he knew exactly what his first order would be:
Banning all straight people from entering.
The prankster looked up the easiest political office he could hold, and found the perfect thing.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Fox News Shuts Down In The UK
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network has been axed in the UK.
Murdoch’s family of media moguls have been forced to pull the channel after it suffered dire viewing figures.
Despite high hopes for the right-wing broadcaster, just a few thousand Brits were tuning in to the channel most days.
It also suffered a long string of complaints from telly regulators.
“Fox has decided to cease providing a feed of Fox News Channel in the UK,” a company spokeswoman said.
“Fox News is focused on the US market and designed for a US audience and, accordingly, it averages only a few thousand viewers across the day in the UK.
“We have concluded that it is not in our commercial interest to continue providing Fox News in the UK,” she added.
21st Century Fox is currently attempting to buy out the largest paid for broadcaster, Sky, for $15bn.
The company offered £11.7bn for the 61% stake in Sky it does not already own in December 2016, following another failed bid in 2012.
TV regulator Ofcom has received many complaints about the channel’s programming and corporate culture since airing in the UK.
Media commentators had suggested it could damage the company’s attempted takeover of Sky as it racked up a bad reputation.
A woman who alleged that she had been sexually harassed at Fox News asked UK media regulators to block 21st Century Fox’s planned purchase of Sky.
One of the channel’s pundits also recently claimed the LGBT Pride flag represents “the exact same thing” as the Confederate flag.
But shockingly, one Fox News guest apparently doesn’t see any difference between that and an LGBT flag.
Star Parker said: “What’s really interesting with an incredible irony here is that the same people that are demanding that the Confederate flag comes down are the same people that are insisting that the rainbow flag goes up.
“These two flags represent the exact same thing: that certain people groups are not welcome here.”
Christian Leadership Issue Anti-LGBT Manifesto
Titled the Nashville Statement, the document was put together by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). It came out of a meeting at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s annual conference in the titular city held this past weekend.
The manifesto contains a preamble and 14 articles about human sexuality.
The first article, for example, reads: ‘We affirm that God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife, and is meant to signify the covenant love between Christ and his bride the church.’
Further statements in the document present the idea of only two genders and heterosexuality.
Article 10 states: ‘We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality and transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.’
Over 150 leaders signed the document. CBMW president Denny Burk claimed the document aims to clear up Christians’ confusion about sexuality.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
College Football Player Comes Out To Entire School And Teammates At Pep Rally
How’s this for a coming out story? When Xavier Colvin, a linebacker for Butler University’s football team, stepped on stage, it wasn’t to give his teammates a pep talk. It was to tell them he is gay.
After initially telling his head coach, Jeff Voris, and linebackers coach, Derek Day, they encouraged him to tell the rest of the team.
So he took to the stage, microphone in hand, and told his story. He spoke of growing up, playing football, and what it means to be a gay athlete.
Fortunately, he received nothing but support for his words.
His coming out speech happened earlier this month, but was only reported on yesterday by Outsports.
‘Afterwards I got texts and phone calls,’ Colvin told the LGBT athletes website. ‘The freshmen who didn’t know me came and shook my hand. And they all said, “we’ve got your back.” They told me how proud they were of me. Not even a single negative reaction. It was all positive.’
Despite the fact that discrimination and homophobia still exist, Colvin believes support does show changing times.
‘What I’ve come to learn from my 105 teammates and 15 coaches is that no one cares, and it’s not as big of a deal as it used to be,’ he said. ‘People care more about you as a person and your mental health. It took me a while to learn that.’
It took Colvin time to come to terms with his sexuality. While he expressed he wishes he had come out sooner, he’s expressing nothing but positivism now: ‘I feel like with the increased role this fall, on top of being more mature, I think this will work out well.’
He also hopes his story can help others.
‘Other LGBT athletes and non-athletes have to realize they are not alone,’ he said. ‘There are other people with similar stories, similar backgrounds.’
I Now Pronounce You Husband And Wife?
In July, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed the marriage equality legislation a few weeks after the parliament voted in favor of the issue. The law reform gives same-sex couples full marital rights, and allows them to adopt children.
But thanks to a technical glitch, couples will still have to register as husband and wife when applying for a marriage license.
While same-sex couples will be able to be married from October, the software problem won’t be resolved until 1 November, 2018. The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the software developer are said to be working on the resolution.
According to a report in the Berliner Morgenpost the software issue was discovered to be a problem throughout Germany. The software cannot register two men or two women who want to marry, so one of the couple will be forced to register as the opposite gender.
Couples will still be able to marry from October.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to put the issue of marriage equality up to a snap vote after meeting a lesbian couple who changed her mind.
‘I would like to steer the discussion more into the direction of a question-of-conscience vote rather than me forcing through [Parliament] a majority decision,’ Merkel said at the time.
Following the vote in June, German legal code now reads: ‘Marriage is entered into for life by two people of different or the same sex’.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)