Religion: Last News

5-4 decision Wednesday evening the U.S. Supreme Court opted to not block a state court’s ruling ordering a faith-based private university to recognize an LGBTQ students’ organization, but the order is quite likely temporary.Yeshiva University, which has four campuses in New York City, was ordered by a state court to recognize Y.U.

executing a search warrant seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, a democracy-denying ultra MAGA activist who had Oval Office access to Donald Trump when he was president, promotes wild conspiracy theories, and is now bankrolling a far-right extremist described as a “fascist,” a “white supremacist,” and “one of the internet’s most rabid white Christian nationalists.”“We are the Christian Taliban and we will not stop until The Handmaid’s Tale is a reality, and even worse than that,” says Vincent James, who Lindell is financially supporting according to Right Wing Watch and Vice News.Lindell, of course, is known to millions as the “My Pillow guy,” the founder of the massively successful shredded foam manufacturer who is now using his vast wealth to promote his claims of massive election fraud, claims that have led some television stations, he says, to ban him from appearing in his own commercials.READ MORE: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Launches Paranoid Rant: ‘Had to Get on My Knees and Pray to God’ US Gov’t. Didn’t Kill HimLindell told supporters about the FBI executing a search warrant while he was at a Hardee’s drive-thru in his Mankato, Minnesota hometown, on his streaming show, the Lindell Report.“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” Lindell said, The Guardian reports.

LGBTQ student organization for now, the Supreme Court said in a Friday evening order from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.A lower court had ordered Yeshiva University, a private Orthodox Jewish research school in New York City to recognize the student group, but Justice Sotomayor, who has jurisdiction over the Second Circuit, which includes Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, temporarily stayed that ruling, “pending further order,” as lower court and state court cases continue.“A New York state trial court ruled that as a public accommodation, Yeshiva was covered under the New York City Human Rights Law and required to provide the Pride Alliance the same access to facilities as dozens of other student groups,” The Washington Post reports. “The group said that means access to a classroom, bulletin boards and a club fair booth.”Yeshiva is an Orthodox institution, and the “Orthodox tradition only supports heterosexual relations and only within the context of heterosexual marriage,” the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has said.Well-known University of Texas School of Law Professor of law Steve Vladeck called Justice Sonomayor’s decision “surprising.”“Justice Sotomayor, acting by herself, has stayed a New York state trial court’s injunction that had ordered Yeshiva University to recognize an LGBTQ student group.

Private and public schools alike participate in the National School Lunch Program, which funds meals for millions of students across the country.In May, the USDA had announced that schools participating in NSLP must create policies prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.But after lawsuits from a religious school and conservative-led states, the USDA clarified on August 12 that religious schools participating in NSLP can continue allowing discrimination against LGBTQ students and staff.“USDA regulations do not require a religious educational institution to submit a written request for a Title IX exemption in order to claim that exemption,” the memo read.The controversy stems from debates around Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded education programs. In a change from the Trump administration, the Biden administration has interpreted Title IX as also banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.The USDA’s announcement this May fell in line with Biden’s interpretation.“State and local agencies, program operators and sponsors that receive funds from [the Food and Nutrition Service] must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation,” a May 5 press release read.“Those organizations must also update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”On July 26, twenty-two states signed onto a lawsuit filed against the USDA policy.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is advocating against legislation in the Senate that would protect existing same-sex marriages but would not ensure same-sex couples could marry in their state if the U.S.

New York’s Yeshiva University is trying to bypass a state court ruling that orders the university to recognize a gay pride group on campus.One of the country’s oldest Jewish Orthodox schools in the nation, the New York-situated Yeshiva petitioned the Supreme Court to allow them to block the YU Pride Alliance from being granted official recognition at the university. In an “emergency petition” sent to the court on August 29, Yeshiva cites that it is a “deeply religious university,” and as such, believes it should be allowed to deny the group on the basis of religious beliefs.On June 14, the New York State Supreme Court had ruled that Yeshiva was not actually a “religious institution” under New York law, indicating that the university had to comply with New York City Human Rights Laws banning all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender.

titular character in “Padre Pio,” a film helmed by Abel Ferrara exploring the life of the Franciscan Capuchin mystic. Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione in southern Italy in 1887. He became famous for showing stigmata, or crucifixion wounds like those on the body of Jesus Christ.

died Monday at the age of 73 — revealed the vow in a February 2021 interview with the A Life of Greatness podcast, speaking candidly about her religious convictions.“I remember I was pregnant with Chloe, and I was close to losing her,” Newton-John recalled about her 1985 pregnancy with her only child.“I went to bed and asked God to save her and, if he did, I would say the Lord’s Prayer every night for the rest of my life and so I have,” she declared. “I think prayer is very powerful.”Newton-John went on to welcome Chloe in January 1986 with her then-husband, Matt Lattanzi.

more than 70 percent of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—support the freedom of same-sex couples to get married. More than 90 percent of Americans support marriage rights for interracial couples, who are also protected under the legislation.But religious-right leaders hostile to legal equality for LGBTQ people were angry that the bill received bipartisan support. They have refused to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling as legitimate, and they have been emboldened by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s call for the court to overturn rulings recognizing and protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and same-sex couples the way it overturned Roe v.

Herschel Walker, the Trump-endorsed  GOP nominee to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, has drawn tremendous criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike, as the former NFL star hides from debates after hiding three of his four children.Walker is being scrutinized as Fox News tries to prop him up, after The Daily Beast recently revealed he has three other children that he has all but never publicly acknowledged.Christian Walker, who does not identify as gay but says he is attracted to men, is the only Walker child most Americans know about.On Wednesday “Fox & Friends” asked Walker about his other children, and he delivered a demonstrably false answer.READ MORE: ‘Pathological Liar’: Herschel Walker’s Own Advisors Don’t Trust Him, Think He Isn’t Mentally Fit for the Job – ReportAt the Longstreet Cafe in Gainesville, Georgia, apparently packed with an almost entirely white audience (the city is 68% white), Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade asked Walker about the “revelations about three children.”“What do you want people to know about that?” Kilmeade said, offering Walker an open door to discuss hiding the existence for three off his four children despite blasting Black fathers for not taking care of their offspring while declaring himself a good dad.“You have not been public about that,” Kilmeade added.READ MORE: Herschel Walker Claims Black Politicians Have Done “Absolutely Nothing” for Black Community“Well I never would be public about that,” Walker replied, “Because you know one of my kids who wanted to be in the media has gotten a lot of threats – he’s gotten a lot of threats.

The Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, released a new policy regarding LGBTQ students in its Catholic Schools that equates being transgender to being sexually abused. The Diocese, led by Bishop David Ricken, published the new gender policy last month in its Education Policy Manual for the 2022-2023 school year.The manual explains how to “restrict” participation in the Catholic education of transgender students, staff, volunteers, and ally parents.The manual contains a section titled “Catholic Principles of Human Sexuality,” which promote current Church doctrine on sexuality and gender, including the idea that there are only two sexes, that every person’s body, as created by God, cannot be altered through social transition or medical interventions, and that heterosexual marriage is the ideal relationship for raising children and continuing the propagation of the faith.The manual also compares homosexuality or “expressing a gender that is discordant with one’s biological sex” with other sinful behaviors that are viewed as reprehensible or crude among polite society, including: the use of vulgar language, “immodest dress or deportment,” masturbation, pornography, fornication, adultery, cohabitating outside of marriage, obtaining an abortion, and sexual harassment or abuse. Section 5045 of the “Education Policy Manual” mandates that trans and non-binary people be addressed as their gender at birth, rather than based on how they identify.Based on this understanding, schools are expected to refuse to allow trans-identifying children to use their preferred names or pronouns, access gender-specific facilities that do not match their assigned sex at birth, or take puberty blockers to prevent the onset of secondary sex

picked up the garbage can from his front yard and threw it at a drummer in what appears to be the Bangor Protestant Boys Band as they marched down the street. The entire band suddenly rushed the perpetrator, who then ran inside his home. But band members seemingly won the fight when they picked up a large trash can on the man’s property and threw it at — and smashed — his front window.

writing for MSNBC’s ReidOutBlog, Ja’han Jones outlined how the Christian Right is facing renewed moral scrutiny and a crisis of “credibility” — at exactly the moment they have captured the Supreme Court and have begun striking down rights and protections they have long declared to be counter to moral society.Specifically, he argued, the latest rash of sex abuse allegations against conservative Christian institutions puts their moral authority on the line.The Catholic Church has long faced criticism for overlooking and shielding priests accused of molesting children — but now, noted Jones, other denominations are coming under scrutiny for similar alleged misconduct.“First, there’s the scandal still unfolding at Agapè Boarding School, a Christian facility for young men in Missouri that’s facing a slew of child abuse allegations. Agapè pitches guardians on its ability to ‘biblically teach your child the importance of submission to authority and the joys of being an obedient law-abiding citizen,'” wrote Jones.

scandal-ridden institution notorious for alleged anti-LGBTQ views and gay conversion therapy among other high-profile controversies.Pratt, 43, denied the allegations during an interview with Men’s Health for its June cover story, saying that he has never been to the church nor does he know anyone from the house of worship, which once attracted the likes of Justin Bieber.“I never went to Hillsong,” said the “Jurassic World” star, who has been the subject of several controversies in the past months.“I’ve never actually been to Hillsong. I don’t know anyone from that church.”In 2019, “Umbrella Academy” star Elliot Page was one of the first people to slam Pratt over his supposed ties to Hillsong after the “Avenger” star appeared on Stephen Colbert to talk about his faith. “If you are a famous actor and you belong to an organization that hates a certain group of people, don’t be surprised if someone simply wonders why it’s not addressed,” tweeted the actor, who came out as a trans man in 2020.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday appeared to agree it is a “blatant falsehood” that a far-right Christian ministry that has claimed “homosexuals say yes” to pedophilia and promotes anti-LGBTQ lies is a “hate group” that deserves to be placed on the same map and the KKK and neo-Nazis.Justice Thomas’ rant appears as the only opposition to the Court’s decision Monday to not take up a case that would effectively revisit the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v.

Roe v. Wade, the Heritage Foundation announced that it is leading The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a coalition of Christian nationalist, pro-voter suppression, anti-LGBTQ-equality, anti-government, Big Lie-promoting, and Trump-cheerleading groups to “position the movement to take the reins of government” after what they expect will be a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Same-sex marriage has never been more popular in the United States than it is today, according to a recent poll. According to Gallup’s annual Value and Beliefs poll – taken every year during the month of May – 71 percent of Americans claim they support marriage, besting the previous high of 70 percent recorded in 2021.When Gallup first began the poll back in 1996, only 27 percent of Amercians supported gay marriage. Despite this dismal first poll, support for same-sex nuptials would steadily rise in the subsequent years.

U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has hired a far right wing agitator and activist who appeared to support sexual relationships between boys as young as 13 and older men.In 2016 Milo Yiannopoulos said, “I think in the gay world some of the most important, enriching and incredibly life-affirming, important shaping relationships very often between younger boys and older men.”Those remarks were part of a video in which “Yiannopoulos discussed romantic relationships between teenage boys and adult men while being interviewed for the Drunken Peasants podcast in early 2016,” NBC News had reported in 2017.

Controversial US Representative from North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn, lost his seat Wednesday after losing the North Carolina Republican primary to State Senator Chuck Edwards.Edwards, a three-term Senator, will go on to face Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Christian minister, in the  elections in November.In May, a video surfaced of him nude and humping a man’s face.Madison Cawthorn says the Daily Mail article about a video showing him butt naked humping his male cousin’s face was “locker room talk.”One problem: there’s no talking in the video. Watch the video and his response here.

By Dr Christopher Pepin-NeffAs Australia celebrates the 2022 International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia & Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on Tuesday, 17 May, another day looms large, the May 21 federal election. Together, these days represent an important statement about where the LGBTQI community is going in 2022 and beyond as we face a resurgence of hate-fueled stigma. Now Peter Dutton stands in the wings to inherit the Prime Minister role from Scott Morrison if the Coalition is re-elected.

seemingly poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and anti-choice activists plotting to implement a nationwide “heartbeat bill” that will ban abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, the “mastermind” of the heartbeat bill strategy is running for Congress and plotting to use the strategy behind the Texas’ 2021 draconian “heartbeat bill” to target schools that teach about LGBTQ issues.Janet Porter, a longtime right-wing conspiracy theorist and religious-right activist, appeared on fellow radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire’s “Pass The Salt” program last month.