Christian Aid, a british charity and NGO has roundly critized the response by Western nations at the latest UN conference on global climate change in
President Obama’s administration filed a legal brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in a court case seeking to overturn it. In effect the
Recently the State of New Hampshire legislature and governor agreed to include certain protections for religious leaders before they would both agree to enact a law recognizing same-sex marriage. Robert Jones and Daniel Cox have taken a close look at that decision to see what sorts of lessons can be drawn.
In a surprise turnabout, the New Hampshire House voted narrowly Wednesday afternoon to defeat the measure, 186 to 188. When the House Speaker announced the vote in the House, the chamber erupted with sounds of both distress and applause.
Gov. John Baldacci of Maine on Wednesday signed the same-sex marriage bill, saying he had reversed his position on such marriages after deciding it was a matter of equal protection. The law would normally go into effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns, which is usually in late June. But opponents have vowed to pursue a “people’s veto” to ask voters if they want to overturn the law.
President Obama’s proposal to limit the tax deductibility of charitable contributions would effectively transfer more than $7 billion a year from the nation’s charitable institutions to the federal government. But the high-income taxpayers affected by the rule change are likely to cut their charitable giving by as much as the increase in their tax bills, which would, ironically, leave their remaining income and personal consumption unchanged.
U.S. officials have notified the declaration’s French sponsors that the administration wants to be added as a supporter. One official added that the United States was concerned about “violence and human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals” and was also “troubled by the criminalization of sexual orientation in many countries.”
Andrew Sullivan has a pretty stark way of framing an issue. In the case of the policy of using torture against enemy combatants, he compares the United States’ policy as investigated by the Red Cross to that of the Gestapo’s. It’s pretty sobering.
The Anglican delegates to the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Woman have issued a call for the world’s governments and the leadership of the Anglican Churches to be careful to guard against any erosion of women’s status during the global economic crisis.
There could be no law, and so no civilization, absent the imputation to persons of responsibility for their wrongful acts. But the sum of a million cases, each one rightly judged fairly on its individual merits, may nevertheless constitute a great historic wrong. This is, in my view, now the case in regards to the race and social class disparities that characterize the very punitive policy that we have directed at lawbreakers.