Human Rights – Page 62 – Hear Our Voices

April 8, 2013April 8, 2013

Zambia gay rights activist Paul Kasonkomona arrested

A prominent gay rights activist has been arrested in Zambia after appearing on a live television calling for same-sex relations to be decriminalised.

Paul Kasonkomona had been charged with “inciting the public to take part in indecent activities”, police chief Solomon Jere told AFP news agency.

He was detained as he stepped out of the studios of privately owned Muvi TV in the capital, it reports.

Homosexual acts are illegal in deeply conservative Zambia.

Correspondents say many people believe that it is contrary to their religious beliefs.
Petition

Sources at the television station in Lusaka told AFP that police tried to stop the interview and take Mr Kasonkomona off air but the management refused.

South Africa-based campaign group Ndifuna Ukwazi demanded Mr Kasonkomona’s release, in an online petition addressed to Zambia’s President Michael Sata.

“We further urge your government to immediately start a process to decriminalise consensual sex between adults in private irrespective of sexual orientation and gender identity,” the group said.

“This means repealing the laws introduced by the British colonial administration and codified in the Zambian penal code.”

All consensual adult same-sex acts are criminalised in Zambia, Ndifuna Ukwazi said.

Offences such as sodomy, or sex between women, carry a minimum sentence of 15 years or a maximum of life, it added.

“Indecent same-sex practices” – probably a reference to holding hands, kissing and masturbation between adults or alone – carries a minimum sentence of seven years or a maximum of 14 years, the group said.

Last week, a group of gay couples attempted to register their marriages but were stopped and the government ordered the arrest of anyone practising homosexuality, AFP reports.

The European Union last month offered financial support for organisations that wanted to promote the rights of gay people in Zambia, it said.

In 2011, both the UK and US warned they would use foreign aid to push for homosexuality to be decriminalised in Africa.

South Africa is one of the few African countries where it is legal.

Complete Article HERE!

April 2, 2013

Catholic Church Rips Off Marriage Equality Facebook Campaign With Red Division Sign

File under: Insulated, monolithic, callous, tone deaf power structure

Nearly three million Facebook users turned their Facebook profile pictures into some variation of a red HRC equal sign in support of marriage equality.

The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco didn’t like that one bit, so it encouraged the faithful to post its own symbolic images: a plus sign, a division sign and a “man + woman = child’” icon.

After a Change.org petition was started to get the Archdiocese to remove its divisive images, the division symbol was taken down, but the others remain.

We’d say the Church was being pretty pathetic in stealing the LGBT community’s symbols, but co-opting imagery and rites from other cultures is pretty much the Catholic Church’s bailiwick.

Complete Article HERE!

March 26, 2013

Silent or supportive, U.S. conservatives give gay marriage momentum

By Peter Henderson

On a frosty December night last year, about two dozen guests slipped into the Alta Club, a century-old private retreat a block away from the temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that dominates Salt Lake City.

Two men, who didn’t know each other, were the reason for the dinner: church lobbyist Bill Evans and gay rights leader Rick Jacobs. Evans was a point man for the church’s successful effort to pass California’s gay marriage ban, known as Prop 8, in 2008. Jacobs, leader of Courage Campaign, produced a 2008 commercial against the ban showing Mormon missionaries ransacking the home of a lesbian couple.

Politics was not on the agenda – just getting to know each other. “The two hit it off,” said host Greg Prince, a medical researcher and church member who had come to know both men. He noted that less than a month before the dinner, the church had launched a website with a major change in its view of gays: the site said homosexuality was not a choice.

“There has been a shift of some tectonic plate somewhere,” Prince said.

Shifting attitudes among some conservatives and many businesses is altering the landscape around gay marriage, long considered a uniquely liberal and political issue, at one of its most crucial junctures – its review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the court’s nine justices will hear arguments on the constitutionality of Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, which excludes gay couples from federal benefits.

Some jurists look to societal changes when interpreting the law, and scholars speculate that Justice Anthony Kennedy, the possible swing vote in the divided court, will be pondering increased public support for gay marriage.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found 63 percent of Americans supported gay marriage or civil unions.

While the Mormon Church has backed “traditional marriage” in Supreme Court briefs, it has been silent in recent ballot battles and has not promoted fundraising as it has in the past.

Republicans like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio are supporting gay marriage and publicly conflicting with party leaders, such as House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. Portman this month said he had switched position on the issue after his son told him he was gay.

Corporations, including Goldman Sachs, whose chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, has campaigned in support of gay marriage, have joined the battle, arguing in briefs to the court that federal policy of not allowing gay marriage is bad for business.

The issue is far from settled, however. Gay marriage opponents have been written off as dinosaurs before, including in California, and most states ban same-sex weddings. But the momentum has been moving towards the proponents of gay marriage.

MORMON MONEY, NO MORE

Money has played a huge part in the pivot, both in terms of the financing of campaigns in favor of gay marriage and the funding of opposition groups.

When the New York State Senate voted to approve gay marriage in 2011, four Republicans joined Democrats. Republicans led by hedge fund manager Paul Singer, whose son is gay, gave the four financial and moral support, and in the 2012 national race, Singer led a political action committee that spent more than $2 million to help pro-gay marriage Republicans.

“You have billionaires telling Republicans ‘Vote our way and you’ll receive more money than you’ve ever seen,'” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the leader of the movement to stop gay marriage. “That was new.”

Pro-gay marriage groups have routed their opponents financially, outraising them three-to-one in November 2012 ballot races that legalized same-sex marriage in three more states, bringing the total to nine states and the District of Columbia.

The single biggest fundraising change between 2008 and 2012 was the disappearance from the political arena of the mightiest foe of gay marriage – the Mormon Church.

While the church has petitioned the Supreme Court in favor of Prop 8, it has focused its public messages about gays on personal issues of respect and love rather than politics.

In the four November 2012 votes – Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota – the top ballot committees raised about $30 million for gay marriage and $10 million against it. The $20 million difference between the two campaigns last year is close to several estimates of what the Mormon Church and its supporters gave to California’s Prop 8 in 2008.

More than 800 Utahns gave $2.7 million to support Prop 8 in 2008, state campaign finance records show. In 2012, a total of 16 Utahns gave $1,264 to the main ballot committees against gay marriage.

“The Mormon Church left as a major funder,” concluded Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the biggest gay rights group.

Frank Schubert, who ran the 2008 and 2012 anti-gay-marriage campaigns, downplayed the Church hierarchy’s silence last year. “Not having a direct statement encouraging people to get involved in the campaign naturally would result in fewer people getting involved in the campaigns, but there were fewer Mormons in these states to begin with, and there was never any expectation that they would be involved.”

California Mormon Brooke Crosland, 27, gave $1,000 in 2008 for Prop 8 and made campaign phone calls, but she stayed out of politics in 2012. She described a personal search for understanding, which she saw reflected in the church. “I feel like the ideal for a child is a father and a mother, but I also feel under the law we should have equal rights,” she said.

Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, whose portrait of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk won an Academy Award, was approached for informal talks by Mormon officials after he narrated a documentary critical of the church called “8: The Mormon Proposition.” Church officials were surprised to learn that he, a young, gay man, deeply wanted a family. “That was this big ‘ah ha’ moment,” he said.

But Black said the initial invitation came only after the church was pilloried in public. “They didn’t contact me after making ‘Milk’. They contacted me after making ‘8: The Mormon Proposition’,” said Black, who was raised a Mormon. He since has introduced HRC leader Griffin to church officials, at the December dinner and a concert following, while continuing talks.

Church spokesman Michael Purdy said its hospitality did not signal a change in position. “Being committed to marriage between a man and a woman does not mean that we do not love and care for all of God’s children. Having conversations with gay rights leaders, speaking about compassion and respect for all, and inviting people to attend a concert do not equal pulling back from supporting traditional marriage due to negative publicity during Prop 8,” he wrote by email.

Meanwhile, gay marriage fans and foes agree that same-sex-union proponents have improved their fundraising. Ted Olson, President George W. Bush’s Solicitor General, made it ok for conservatives to support gay marriage when he agreed to take the Prop 8 case, said Margaret Hoover, a pro-gay-marriage Republican activist.

When former Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman in 2010 came out as gay, it was critical mass. “Nightingales don’t sing unless they hear another nightingale singing. As soon they hear one, another one sings, and another one sings,” said Hoover.

Dozens of Republican leaders, including former California candidate for governor Meg Whitman and former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, have signed a brief to the Supreme Court in favor of gay marriage.

Some 278 businesses, including Goldman Sachs and hotelier Marriott International, whose chairman and major stockholder is Mormon, have signed a similar brief opposing the Defense of Marriage Act. (Thomson Reuters, the parent of Reuters News, is part of that group.)

UNEXPECTED CONVERTS

The person credited by all sides with cementing the victory in California for the gay marriage ban was a little schoolgirl who told her mother she had just been taught, “I can marry a princess!” The girl was in a commercial for Prop 8, and for years Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, has been asked whether he could beat the “Princess” ad.

Wolfson, a fundraising and strategy leader for most recent ballot campaigns in favor of gay marriage, said the answer was chiefly to change his own side’s message, rather than chase the opposition. The pro-gay-marriage campaign, which in 2008 had largely focused on appealing to voters to give gays rights because it said they deserved them, took a more personal tone, he said, of affirming the idea of equal rights and respecting loving couples.

That strategy had some unexpected converts.

David Blankenhorn, founder of the family-focused Institute for American Values think tank, was the prime witness in 2010 in the opening round of the federal trial of Prop. 8. Blankenhorn struck up unlikely friendships with gays while debating the issue in public, and he was sitting at his desk one day last year, when one called and told him to go to a website with a strident, anti-gay article.

“He said, ‘Are you sure that this is the side you are on?'” Blankenhorn recalled. He put down the phone, and in that moment realized he had already changed his mind.

“I have a kind of intellectual reason for shifting from one foot to the other foot,” he said “But I really, honestly think that it was through just personal interactions… if you want to stick with your position, don’t get to know people who disagree with you.”

Gay marriage foe Brown says he is not worried by polls that show gay marriage support snowballing. It’s all about how you ask the question, he said, and a majority of voters do not want to redefine marriage. His side has always been behind in the money battle, he added, but has had some banner successes.

Politicians can see the danger of switching sides, he said. Of the four New York State Senate Republicans who voted for same-sex marriage, only one returned to office, despite financial backing from sources as diverse as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) union, Wall Street Republicans, and libertarian David Koch.

Back in California, Rick Jacobs, the Courage Campaign chief, thinks Prop 8 was the best thing that ever happened to his movement. People sat up and started paying attention when liberal California overturned its own state Supreme Court and took away the right to marry, he said, and the court fight has kept the issue alive.

“It not only galvanized a lot of people who didn’t really care about it before that – gay people – but it also galvanized straight people,” he said. “People said, ‘wait a minute, we don’t like voting on people’s rights.'”

The night in Salt Lake City left little doubt things had changed since 2008. After the dinner, the gay rights leaders all headed over to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas spectacular. It was the hottest ticket in town and, as guests of the church, they had VIP seats.

Complete Article HERE!

March 13, 2013March 14, 2013

The Pope’s inbox: Top priorities for Benedict’s successor

Pope Benedict XVI’s successor takes the helm at a difficult time for the Catholic Church.

By Michael Hirst

In the West, the Church is struggling to fill pews as congregations dwindle, while the number of priests is also falling.

Meanwhile, the rise of evangelical Churches, especially in Latin America and Africa, is checking the growth of Catholic congregations, which are also threatened in some areas by religious intolerance.

Benedict XVI rejected calls for a debate on the issue of clerical celibacy, and reaffirmed the ban on Communion for divorced Catholics who remarry.

Equality laws being debated in several Western countries are a major issue. Benedict XVI has said the Church’s strict positions on abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality are “not negotiable”, and such outspoken orthodoxy has alienated liberal-minded Catholics.

And the next Pope will also have to shore up confidence in an institution that been rocked for several years by the sexual abuse of minors by priests.

Here are some of the major issues facing the next Pope once he is elected.

Managing the Vatican

The recent leaking of Vatican documents by the Pope’s butler have exposed the Church’s central government – the Curia – as a seriously dysfunctional institution.

It appears to be “riddled with rival factions and there were accusations of corruption in high places”, says veteran Vatican analyst Clifford Longley.

“The reform of the Vatican, which he only began at the margins, has a long way to go yet,” says Mr Longley. “Decentralisation is now imperative. His successor has a huge and unenviable task.”

Systems of oversight need to be put in place to ensure corruption is detected and halted, while Vatican financial transactions need to be made more transparent.

Equality laws
“The one issue which overshadows all others is the growing pressure on Catholics because of equality laws in the West,” says Catholic commentator Austen Ivereigh.

Gay marriage legislation in France and the UK, the closure of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK, the battle in US courts between leading Catholic institutions and the State over sexual equality are all serving to have a chilling effect on the Church in the West, he says.

“Equality laws such as same-sex marriage make Christians and church organisations vulnerable to lawsuits and anti-discrimination claims.”

Ultimately, says Mr Ivereigh, the State could be developing positions through equality legislation that will serve to marginalise Catholics and the presence of the Church in public life.

“There is no bigger file in the Pope’s inbox,” he says.

Sex abuse
Benedict XVI has spoken of the Church’s shame for “unspeakable crimes” committed by paedophile priests, as well as offering heartfelt apologies to victims, groups of whom he has met during his trips overseas.

But many critics feel the Vatican was – and still is – far too slow, too reluctant and too secretive when it comes to acknowledging and investigating sexual abuse.

The new Pope will have the task of continuing to ensure perpetrators are held to account, and to ensure the changes introduced by Benedict XVI are implemented – particularly when it comes to bishops signing up to child protection guidelines.

David Clohessy, Executive Director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, told the BBC: “The next pontiff must do more to safeguard children.

“He should stop issuing apologies and making gestures, and instead demote bishops who continue to conceal heinous crimes.

“And he should insist that prelates work with secular authorities to craft and pass stronger child sex laws across the globe.”

The role of women
Benedict XVI acknowledged progress on promoting women within the Church – particularly in its administrative bodies – was too slow.

In 2007 he pointed out that while Jesus chose 12 men as apostles, “among the disciples many women were also chosen. They played an active role within the context of Jesus’s mission”.

Despite this, though, he has refused to countenance women priests, delivering a fierce rebuke last year to Catholics who challenged the Church’s teaching.

And while certain women have risen to posts in the Vatican, others considered “difficult” have been removed, says Dr Gemma Simmonds, Director of the UK’s Religious Life Institute.

An investigation into statements made by a group of Catholic nuns in the US on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood caused controversy. Fr Drew Christiansen, a Jesuit priest and visiting scholar at Boston College, says it is one of the key shortcomings of the pontificate.

“The USA owes a huge debt to generous, heroic sisters who have dedicated their lives to offering education, healthcare and pastoral provision only to be subjected to an intrusive, inherently hostile process of investigation for alleged doctrinal errors,” says Dr Simmonds.

“The contrast between their treatment and that of paedophile clergy has caused widespread scandal.”

It is widely acknowledged that a culture shift needs to take place within the Vatican, and the Pope will be expected to promote women into senior management positions in the Curia.

Interfaith tensions
The welfare of persecuted Christians around the world, particularly in troubled areas of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, will be a major issue for the next Pope.
Pope Benedict XVI at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem on 12 May, 2009 The exodus of Christians from the Holy Land will be a troubling issue for the next Pope

The ongoing exodus of Christians from the Holy Land will add significance to the Pope’s approach to relations with Jews and Muslims.

Such a bridge-building attempt was not welcomed in some Muslim circles, particularly coming shortly after the Pope quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who labelled the Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman”.

Benedict XVI’s successor will be challenged to find common ground with Islam, which is on the rise in Africa and Asia where Roman Catholicism has a large base.

Benedict XVI irked Jews by forwarding the path of Pope Pius XII to sainthood despite criticisms that the wartime Pope did not do enough to prevent the Holocaust. He also angered some in the Church of England by encouraging those disaffected with Anglicanism to convert to Catholicism.

In general, relations with Anglicans and Jews seem to be on a good footing. But the new Pope will have to tread carefully to build bridges with the Muslim world while not alienating Jews and without being seen to pander to Islamic extremism.

Smaller congregations, fewer priests
There are 1.2 billion Catholics around the world, a large proportion of whom (42%) come from Latin America. Europe, Catholicism’s historic heartland, is now home to just a quarter of Catholics.

However, Benedict XVI seemed reasonably untroubled by this numerical decline, envisioning a smaller, but more faithful, Church.

Key for his successor will be to consolidate this changing position of the Church within society. As it becomes more distant from official institutions, says Austen Ivereigh, the Church will have to ensure that those within the pews – and those who lead them – are well supported.

Similarly, it must continue to ensure it takes advantage of modern technology to spread its message.

The appointment of Fox News’ Rome correspondent Greg Burke as an adviser in 2012 signalled a modern communications strategy at the heart of Vatican decision-making that had previously been lacking. And then the Pope took to Twitter.

His successor will be expected to take a similarly enthusiastic approach to modern technology.

Complete Article HERE!

March 8, 2013

Former Catholics say rigid church forced them to leave

Opposition to female ordination and the prohibition on marriage for priests are among the factors causing an exodus from the Catholic Church.

By: Leslie Scrivener
Joanna Manning, former nun, award-winning religion teacher, advocate for the poor and activist-intellectual, was battle-weary.

For decades she had challenged the Catholic Church, arguing for women’s ordination, the right of priests to marry and accountability in repeated sexual abuse crises.

So Manning, once the public face of the reform movement in Catholic Canada and a persistent burr in the side of the church establishment, decamped a decade ago.

She is now a priest in the Anglican Church.

“I did go through a period of grieving for the loss of the vision I’d grown up with after Vatican II,” says Manning, now 69, referring to the 1962-1965 council to modernize the church. “But the church hierarchy had shut down and retreated . . .”

Critics say the Catholic Church hierarchy is disconnected from many if not most of its followers on issues of reform. Theologian Hans Kung writes that a recent poll in Germany shows 85 per cent of Catholics say priests should be allowed to marry, 79 per cent say divorced persons should have permission to remarry in the church and 75 per cent favour ordaining women.

“There’s a catastrophic shortage of priests, in Europe and in Latin America and Africa,” Kung wrote in the New York Times last week. “Huge numbers have left the church or gone into ‘internal emigration,’ especially in the industrialized countries.”

Around the world there are 49,000 parishes without a resident priest pastor.

The question, says Kung, author of the forthcoming book Can the Church Still Be Saved? , is whether cardinals, gathering to elect a new pope — likely in the next 10 days — will discuss progressive issues, or be “muzzled, as they were at the last conclave, in 2005, to keep them in line.”

In Canada many churches have closed and priests have been brought in from other countries to serve. The Catholic Register has reported that in the Archdiocese of Halifax, elderly priests have been brought out of retirement to serve in parishes.

In the sprawling diocese of London, 42 Catholic churches — including half those in Windsor — closed between 2006 and 2008. About one-third of the remaining parishes are “clustered” or share a priest. Declining attendance, the shortage of priests and the high costs of maintaining old buildings have all contributed to the shuttering, says Connie Paré, the diocese’s director of pastoral planning. “It was a very painful process.”

Speaking from her Bloor West home, Manning recalls of her break with Catholicism that she “had put too much energy into something in which I could see no future.” Her spiky white hair, jeans and purple jacket, worn with a clerical collar, contribute to her youthful appearance. “At my age I could no longer give my life over to resisting.”

She looked elsewhere for a place to practise her faith and found, about 10 years ago, San Lorenzo Anglican church on Dufferin St., which has a Spanish-speaking congregation.

“I’d been in exile and alien in my own church,” says Manning, who received horrific hate mail for her views. “Finally, I’d found a place where I was accepted for who I was without having to check anything at the door, including my brain.”

About five years after she joined the San Lorenzo community, Manning, who is single and has two adult sons and two grandchildren, was unprepared when her fellow parishioners suggested she consider the Anglican priesthood. “It was like I was surprised by the Spirit.”

Women have been ordained as Anglican priests in Canada since 1976.

Manning was ordained in 2011. More than half of those who attended the service were Catholic.

Among them was Ted Schmidt, retired teacher, author and former editor of the Catholic New Times. “This was a woman so far ahead of the institutional leadership she would be shot as the enemy,” says Ted Schmidt, a church progressive. “She’s a prophetic person.”

Manning now works as an assistant curate at two parishes, the inner city All Saints Sherbourne and All Saints Kingsway. She finds herself living with a “deep, abiding joy. A place where I can exercise all my gifts.”

She compares her present state to 10 years ago. “My energies were being drained by struggle. I felt a real outsider. I’d been rejected and was on the fringes of the church. Today my energy is so positive, I feel a flowering . . . at my age to have a second chance to do God’s work in the world.”

The Anglican Church has also attracted Catholic men who wanted to marry and raise families as much as they wanted to be priests. The Rev. Canon Joseph Asselin has been the rector of St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church in Oakville for the past 13 years.

He was raised Catholic — and was a student of Ted Schmidt — and was so committed that as a young person never once missed Sunday mass over 20 years. His mother continues to attend mass up to four times a week.

Asselin was steeped in Catholic social teaching, he says, and was taught to challenge the culture of consumerism and materialism. His experiences in the church were positive. “I was so happy to have healthy role models and mentors.”
But he could never consider being a priest in the Catholic Church. “This could never happen because I always wanted to be a husband and father. Probably, what I find the greatest joy in is being a father.”

He and his wife, Maureen, an elementary school teacher, have a teenage daughter and son, whose photos adorn his church office.

“The Catholic Church is turning its back on a lot of people who have a genuine calling to be priests, and they are the poorer for it,” says Asselin, 49. “No surprise,” he adds, “women can have the same calling.”
He counts many Catholics in his congregation and has married divorced Catholics who do not want to go through painful, lengthy annulments.

“I am able to relate to families here, with all the joys and challenges of being in a family,” he says.
He adds that the Anglican Church has options for men who feel the calling to live celibate lives as monks.

“When you see priests not leading sexually health lives, it saddens me, because they have been asked to a live a life that is not really for them.”

A radical option for Catholic women who feel called to the priesthood is to be ordained in the Catholic Church.
The price is excommunication.

Monica Kilburn-Smith, a 52-year-old Calgary hospice chaplain and mother of two, is a member of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests group, and was ordained in 2008. “The first priests and bishops in our movement were ordained by male bishops in full communion with Rome, who did this out of their own conviction/conscience that it was wrong for women to be refused this sacrament,” she explains.

Pope John Paul II said that the church has no authority to ordain women, using the argument that the first apostles were all men.

Later, Pope Benedict XVI declared that anyone taking in a woman’s ordination was committing a grave sin.

Kilburn-Smith’s St. Brigid of Kildare Catholic Faith Community is growing, she says, with 200 on the mailing list and up to 60 coming to a monthly service held in a United church. By the fall she hopes to say mass twice monthly.

“When women come to mass for the first time and see a woman in vestments and all that represents, on the surface and at deeper levels, it hits them and makes them cry,” says Kilburn-Smith. “It’s not about me; it’s seeing a woman as a person as a representative of God.”

The movement is not just about getting women into the priesthood, but also about a renewed church for the 21st century.

Why not leave the church and join a denomination that ordains women? “To leave women’s voices out just seems wrong,” Kilburn-Smith says.

“If you see something isn’t right, and you feel called in your own faith, why would you go? The Anglican Church changed because women were ordained. It didn’t come from the hierarchy.”

Complete Article HERE!