Supreme Court Could Take on Religious Rights of Corporations

U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adam Liptak | The New York Times | November 25, 2013

Hobby Lobby, a chain of crafts stores, closes on Sundays, costing its owners millions but honoring their Christian faith.

The stores play religious music. Employees get free spiritual counseling. But they do not get free insurance coverage for some contraceptives, even though President Obama’s health care law requires it.

Hobby Lobby, a corporation, says that forcing it to provide the coverage would violate its religious beliefs. A federal appeals court agreed, and the Supreme Court is set to decide on Tuesday whether it will hear the Obama administration’s appeal from that decision or appeals from one of several related cases.

Read more

Accord Reached With Iran to Halt Nuclear Program

Denis Balibouse/Reuters

The negotiators in Geneva on Sunday. President Obama’s administration now must appear accommodating enough to Iran to keep talks moving, and tough enough not to seem naïve to allies.

MICHAEL R. GORDON | New York Times | November 23, 2013

GENEVA — The United States and five other world powers announced a landmark accord Sunday morning that would temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping agreement.

It was the first time in nearly a decade, American officials said, that an international agreement had been reached to halt much of Iran’s nuclear program and roll some elements of it back.       

The aim of the accord, which is to last six months, is to give international negotiators time to pursue a more comprehensive pact that would ratchet back much of Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it could be used only for peaceful purposes.

Read more 

Britney Spears Blasted For ‘Gay Marketing’ By Mykki Blanco On Twitter

James Nichols | Huffington Post | September 16, 2013

EDITOR’S NOTE: Michael Quattlebaum Jr., also known as Mykki Blanco, said in a recent interview that anyone discussing or writing about the latter persona should use female pronouns. For that reason, this article refers to Mykki Blanco within the feminine framework of gender identity.

Britney Spears and her new single “Work Bitch” are coming under fire by performer Mykki Blanco, who claims that the pop superstar is attempting to exploit the bankability of gay culture, claiming “this is not ‘gay pride’ it’s ‘gay marketing.'”

Blanco, a gender-bending queer performer, artist and musician, lashed out at the pop princess on Twitter last Sunday, calling the single “tacky” and asking “is it just me or is EVERY female pop star currently in a war to secure as many GAY fans and gay $ as possible ?”

Read more

The Russian Orthodox Church provides an official and shameful response to Castro LGBT Protests

Russian Orthodox Church in Dresden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Melanie Nathan | Oblogdeeoblogda | August 25, 2013

The Russian Church took our protests this Sunday very seriously and below is their response.  After you read it  you will note that nowhere do they take a  single sentence to show care or concern for persecuted LGBTI people in Russia.  The Orthodox Church has refused  to dialogue with us, and they failed to respond to our concerns.  Instead they fled in advance of our picket outside the Church, and knowing they would not be there, that there could of course be no harm, still called the police on us.  When we arrived the Church was locked and there were 3 patrol cars and two officers on bikes. All for nothing. (My report on the Sunday picket is linked below.)

There is no decency in their response. Just disrespect and further confirmation that the Church is in fact complicit in the persecution of Russia’s LGBT gays.

The police showed up to persecute the gays – or so the Church thought, but instead the police sided with us giving us the right to protest outside the Church. In the meantime the Church and its Parishioners fled the scene before  we even arrived arrived. I have never seen such a shameful response to a call for dialogue and such  disrespect by neighbors for LGBT Americans and the persecuted Russians.

Read more

The Great Burning: How Wildfires Are Threatening the West

English: Sign for the city of Yarnell in Arizona (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Osha Gray Davidson | Rolling Stone | Reader Supported News | August 3, 2013

It was the sound of her neighbors’ propane tanks exploding that convinced Nancy Myers she had run out of time. Twenty minutes earlier, the 57-year-old potter had been standing with some friends on a rock-strewn hillside above the village of Yarnell, Arizona, on a hot Sunday afternoon, watching the red coil of flames unspool in the distance, certain that everything was going to be OK – despite the “prepare to evacuate” order issued by the county sheriff’s office earlier that day. “Then the storm came down the mountains,” she remembers. “The wind shifted and it came straight into town. There was ash and smoke everywhere and big old flames. I went into panic mode.”

It’s been four days since Myers floored her old Corolla and headed north to safety, and the terror caused by the Yarnell Hill fire, which started on June 28th and overtook the town two days later, hasn’t fully left her eyes. We’re sitting outside a Red Cross shelter, as Myers puts on her sunglasses­ even though it’s late afternoon and the sun is low.

“Today’s the first day I haven’t cried all day long,” she says, but a hitch in her voice suggests she may start again. “The first day, I cried for my house,” she explains. When she learned it had been spared, she cried for friends who lost their houses. But mostly she cried – and will continue crying for some time – “for all those beautiful young firefighters.”

Read more