Author: Gospel Order

Target snub sparks brand-new boycott alarms

target-twThe American Family Association’s leadership hand-delivered a petition with more than one million names to Target executives, demanding it overturn its “unsafe bathroom policy” and make transgenders use the restroom facilities that correspond to their birth sex.

The AFA also said in a release its leadership was also able to meet briefly with Target’s management and express concerns about the retailer’s new bathroom policy that lets store staffers and customers use whatever bathroom they choose, based on whichever gender they feel they identify with best, at the time.  Source

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Obama ‘holding North Carolina children hostage’

gender-neutral_bathroomNorth Carolina Lt. Gov. Dan Forest is firing back at the Obama administration for what he says is the federal government trying to make states conform to its cultural agenda, threatening “extortion” to compel his state to abandon its new public accommodation law and comparing the debate over transgender access to the civil rights movement.

The debate expanded in two major ways this week after Gov. Pat McCrory rejected the Obama administration’s assertion that North Carolina was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. McCrory also announced he was asking the federal courts to define what is meant by the discrimination based on sex in the law. The same day, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the Justice Department was bringing action against the state for denying civil rights to transgenders by requiring them to use facilities based on their sex at birth.  Source

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Bee genocide: Nearly half of US honey hives collapsed in past 12 months

5733590dc46188db3d8b45c0The shocking, and seemingly irreversible, destruction of the US honeybee population took a huge hit in the past year, with 44 percent of all hives collapsing between April 2015 and April 2016.

This was the second worst year for colony losses since the “Beepocolypse” started a decade ago, according to The Bee Informed Partnership, the collaboration between the US Department of Agriculture, research labs, and universities that is tracking the alarming numbers.  Source

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The ‘Quiet Revolution’ of Pope Francis

Italy Gay RightsIn his new exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis reaffirms the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, stating, “every sign of unjust discrimination is to be carefully avoided.“ Yet, such teachings don’t seem to be applied consistently throughout the Catholic Church…

It should be noted that while a Cardinal in Argentina in 2010, Pope Francis privately signaled openness to civil unions for LGBT couples as a compromise to legalizing same-sex marriage. It was said that Francis held this stance because he thought Argentina wasn’t ready for a same-sex marriage law.

In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis states, “It can no longer simply be said that all those in any “irregular” situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace.”  Source

 

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More Than 100 Methodist Ministers Defy Church Rules, Come Out As LGBT

ap577649381886-1125x635A slate of 111 United Methodist ministers have come out as LGBT, challenging their denomination’s ban on “practicing homosexuals” and hoping to influence a major church-wide vote on LGBT issues later this week.

On Monday morning, Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN), an LGBT advocacy group within the United Methodist Church (UMC), published a letter signed by 111 ministers openly declaring their dual identity as both clergy and LGBT persons. The effort constitutes a direct affront to existing church policy — which currently prohibits the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” — and comes just one day before thousands of UMC leaders gather in Portland, Oregon, for General Conference, an event held every four years where delegates vote on issues of church governance and theology.  Source

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The eight things Catholics and Muslims agree on

qoran_bible_400x254The document is the result of the fourth Catholic-Muslim colloquium on interreligious dialogue

Senior leaders from the Catholic Church and the Muslim community have issued an eight-point joint statement reflecting their shared beliefs.

The document, which is the result of the fourth Catholic-Muslim colloquium on interreligious dialogue, includes a call for basic human rights to be protected by law, a pledge of solidarity with all those in need, a rejection of all forms of proselytism and a focus on the right of young people to an education that is “respectful of diversity”, reports Vatican Radio.

The communiqué came at the conclusion of a two-day meeting at the Vatican entitled ‘Shared values in social and political life: Christian and Muslim perspectives’. Delegates from a dozen different countries came together, organised by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Jordan’s Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. They were joined by Pope Francis on the concluding day.  Source

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Philippines bishops: Catholic Church will not stop ‘interfering’ in politics

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Bishops offer olive branch to Duterte

WHILE some of them had earlier questioned the fitness of Rodrigo Duterte to be President, Catholic bishops were now offering his incoming administration “vigilant collaboration.”

“The greatest promise the Church can offer any government is vigilant collaboration, and that offer we make now,” Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a statement…

He said several critical, even spiteful, voices had asked the prelates to desist from “interfering” in politics.

“We cannot,” he said, explaining that “it would be a denial of Christ’s universal Lordship were we to desist from reminding his disciples of what fidelity to him—in all things, including political life—demands.”  Source

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E-cigarette poisonings in kids skyrocket, study finds

150318095634-e-cigarette-classic-exlarge-169(CNN)  The number of children under 6 poisoned by nicotine in e-cigarettes rose by nearly 1,500% between 2013 and 2015, and one child died, according to an analysis of calls to the National Poison Data System published in the journal Pediatrics.

More than 90% of the children swallowed the nicotine-laced liquid, known as e-juice, that is smoked inside e-cigarettes. Nearly half of the exposed children were under the age of 2.
The number of children exposed to e-cigarette products each month rose from 14 in January 2012 to 223 in April 2015.  Source
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Philippines election: Rodrigo Duterte in quotes

89644711_89644710The frontrunner in the Philippines election, Rodrigo Duterte, is known for saying things that many would consider unsayable.

But his outspoken style – and his record as mayor of the country’s third biggest city – have made him popular with voters. A vow to kill 100,000 criminals…  Source

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