There’s a new Congress in town (yawn), and Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard — the first Hindu to serve in Congress — took the oath of office on a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. Pew’s latest numbers show that this year’s freshmen class is even more diverse than Congress has a whole.
And in the wake of House Speaker John Boehner reportedly telling Senate Majority Leader to “go f*** yourself,” an unusually broad array of religious leaders is launching a three-week prayer campaign in the name of civility and decorum. Best of luck with that.
President Obama signed a Pentagon funding bill, but criticized as “unnecessary and ill-advised” a section that says the military can’t go after chaplains who object to openly gay service members.
Final tally (for now) in the Illinois battle over gay marriage: Chicago Cardinal Francis George and religious allies 1, gay rights supporters 0.
Speaking of Illinois, another Catholic-owned company has won a temporary reprieve from the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.
Next door in Indiana, eight hospital employees were fired for refusing a mandatory flu shot, most of them on religious grounds.
That bucolic campus in western Mass. that evangelical billionaires can’t seem to give away? Interested parties may now have to pay for it.
HuffPo asks an interesting question: are biblical baby names really on the way out, and does it matter? Looks like Downton Abbey (“Branson”) and Fifty Shades of Grey (“Grey”) are more popular than Jacob or Hannah or Sarah.
After years of tension, there are signs of a real thaw between Mormons and gays, saith Peggy Fletcher Stack.
CNN says Les Miserables is winning at the box office (despite some so-so reviews) because of heavy support from evangelicals.
There’s a fight over an 1850s-era blasphemy law in, of all places, Greece.
If you want to see the Sistine Chapel, bring cash because Italy’s central bank has blocked all electronic payments (including credit and debit cards) in Vatican City because the Holy See hasn’t fully implemented financial transparency rules.
Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for the egregious sin on going to school, has been released from a British hospital.
CNS has a Top 10 things you need to know about “Gorgeous Georg,” the pope’s longtime aide who was recently promoted to the head of the papal household.
And with that, we’re off to the weekend.
3 Comments
dj spellchecka
update of the illinois law
Same-sex marriage bill heads to Illinois state Senate floor
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/04/us-usa-gaymarriage-illinois-idUSBRE90305A20130104
Rajinder Nijjhar
Hi,
In Jesus, our physical body does not count but the spiritual self that is neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile, etc.
Gay marriage has nothing to do with Jesus but with John, the Baptist.
A.Yeshuratnam
The Bhagavad Gita was a later interpolation in the mythological epic the Mahabharata. It is a war literature where Krishna is urging a reluctant Arjun to kill his own cousins, teachers (gurus) and other supporters of the rival Duryodhan. Russia wants to ban it. State prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk are trying to ban the Russian translation of the Bhagavad Gita because they believe the text too “extremist.” Prosecutors reportedly took issue with the Russian translation of the text called “Bhagavad Gita As It Is”, with commentary by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), because it promoted “social discord” and hatred toward non believers, according to the media. Last year, courts banned Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” Bhagavad Gita also promotes caste oppression because Krishna says that he created fourfold division of caste system which made 90% of Indians to lead the lives of beasts and slaves for centuries till liberated by the British by passing laws.