c. 2000 Religion News Service
Episcopal House of Deputies Denounces Scouts’ Policy Against Gays
(RNS) Even though the Boy Scouts of America can legally bar gay Scouts and leaders from membership, the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies said Monday (July 10) that Scout troops associated with local churches should not discriminate against gays who want to join.
The resolution, passed at the church’s General Convention triennial meeting, comes two weeks after a landmark Supreme Court ruling that said the Boy Scouts, as a private organization, can ban gays from membership and leadership posts.
The church’s 832-member House of Deputies, comprised of lay members and clergy, passed the resolution 492-283. The measure still needs approval by the 200-member House of Bishops before it becomes official.
While delegates cut out a section saying all church-related programs need to be “open and affirming” to gays and lesbians, the resolution reaffirmed the church’s 1976 statement that “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the church.”
The resolution encouraged the Scouts to “allow membership to youth and adult leaders irrespective of their sexual orientation” and asked local congregations to “open a dialogue with the unit leaders, Scouts and their parents regarding discrimination against youth and leaders on the basis of sexual orientation.”
Some church delegates, however, said Episcopalians should not be lecturing the Boy Scouts when the church has failed to accept gays and lesbians into the entire life of the church.
“The church looks the worst when we appear to advocate something we do not do ourselves,” said Richard Thomas, a church member from Wyoming. “We’re a little short on intellectual honesty. If we’re going to talk the talk, we need to lace up our boots and walk the walk.”
In a separate but related matter, an official of a group of Reform rabbis has announced he is resigning his rank as an Eagle Scout in the Scouting organization because of its anti-gay policy.
“It is no badge of honor to be heterosexual and it is no sin to be homosexual,” wrote Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in a letter to John McGillicuddy, president of the Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
“I am a 58-year-old heterosexual male. I cannot, however, be associated with any organization that engages in discrimination against homosexuals. It is unacceptable and is an affront to the principles upon which our great country stands.”
Jesse Jackson Encourages Ministers to Take HIV Tests
(RNS) The Rev. Jesse Jackson is urging ministers to take HIV tests in an effort to curb the spread of AIDS among African-Americans.
“The minister tends to have the moral authority,” Jackson said Monday (July 10) before a service at an Indianapolis church that kicked off the 30th Summer Celebration of the Indiana Black Expo.
“You have to have the courage to take the test.”
Several area ministers, along with Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson and Indiana Attorney General Karen Freeman-Wilson, were tested for HIV at the church Monday. Jackson also was tested, the Associated Press reported.
The civil rights activist also suggested that public leaders, including professional athletes, should take the AIDS test.
“None of us are safe until all of us are safe,” he said.
Jackson said test-taking by public officials will help people of all economic and racial backgrounds learn that getting tested for the virus that causes AIDS is not taboo.
“However you may have gotten it, early detection leads to early correction,” said Jackson.
Tension Over Muslim Sharia Law Flares Again in Nigeria
(RNS) Thousands of graduates of Nigeria’s Christian universities gathered Tuesday (July 11) in southern Nigeria to protest work assignments in northern states that are adopting strict Muslim Sharia law.
“We have been following what is going on in the north and we fear for our safety,” one graduate told Reuters news agency.
Protesters demonstrated in Lagos and Abuja outside offices of the nation’s quasi-military National Youth Services, which since 1973 has required graduates of Nigerian colleges and universities to work _ most commonly as teachers or civil servants _ for a one-year term outside their home state.
Protesters said they disagreed with the stiff penalties handed down under Sharia law, such as hand amputation for stealing and flogging for alcohol consumption.
Some states that follow Sharia law have also designated gender-segregated schools and public transportation, and have adopted strict dress codes barring women from wearing short skirts and pants.
But Sharia laws pose no threat to members of the National Youth Services as long as they abide by them, said Ahmed Sani, governor of Zamfara, which in January became the first northern state to adopt Sharia law.
Northern Nigeria, which is mainly Muslim, practiced Sharia for decades under British colonial rule and has continued to do so since winning independence in 1960. Christians, who comprise some 10 percent of the northern states’ population, say they fear some aspects of Islamic law are harsher than the Nigerian penal code.
Religious clashes about the matter have claimed hundreds of lives since January, the nation’s worst crisis since its civil war some 30 years ago, said Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.
On Monday (July 10), political leaders from Nigeria’s predominantly Christian southern states denounced Sharia law as unconstitutional, and demanded the government stop assigning Christian youths to northern states and sending Muslim youths to the south.
New American Bar Association President Supports Death Penalty Moratorium
(RNS) The president-elect of the American Bar Association encouraged U.S. lawyers Monday (July 10) to support a moratorium on the death penalty.
Martha Barnett, speaking at a news conference at the ABA’s annual convention in New York, said there is widespread unfairness and even “gross injustice” in the manner in which capital punishment is applied.
“No defendant should be executed until we assure that the imposition of the ultimate sanction is not the result of inadequate counsel or lack of due process,” she said.
Barnett, a Tallahassee, Fla., attorney who began leading the 400,000-member lawyers’ group on Tuesday, said she is effectively requesting that the legal profession rally behind an ABA resolution adopted in 1997 calliing for open-ended suspension of the death penalty.
“I am putting together a call to action,” Barnett said, the Associated Press reported.
“What we want to do is ask the lawyers of America to get involved in trying to work with their states and local governments encouraging a moratorium in those various jurisdictions.”
The ABA has opposed capital punishment for the retarded and children but has never taken an overall position on the death penalty. Barnett, who thinks an overall stance could be taken in the near future, said the issue will be a key emphasis of her year in office.
Support for reassessing the death penalty has come from several quarters, including a decision by Illinois Gov. George Ryan to suspend executions after his state released 13 people from death row.
“What we don’t know is how many innocent people still sit on death row,” Barnett said. “The possibility that we are executing innocent people is abhorrent to all of us. As lawyers, we have a responsibility to ensure that the law is being evenly and fairly applied.”
ACLU of Kentucky Sues Over Placement of Ten Commandments at Capitol
(RNS) The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky has filed suit challenging a state law requiring the placement of a Ten Commandments monument outside the state Capitol in Frankfort.
“It’s not proper for legislators to vote for something he or she knows is unconstitutional because it is popular,” said ACLU general counsel David Friedman at a news conference Monday (July 10). “They’re violating their own oath. They’re being very irresponsible.”
Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, who authored the final version of Senate Joint Resolution 57, said the suit, filed Monday, did not surprise him.
“This is part of a systematic campaign by the ACLU to denigrate God in the classroom and in public life,” he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. “What they cannot accomplish legislatively they are trying to accomplish through judicial channels.”
The resolution takes effect on Friday and directs the Finance Cabinet to place a monument with the Ten Commandments inscribed on it near the floral clock on the grounds of the Capitol. The 7-foot-high structure was once displayed in an obscure corner of the grounds but has been in storage since 1988 when it was removed to make room for the Capitol complex’s heating and cooling plant.
The ACLU filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Frankfort. It names the Finance Cabinet and the commissioner of the state Department for Facilities Management as defendants. The suit also seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent the monument from being placed on the Capitol grounds.
The suit does not challenge a portion of the legislation that encourages local governments and schools to display the Ten Commandments.
Quote of the Day: Ukrainian emigre Anna Bodnar
(RNS) “I expected so much freedom, like wild clothes and people without clothes, naked, a lot of sex stuff. I was kind of surprised it was not as much as I expected. It was kind of normal.”
Anna Bodnar, 23-year-old member of Church of the Rebirth, who moved to the Portland, Ore., area from Ukraine with other evangelical Christians seeking religious freedom. Evangelical churches like hers warn young people about inappropriate behavior in America. She was quoted in the Tuesday (July 11) edition of USA Today.
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