Years before the gay rights movement gained momentum, an openly gay black activist named Bayard Rustin advised Martin Luther King Jr. on nonviolent protest tactics and organized the 1963 March on Washington. But attacks on Rustin’s sexual orientation threatened his role in the civil rights movement.
Rustin died in 1987 at age 75 after decades as an activist and organizer on issues including peace, racial equality, labor rights, and gay rights. He will be remembered for support for LGBT rights during the National LGBT 50th Anniversary Celebration July 2-5 in Philadelphia. The four-day event recalls gay rights activists who demonstrated for equal rights at Independence Hall on the Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969.
The Vatican on June 30 released details of Pope Francis’ itinerary for his Sept. 22-27 U.S. visit, his first, and it shows how this “pope of the people” wants to avoid becoming a prisoner of the East Coast “power corridor” during his five days in Washington, New York, and Philadelphia.
For example, organizers have added visits to a Catholic Charities food program in downtown Washington, a Catholic school in Harlem that serves largely Latino immigrant children, and a prison in Philadelphia to meet with inmates and some of their families.
“The task of cleaning up our environment calls for a total mobilization by all of us. It involves governments at every level; it requires the help of every citizen.”
Sounds like a liberal Democrat, right? Someone who has been using Pope Francis’s recent climate encyclical Laudato Si’ (“Blessed Be”) as a political bludgeon, wielded against “climate change deniers?” Nancy Pelosi, perhaps? Not quite.
With these words, President Richard Nixon concluded his plea to congress in 1970 to take action on behalf of the environment, stressing that this was “an urgent common goal of all Americans.” Nixon then gathered bipartisan support as he spearheaded the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and inked 14 laws related to environmental protection.
To be sure, Nixon didn’t know what to make of environmentalists, once complaining that they wanted everyone to live like “a bunch of damned animals.” Still, when a 2012 poll asked 12 leading environmental groups to rank the three most environmentally-friendly presidents, Nixon came in second — behind Teddy Roosevelt, a fellow Republican.
The governor of California — which was ground zero for the Disneyland measles outbreak that infected 117 people — today signed legislation giving the state one of the toughest school vaccine laws in the country.
California children will no longer be able to skip the shots normally required to attend school because of their parents’ religious or personal objections. Unvaccinated children will still be able to attend school if there is a medical reason why they’re not able to be immunized, such as treatment for cancer.
Although arson is blamed for at least three fires over the past two weeks at several predominantly black churches in Southern states, a blaze that destroyed Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina was not deliberately set, according to a federal source, the Associated Press reported July 1.
Churchgoers had feared the worst because the church in Greeleyville, S.C., was burned to the ground by the KKK in 1995. The latest fire broke out June 30 during a night of frequent storms and lightning strikes.
One thing has not changed in the world of Alcoholics Anonymous since Bill W. and friends started the program 80 years ago— the belief that anonymity provides a safe environment for people recovering from addiction.
Yet in an era of constant, instantaneous information sharing, how can young people safeguard their anonymity? And is it even important to do so in the digital era?
"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone." (Rom 12:18 NIV)
Together with forty other organizations, Sojourners is calling on Congress to support the nuclear deal currently being negotiated with Iran. Sojourn have choice to either act to promote peace and restrain Iran from building nuclear weapons or to slide towards war.
"The following organizations, representing millions of Americans, urge you to support the strong nuclear deal being negotiated currently between world powers and Iran," the letter reads.
In two weeks after Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston, S.C., six church buildings in the south housing predominately black congregations were burned. The Southern Poverty Law Center suggested the string of nighttime fires “may not be a coincidence.”
When I think about that trip to Charleston with its confederate flag, slave auction block, statues to slave holders, and museums honoring the daughters of the confederacy, it makes it a whole lot harder to fully believe in the hashtag #lovewins. And when I see the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that racism has infused a largely white-led movement for LGBTQ justice — an infusion I have been complicit in even as I have attempted to critique it — my conscience convicts me. I know that in this one moment, love has won a precious victory that allows me the privilege to be healthy, loved, and fully seen. I also know that at this moment systemic racism has murdered nine beautiful people and brutalized countless others. It is a moment in time that asks us to both celebrate and mourn, and more than anything else reminds us of the work yet to be done.
Schumer’s strong, emphatic, and well-intended words once again have reduced the feminist cause to the act of sex and a woman’s appearance. She rails against sexual restrictions on women, male sexual dominance, and that weight and beauty define a woman’s worth, all worthwhile topics. But in this extremely powerful and culturally influential speech, I wonder: where is any mention of actual equality?