Today, I have found freedom and hope — not by becoming straight, but by embracing my queer sexuality and coming out of the closet. New research on the science of sexual orientation as well as personal stories of well-adjusted and happy LGBTQ people helped me reject the religious system that told me there was something wrong with me because I was gay. Recently, the word “survivor” has felt as an appropriate label for myself in relation to reparative therapy, and I am so thankful to be in a much more welcoming environment today. But I cannot ignore the fact that many people today, including a lot of children and adolescents, are still being subjected the psychological torture that is conversion therapy.
Through the Sisters of Salaam Shalom, Jewish and Muslim women are coming together to discover their similarities and bond together as friends and fellow travelers in the world. They are finding common ground, language, or customs to be bridges to relationships. They are not allowing the world to separate them.
If the goal is to challenge a broken system, does skin color matter for the person doing the challenging? Are black people, or others from an oppressed group, the more appropriate persons to lead change? If so, who are those leaders currently, and are they doing the best job? Does an ambitious white person have a place in racial reconciliation leadership?
President Donald Trump had a party yesterday in the White House Rose Garden — while cases of beer were wheeled into the Capitol Building — to celebrate the just-passed Republican health care bill through the House of Representatives. If this bill passes the Senate and is signed by President Trump, the core elements of the bill will create conditions in which 24 million fewer people will have health insurance by 2026 than under the Affordable Care Act, which is, for the time being, still the law of the land.
1. A Little-Noticed Target in the House Health Bill: Special Education
The New York Times’ Erica L. Green reports on how the Republican plan would hit already underfunded Individuals With Disabilities Education Act programs in schools: “Our most vulnerable citizens are going to be suffering the most. If any legislator votes for this, it’s unconscionable.”
“America is a deeply religious country because religious freedom and tolerance of divergent religious views thrive. President Trump’s efforts to promote religious freedom are thinly-veiled efforts to unleash his conservative religious base into the political arena while also using religion to discriminate. It’s a dual dose of pandering to a base and denying reproductive care.”
During his early morning visit to the Vatican, Trump will also meet the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, who is responsible for the Holy See’s relations with states.
Luke 6:31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
The Christian faith shouldn’t be defined by presidential orders and government mandates. Instead, it’s perfectly represented by the person of Jesus Christ, who told us to love our neighbors as ourselves and do unto others as we would have done to us.
After months of internal discord, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a bill to overhaul the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which they have been attacking since it was enacted in 2010. Two attempts in recent weeks to pass an overhaul bill had collapsed in confusion, but Republicans overcame their differences in a 217-213 vote that will send the bill to the Senate, where its outlook was uncertain.
Trump will mark the National Day of Prayer by issuing guidance to federal agencies like the Treasury Department on how to interpret a law that says churches and religious organizations risk losing their tax-exempt status if they participate in political campaigns.