The Supreme Court of the USA has decided by a 5-4 majority that gay marriage should be allowed in the whole country. The Court was forced to rule on it after one state decided that gay marriage should not be permitted because gay marriage was a re-definition of marriage rather than an extension of it. Unfortunately, the final ruling made almost no reference to the re-definition argument; instead it decided that the Constitution’s requirement for “liberty” applied to gay marriage. The four dissenting judges strongly criticised the ruling for ignoring the re-definition argument; for ignoring the inevitable clash between the civil institution of marriage and the religious institution of marriage; for mis-interpreting “liberty” which had previously referred to freedom from government interference, not to a government entitlement; and for acting more like social policy activists than legislators. From a neutral standpoint, it seems that, even at the level of the Supreme Court, there is still no agreement on which issues are important to deciding whether gay marriage is right or wrong.
The primary reaction from those who support gay marriage seems to be that “love has won”. From its opponents, there is a mixture of defiance of the decision on the grounds of “obeying God rather than man”; fears that pro-gay activists will now target individuals and organisations who oppose gay marriage even more than they have done already; and criticism of the decision to prioritise equality above freedom of conscience. It seems likely that the legislative battles between pro- and anti-gay marriage groups will increase rather than decrease, and there are fears (which seem realistic, based on previous case law) that religious colleges and churches could lose their charitable tax-exempt status for opposing what is now a civil right.
Also in the USA, a public LGBT conference in Canada included a talk by two lesbian teachers who explained how they tried to get kids to accept gay relationships by “sneaking it into math lessons” and other parts of the curriculum where it wouldn’t be noticed. An American Christian attending the conference video-recorded their talk and then posted a blog about it. He has now been threatened with legal action if he does not remove that blog from the Internet.
In the UK, Andy Burnham, one of the candidates for the Labour leadership, has called for gay marriage to become a compulsory part of the school curriculum, including in church schools. He said that faith schools should not be allowed to teach their religion to the exclusion of all other faiths, and that there must be “absolute equality in terms of relationships “ when marriage is taught.
In Belgium, a healthy 24 year old woman who claims to have had a death wish since childhood is to be euthanised. “Life’s not for me”, she said. Euthanasia for psychological reasons is permitted in Belgium when a psychiatrist agrees that the psychological pain that a person is experiencing cannot be relieved in a way that the individual finds acceptable.
The girl who was photographed in the Vietnam War, running naked with napalm burning her back, is now a 52 year old Christian mother living on the outskirts of Toronto. She is also a mentor and an UN goodwill ambassador. She still bears the scars of the napalm; she spent more than a year in hospital having skin grafts. Once released, she found no peace and sometimes wished for death to escape her sufferings; so she studied various religions, and became a Christian at the age of 19. She said that at first she hated the photo and struggled with the attendant publicity, but eventually decided that the photo meant that the bombing was not forgotten to history. “I learned to forgive,” she said, “and I thank God that he spared my life.”
In Tunisia, a lone gunman associated with Islamic State has killed 38 people on a beach, 23 of them British. But even amongst such horror, there are stories of good, such as the Welshman who threw his body in front of his fiancee’s as a human shield (he was shot 3 times and later suffered a heart attack in hospital but survived); and a middle aged woman who was trapped in a dead end in the hotel, and shot in the leg, but at least two bullets heading for her midriff were deflected by the glasses case in her handbag.
Meanwhile in Syria, Islamic State is celebrating Ramadan with a competition to memorise some of the most warlike chapters parts of the Qu’ran. The prize for the top three winners is a slave girl each.
Billy Graham’s grandson, Tullian Tchividjian, has resigned from his high-profile pastorate in South Florida after admitting an affair. Tchividjian said in a statement, “I returned from a trip a few months back and discovered that my wife was having an affair. … Sadly and embarrassingly, I subsequently sought comfort in a friend and developed an inappropriate relationship myself.” Tchividjian had previously faced opposition from within the church for his lack of political activism compared to his predecessor; Tchividjian argued that the association of evangelicalism with “religious right and conservative politics” has damaged Christianity.
In sports news, England’s women’s football team has reached the semi-final of the World Cup after defeating hosts Canada. They will play world champions Japan. Germany and the USA are in the other semi-final, the Germans having won a penalty shoot-out (as usual) against France.
In technology news, Google’s Gmail service has introduced an “Undo Send” feature; it is now possible to delay sending of a Gmail message by between 5 and 60 seconds, during which time the user can cancel their email. People who might have benefited from this feature include the Oxford University administrator who, in 2014, accidentally sent an internal staff list of the university’s 50 worst performing students to hundreds of other students.
And finally, a struggling small railway company in Japan has found a highly unusual way to boost its passenger numbers. When it was forced to merge with another company to form the Wakayama Electric Railway, a cat shelter near one of its stations was given an eviction order. The elderly woman who ran the shelter approached the president with a plea to let the cats live inside the station. The president decided that one cat, Tama, could be a “beckoning cat” -- a Japanese lucky charm -- and awarded Tama the position of station master, complete with a hat and her own station master’s office. The result was a $10 million boost from increased passenger numbers and Tama-related memorabilia; Tama has also appeared in TV commercials; and when she died a few days ago at the grand old age of 16, she had reached the 5th highest position in the company.
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