The recent revelations of the cover-up of priestly abuse in the Los Angeles diocese by now-retired Cardinal Roger M. Mahony has resulted in him being ‘punished’ by the current archbishop Jose Gomez. However, it does not seem like much of a punishment to outsiders, consisting of him being supposedly ‘stripped of his official duties’. Since Mahony is already retired, it is not exactly clear what he loses. [Read more…]
In addition to the Boy Scouts, the National Football League may be the only major organization with a male membership that seems to think that there are no gay people in its ranks, even thought it should be obvious by now to even the dimmest bulb that gay people are present in every area of work and life and the only difference is whether the climate allows them to be open or not. But just as the Boy Scouts are beginning to take tentative steps towards acceptance of gays, so is the NFL. In fact, things are moving quite rapidly over there, with players from both the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers, the teams playing in today’s Super Bowl game, calling for equal treatment of gays. [Read more…]
The US government routinely invokes its right to keep things secret and the courts are loath to overrule them whenever the government wraps itself with the cloak of national security. For example, consider a recent ruling by a federal appeals court. [Read more…]
The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on some same-sex marriage cases in late March with its rulings expected to come towards the end of its term in the summer. The constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is one of the cases pending before them. [Read more…]
France has been steadily moving to implement a promise made by its president Francois Hollande to legalize same-sex marriage, despite the Catholic Church and right wing groups mobilizing large protests against it, similar to what they have done in the US. [Read more…]
Neetzan Zimmerman recounts the story of Alois Bell, pastor of a St. Louis church, who took a group of her flock to her neighborhood Applebee’s for dinner. The bill included an 18% gratuity built in, which is the restaurant’s policy for groups of 8 or more people, something that is fairly common. Serving large groups is tricky (especially if they order separately and want separate bills) and unfortunately some customers try to stiff the wait staff by under-tipping. (This whole business of tipping is a complex one and I expressed my own views on it back in 2005.) [Read more…]
In a lighter vein, That Mitchell and Webb Look struggles with some of the same issues of racism that this blog has been grappling with in the last few days. [Read more…]
Politics often features heated rhetoric. Hyperbolic language is often deliberately used by politicians in order to achieve more modest goals like electoral gains but, like a controlled burn in a forest that suddenly breaks its boundaries and wreaks havoc, it can take on a life of its own that its originators can no longer control. [Read more…]
Religious people are always fighting the inroads made by secular modern culture. One example is the Super Bowl that is coming up this Sunday and which is expected to drawn an audience of around 100 million. Some religious groups are worried that the halftime shows are not appropriate for their flock because the performances can be somewhat raunchy. Ever since the entire nation was traumatized in 2004 by briefly seeing one of Janet Jackson’s nipples, religious groups have felt the need to protect believers from such dangerous threats to their holiness. [Read more…]