Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video from Argentina says, in Spanish, about itself:

El Ex Arzobispo Edgardo Storni fue procesado en el 2003 por presunto abuso sexual a seminaristas.

From Associated Press:

Argentine cleric gets 8 years in sex abuse case

Wednesday, December 30, 2009; 10:26 AM

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — An Argentine judge convicted a former Roman Catholic archbishop Wednesday of sexually abusing a seminarian in 1992.

Former Santa Fe Archbishop Edgardo Storni received a sentence of eight years, the minimum for aggravated sexual abuse, defense attorney Eduardo Jauchen said.

…

Storni would likely serve any time under house arrest because he is over 70.

Storni resigned in 2002 amid various abuse accusations. Judges threw out most of the cases, but the one involving the seminarian moved forward.

He is the fourth Argentine cleric to be convicted of sex crimes.

In the most famous of those cases, a court sentenced Father Julio Grassi, who won fame running a foundation for poor youths, to 15 years in June for molesting a boy who participated in the program.

Argentina’s authorities order DNA tests in search for stolen babies of dirty war: here.

This is a video of George Eliot’s Adam Bede.

By David Walsh:

In praise of George Eliot’s Adam Bede on its 150th anniversary

Part 1

30 December 2009

This year marked the 150th anniversary, widely and deservedly celebrated, of the publication of Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking On the Origin of Species.

Marx, who immediately recognized the significance of Darwin’s work, published his own A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that same year. Its preface contains the famous summation of the materialist conception of history (which, decades later, the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky would memorize and be able to recite by heart) that begins, “In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.…”

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens appeared in 1859, as did Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov. Gustave Courbet was the acknowledged, if embattled, leader of the Realist current in painting. He held a Grand fête du Réalisme at his studio in Paris in October, writing a friend two months later that “Realism is very much under attack at the moment…we must marshal new forces and do everything we can.”

Before 2009 comes to an end, the publication of George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede early in 1859 also deserves to be noted.

There are numerous biographies of Eliot, and Adam Bede is easy enough to obtain, but certain details about the author and her first novel are worth commenting upon. …

Eliot’s life, 1819-1880, coincides almost exactly with Marx’s (1818-1883). Important developments at the material base of society, in industry and technology, in the natural sciences, as well as in art and culture, influenced their lives—in different ways and under different conditions, of course.

Eliot (whose real name was Mary Ann or Marian Evans) was born in Warwickshire in England’s West Midlands region, the daughter of an estate manager known for his conscientious work habits and staunchly conservative political views. Recognized at an early age for her intelligence, Evans gained access to the estate’s library. At school, as an adolescent, she was allowed considerable freedom in what she read; she devoured books, including Sir Walter Scott’s novels.

Evans was strongly touched by Evangelicalism in her later teenage years, and devoted several years to taking religion and religious study seriously. During that time, she disapproved of frivolities such as the theater and novels. However, her theological ardor eventually cooled and she found herself reading all of Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, Southey and, especially, Wordsworth, among others.

In 1841, she and her father moved to a house near Coventry where Mary Ann came under different intellectual influences. There was clearly something in the social air as well, including no doubt the impact of the Chartist movement and the depression of 1841-1842, that made her susceptible to new ideas, among them those advanced by Charles and Caroline Bray, who became her close friends. Charles Bray was a ribbon manufacturer and a free thinker. He was an acquaintance of, among other figures, Robert Owen, the utopian socialist, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher, to both of whom he introduced Mary Ann, who had by now stopped attending church. She “was quickly brought,” as biographer Gordon S. Haight writes, “from provincial isolation into touch with the world of ideas.”

Her intellectual development was rapid and extraordinary. An assiduous student of foreign languages, Evans began translating David Friedrich Strauss’s Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus), originally published in 1835, from German into English in 1843. This pioneering “left Hegelian” work, which denied the supernatural and miraculous elements of the Christian gospels and treated the latter as mythology, helped lead Friedrich Engels (another contemporary of Eliot’s, 1820-1895) to abandon his Christian faith and provided “the first impulse,” in his expression, for the modern philosophical struggle against religion.

“For two years,” writes Haight, “Mary Ann laboured, translating the fifteen hundred pages of German, with quotations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.… For her work she was paid £20. Few books of the nineteenth century have had a profounder influence on religious thought in England.”

By now she read everything, including French writers—such as Rousseau, the utopian socialist Saint-Simon, and the “scandalous” novelist George Sand—who shocked even some of her new progressive friends. In March 1848, she welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution and expressed contempt for the overthrown ruler, Louis-Philippe. She declined to sentimentalize over “a pampered old man when the earth has its millions of unfed souls and bodies.”

However, she had no hope for any English revolution. Here, she wrote a correspondent, “a revolutionary movement would be simply destructive—not constructive. Besides, it would be put down.… [T]here is nothing in our constitution to obstruct the slow progress of political reform. This is all we are fit for at present.… We English are slow crawlers.”

These two videos say about themselves:

Houzan Mahmoud speaks at the ‘Remember Du’a and denounce honour killings globally’ conference in April 08 in London. Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17 year-old girl, was stoned to death in Iraqi Kurdistan in April 07. The conference was organised by the Organisation for Women’s freedom in Iraq.

By Louise Nousratpour in Britain:

Brutalised for Western profit

Wednesday 23 December 2009

Iraqi activist Houzan Mahmoud is too young to remember the 1963 CIA-backed coup against Abdel Karim Kassem.

Five years earlier General Kassem had ousted the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy and retrieved land and oil from the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company.

During the overthrow tens of thousands of communists, along with much of Iraq’s democratic-minded educated elite, were dragged out of their homes and shot in the streets. Their “crime” had been to support a leader who was on good terms with the Soviet Union.

But while Mahmoud cannot recall this bloody episode first hand she remembers well the oppressive years under Saddam Hussein, who was installed a few years after the coup and was supported by the West - until he too showed signs of defection.

The bloody removal of Kassem was almost a carbon copy of the joint CIA/MI6 coup in neighbouring Iran 10 years earlier against democratic leader Mohammed Mossadeq, who also tried to nationalise his country’s oil.

“The West, which has been instrumental in defeating progressive forces in the region for generations, now dare to label us backwards. How dare they portray our women as burqa-wearing, submissive victims and our men as a bunch of bearded, misogynist terrorists?” says Mahmoud.

“They have installed a corrupt regime in my homeland, supporting its reactionary laws in the name of respect for Iraq’s traditional values.

“In the same manner they called Saddam’s savage execution Iraqi justice, but we know they instigated the lynching to stop him from incriminating them in an open court.”

No-one knows for certain how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sex slavery since the US-led Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

The group that Mahmoud works for, the Baghdad-based Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), puts the figure in the tens of thousands.

“Crimes that were virtually unheard of before have now become commonplace. So-called honour killings have shot through the roof and mass unemployment has pushed many women, especially war widows, into prostitution,” she says.

“Women have all but disappeared from public life for fear of being raped, killed, kidnapped or trafficked to foreign countries.”

Once Iraqi women’s legal rights and freedoms were the envy of their oppressed sisters in much of the Middle East. No more.

Thanks to the benign humanitarian intervention of two Christian extremists, they too face the prospect of an autocratic regime that sanctions misogyny in the name of religion.

Mahmoud points out that legislation allowing polygamous marriages was passed last year by the puppet Kurdistan regional government despite public outrage.

And Iraq’s draft constitution has paved the way for oppressive sharia law.

“But the left is fighting back and will rise from the ashes, as we have done in the past,” says Mahmoud, who visits Iraq regularly and is active in her country’s rejuvenated women’s rights and union organisations.

Unionised oil workers in the south have been a constant thorn in the side of US and Britain’s plans to control Iraq’s rich resources. And since its foundation in June 2003 OWFI has organised thousands-strong demonstrations, seminars and campaigns against the occupation and for a secular, democratic Iraq.

The group also provides shelter and support for victims of domestic violence and women fleeing pimps and traffickers, though a lack of resources is a major obstacle.

“We brought 2,000 women out on the streets of Baghdad on International Women’s Day in 2004 at the height of the war, when women hardly dared go out,” Mahmoud recalls proudly.

“Since then we have had many successful campaigns, including breaking the silence around prostitution and forcing a debate on trafficking which has now led to a draft legislation to clamp down on it.”

Mahmoud emphasises that OWFI “is the opposite of many of the sectarian organisations that we have to contend with. We have secular women working side by side their veiled sisters. And many men support our campaign because they grew up in a society that was not so brutalised in terms of gender relations.”

The organisation’s wide appeal and its uncompromising stance have made it unpopular with the US-backed government, which is refusing to grant it NGO status.

“They have their own NGO stooges who have no grass-roots base and operate from plush offices, with huge salaries and private security,” Mahmoud says.

Back in Britain, she is forging links with progressive groups to raise awareness about the impact of the wars in the Middle East on working-class communities in this country and to challenge the West’s sinister portrayal of Iraqi and Afghan people as savages who need rescuing from themselves.

“Blowback” - the violent consequences of the war on terror - has expressed itself in disturbing ways.

Army recruiters target teenagers in deprived areas ravaged by mass unemployment. Brutalised by war and abandoned by the state that sent them there, increasing numbers of returning soldiers on both sides of the Atlantic are bringing the violence back to their own homes and communities in the form of drug misuse, domestic abuse and homicide.

“In times of war, violence, especially against women, increases as a result of a more militarised and macho society,” Mahmoud observes.

“Because minority communities continue to be treated as the enemy within … they are ever more vulnerable to racist attacks.

“Is it any surprise that some turn back to the musty comforts of reactionary and patriarchal tradition, when they are far away from the familiarity of ‘home,’ experiencing hostility and racism in their ‘civilised’ new home?

“This, in part, manifests itself in increased violence against women - honour killing, forced marriage.”

But Mahmoud fears there is an unhealthy focus on cases of domestic abuse and so-called honour killing in ethnic minority communities which serves to drive a wedge between them and the rest of society.

“There is an element of media bias and it goes back to the same racist attitude which seeks to portray these communities as savage, non-integrating aliens,” she argues.

Mahmoud is also concerned that the focus on grimly exotic, headline-grabbing “honour killings” serves to distract attention from the shocking levels of violence against women in wider society.

“The fact that in Britain two women a week are killed by a current or former partner is a form of honour killing,” Mahmoud points out, adding: “Women are constantly told they are ugly and fat and encouraged to have cosmetic surgery and to go on a diet - that too is violence against women.

“The difference is that, while in the Middle East the violence is often backed or sanctioned by law, here it’s sold to us as pop culture, fashion or even girl power.”

For Mahmoud, what unites us is the fact that we “all live in a class-based capitalist system,” a system that she believes we can only overcome “by fighting for our common class interest - for socialism.”

US Refuses to Allow UN Inspectors to Investigate its WMDs: here.

This video says about itself:

Watch documentary maker Nick Broomfield’s short film, made for Amnesty International, about destitute refused asylum seekers in the UK.

From Deutsche Welle radio in Germany:

23.12.2009

Asylum seeker numbers on the rise in Germany

The number of people seeking asylum in Germany is expected to rise by 10 percent in 2010, says the Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), after the government said Wednesday that more than 25,000 applied this year.

German media has reported that the country is set to see an increase in the number of asylum seekers in 2010, according to the Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF). The office said the number of asylum applications could rise by around 10 percent.

The office said most of the asylum seekers would arrive from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, according to public broadcaster ZDF.

BAMF said that unstable security situations and economic strains in Afghanistan and Iraq were the main reasons for people fleeing those countries, while in Iran, government repression was a leading cause for people seeking a new life.

With 2009 coming to a close, Germany has recorded accepting more than 2,000 Iraqi refugees, whom it has housed at its Friedland border transit camp in the state of Lower Saxony.

Applications increase

Iraqis made up the vast majority of people seeking asylum in Germany in 2009, with the Interior Ministry logging more than 6,200 applications for asylum status from January to November. In second place were asylum seekers from Afghanistan with around 3,000 applications.

The ministry said a total of 25,429 people applied for asylum in Germany in the first 11 months of this year. That figure represents a 15 percent increase compared to the number of applications for all of 2008.

One year ago European Union Interior Ministers pledged to take in up to 10,000 refugees from Iraq, with Germany saying it would accept as many as 2,500.

Most of those accepted are persecuted minorities, particularly Christians.

Iraqi Christians most definitely suffer from cruel violent persecution since George W. Bush invaded their country in 2003. So do Christians in Afghanistan (where there are far less than in Iraq).

However, occupation, war and dire poverty mean that basically the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and Afghans are “persecuted“, not just Christians or other minorities. Xenophobic prejudices, including in government policies, in Germany and other NATO countries mean that refugees are often not getting the asylum which they should get. Sometimes, Western governments deport Iraqi and Afghan refugees as these countries are supposedly “safe” (why are their soldiers waging war there then?). Quite often, the worst xenophobes are also the most enthusiastic supporters of bloody wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

So, most refugees are from the two main countries where the USA and its allies wage war ever since 2001.

As for Iran, the third country in refugee numbers to Germany: while the Iranian government may repress people which it considers “not Islamic enough”, Iranian refugees may now face xenophobia in the West: whether they are “conservative” Muslims, “liberal” Muslims or not Muslims at all, they are, in xenophobic Rightist ideologies, part of the Great “Eurabia” Conspiracy (also never mind that Persians are not Arabs …).

A US-based human rights group has called on the Afghan regime to investigate the death of a suspect who died while being held in prison by the intelligence service: here.

Britain: Anti-war campaigners have called on the government to “open its eyes” and bring troops back home from Afghanistan after a probe was launched into the second suspected friendly-fire death of a British soldier in as many days: here.

The Great Afghan Gem Heist: How the War Led to the Pillaging of Afghanistan’s Precious Stones: here.

Iranian activists have called on the international labour movement to press Tehran to end its crackdown on opposition campaigners after eight people were killed in anti-government protests and hundreds detained in the aftermath: here.

From British daily The Guardian:

Jewish anger as Pope Benedict moves Pius XII closer to sainthood

• Catholic leader signs decree extolling virtues of predecessor
• Wartime pontiff accused of inaction during Holocaust

* Riazat Butt, Religious affairs correspondent

* Monday 21 December 2009 15.44 GMT

Jewish leaders from around the world expressed their outrage today after the Pope opened the way for his controversial wartime predecessor to be made a saint, with some calling the possible beatification of Pius XII as “inopportune and premature”.

Benedict signed a decree last Saturday on the virtues of Pius, who has been criticised for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust. The decree means he can be beatified once a miracle attributed to him has been recognised.

Beatification is the first major step towards sainthood. But Benedict, who has long admired Pius, continues to draw fire for ignoring concerns over the controversial pontiff.

Among those to criticise him was the World Jewish Congress, whose president, Ronald Lauder, said: “As long as the archives about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions ‑ or inaction ‑ concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature.

“While it is entirely a matter for the Catholic church to decide on whom religious honours are bestowed, there are strong concerns about Pius XII’s political role during world war two which should not be ignored.”

He called on the Vatican to immediately open the files on the controversial figure. “Given the importance of good relations between Catholics and the Jews, and following the difficult events of the past year, it would be appreciated if the Vatican showed more sensitivity on this matter,” he added, referring to Benedict’s rehabilitation of a Holocaust-denying cleric, Richard Williamson.

The incident sparked worldwide condemnation from prominent Jewish groups and individuals and placed an additional strain on interfaith relations, which were already under pressure after the pope issued an edict permitting a prayer that called for the conversion of Jews.

In France, the country’s chief rabbi urged the Vatican to abandon its mission to beatify Pius. Gilles Bernheim said: “Given Pius XII’s silence during and after the Shoah [Holocaust], I don’t want to believe that Catholics see in Pius XII an example of morality for humankind. I hope that the church will renounce this beatification plan and will thus honour its message and its values.”

The renewed source of tension could cast a cloud over Benedict’s inaugural visit to Rome’s synagogue next month.

Giuseppe Laras, president of the Assembly of Italian Rabbis, told the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica: “I hope it goes ahead but after this latest move I wouldn’t be surprised if it is cancelled. While I respect the autonomy of the church in matters of sainthood, I don’t see how the pope could have taken such an untimely decision. Anything can happen now.”

See also here.

From Pink News in Britain:

Christian leader supports death penalty for gays

December 21, 2009 - 11:06

A far right Christian group has urged fellow Christians to support Uganda’s proposed law that would make homosexuality punishable by death.

Stephen Green,

a former Chairman of the Conservative Family Campaign

leader of the Christian extremist group ‘Christian Voice‘, remarked:

“The Bible calls for the ultimate penalty for sodomy (Lev 20:13) and for rape (Deut 22:25), and our Lord upheld the death penalty when He called for the accusers of the woman caught in adultery to cast the first stone (John 8:7) – if, that is, they were not implicated in adultery themselves.

“The contrast between our politicians and those of Uganda could not be more stark. A Parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation’s children. The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is trying to corrupt ours. Which country is the more civilised, I wonder, in the eyes of Almighty God?”

The law would impose the death penalty on those convicted of having gay sex with a minor or disabled person or someone infected with HIV.

Friends and family members of gay Ugandans who do not report them to authorities could also face up to three years in prison.

People who “promote” or assist homosexuality could be jailed for seven years. The bill would also punish Ugandan citizens who have gay sex abroad.

The bill’s sponsor, David Bahati MP, has argued that it will curb HIV infections and protect the “traditional family”.

It has been subject to worldwide condemnation and since the first reports emerged in mid-October and has received widespread media attention. …

Christian Voice opposes abortion, homosexuality, no-fault divorce and safer sex education. Additionally it supports the death penalty and does not recognise the concept of marital rape.

On 2 September 2006, Green was arrested while handing out what were considered by the police to be homophobic leaflets at the Cardiff Mardi Gras.

He was arrested for an alleged “homophobic incident”, detained for four hours, and charged with public order offences. The Crown Prosecution Service decided to withdraw their prosecution of Green on the grounds of insufficient evidence, though the police stated that this did not “challenge the legality” of his arrest.

Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill: Inspired by the U.S.: here.

By Antoine Lerougetel:

France: Sarkozy’s national identity campaign boosts the National Front

21 December 2009

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in a December 9 opinion piece in Le Monde, gave vent to an extreme nationalist and barely concealed Islamophobic appeal to the most reactionary forces within French society.

Its purpose is to win a social base for the imposition of authoritarian rule in order to make the working class pay for the economic crisis and the vast state debts incurred in bailing out the banks. It is also designed to create the ideological climate to justify France’s imperialist foreign policy, involving the unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan in the scramble for the world’s strategic resources, mainly oil and gas, by competing imperialist powers.

The article vigorously defends the recent Swiss referendum vote for a law making the building of mosque minarets illegal. Sarkozy asserts that those attacking the Swiss referendum vote were attacking “the Swiss people” and furthermore were showing a general “scorn for the people” and “a visceral mistrust for everything coming from the people.” He denies that the vote had any effect on “religious freedom and freedom of conscience.”

Sarkozy’s public endorsement of the Swiss referendum vote places him at the head of a sharp move to the right in European politics. Indeed, Sarkozy positions himself to the right of the ruling political parties in Switzerland, which had opposed a vote for the ban, if only for fear of possible damage to the country’s banking, trade and tourist interests.

The law is being challenged by Muslim groups in the European Court of Human Rights as being incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. They point out that it is discriminatory because it exclusively directed at the Muslim religion.

Sarkozy’s article is part of the national-identity campaign, spearheaded by his increasingly fanatical minister of immigration and national identity, Eric Besson, the former Socialist Party spokesman on economic affairs. It is an escalation of the state racism and Islamophobia expressed in the 2004 law banning the wearing of Muslim headscarfs by girls in schools and the parliamentary mission preparing legislation for the banning of the burqa in public. …

Besson ordered the forced repatriation of nine Afghans, whose safety is in severe doubt, to Kabul on Wednesday, on a plane jointly chartered with the British government, against the express wishes of the Afghan government.

Most notable about Sarkozy’s right-wing populism is the complete non-recognition of class divisions within “the people” and his exclusive use of religion to define social categories: “Christian, Jew or Muslim, man of faith, whatever his faith, whatever his beliefs.…”

Asserting the fundamentally “Christian civilisation” of France and the “values of the Republic,” Sarkozy warns newcomers and particularly Muslims that any challenge by them to these “values…would condemn to failure the so-necessary establishment of a French Islam.” …

There are signs that Sarkozy’s strident embrace of large parts of the National Front’s programme and ideology, rather than attracting the far-right vote, is boosting the neo-fascists. Le Pen’s daughter and likely successor, Marine Le Pen, is shown on television working the markets with leaflets headed “ National Identity.” The opinion polls show 10% voting for the FN in the regional elections, which could be very damaging for the prospects of the ruling UMP (Union for a Popular Movement). Approval ratings for Sarkozy are now dipping below 40%. …

Increasingly, sections of the political elite are worried that the national identity campaign launched by Sarkozy and Besson is getting out of control. AFP quotes the UMP deputy Jean-Pierre Grand, a supporter of Sarkozy’s rival, Dominique de Villepin, describing the national identity campaign as “a marvellous boost for the National Front. I regret it profoundly.”

Former UMP prime ministers de Villepin, Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Alain Juppé have publicly expressed their objections to Sarkozy’s article and the national identity campaign.

From ANI news agency:

Uncovering feminist views in 19th century Albanian’’s works

Submitted by Karan Jakhad on Sun, 12/20/2009 - 09:21.

Washington, Dec 20 : An American academic has discovered some radical ideas on women’’s equality in the works of a Muslim author penned during 1872 to 1900.

The expert has written an article about his findings that will appear in the January 2010 issue of Middle Eastern Studies, a British academic journal published in London.

Dr. George Gawrych, a professor of history professor at Baylor University, reviewed the works of Albanian novelist and playwright Semseddin Sami Frasheri and found that he saw women as “equal but different.”

This was a revolutionary point of view in the patriarchal society of the time.

Gawrych, who received a Fulbright Senior Researcher Scholar grant for 2008-2009, was in Turkey to study about Ataturk and the War of Independence waged from 1919 to 1923.

While studying about Albanians under Ottoman rule, Gawrych came across Semseddin Sami’’s ideas in an 1879 published book titled Women.

Gawrych went on to read Sami’s novel on arranged marriages and reviewed entries about women in his six-volume encyclopaedia on the world.

Talking about Sami’’s thought, Gawrych said: “He was a Muslim who in his novel briefly gave an image of a wife having an education and discussing child-rearing with her husband.

“But there are lots of nuances beyond that in his book.”

In his encyclopedia, Sami wrote a three-column entry on George Sands, a female French writer.

Not “George Sands”, but George Sand; pseudonym of Amantine (also “Amandine”) Aurore Lucile Dupin; a socialist.

In Sami’’s opinion she was a better writer than most of her male peers, but she wrote using a man’’s name because it was easier than being a female writer.

Gawrych said: “He (Semseddin Sami) was expressing some revolutionary ideas through her in the encyclopedia, which censors let get by.”

According to Gawrych, Sami stated unequivocally that women must have equal rights, education and freedom to work like men. He was, however, patriarchal in his view in so far as he considered men should be protectors of the society.

In a society where having multiple wives was permissible, Sami said that a second wife is not good for the marriage and the children, “although he reluctantly accepted the possibility of a second wife if the first could not produce the children and if the first wife gave her permission,” Gawrych said.

Sami married a Turk in 1884. Gawrych pointed out that a posed photo of the pair shows Sami’’s convictions.

The snap shows Sami’’s wife unveiled and wearing European clothes. She sits next to him with her left hand resting next to his with three books directly behind their elbows.

Gawrych sees the photo as meaning that “their marriage is going to be one of equal minds.”

He added: “He gave his daughters a progressive education through tutors. He was still a patriarch but at the same time pushing the envelope.”

This is a video about US religious Right televangelists.

US religious Right televangelist Oral Roberts has died today. See also here.

This video from the USA is called NY Protests Uganda’s Anti-Gay Policy.

By Jessica Geen, Pink News, Britain:

Call for Archbishop of Canterbury to retract statements on lesbian bishop

December 11, 2009

Liberal Anglicans are calling for Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams to retract comments he made on the selection of a US lesbian bishop.

Three thousand people have joined a Facebook group set up two days ago to call for Williams to speak out instead about anti-gay laws proposed in Uganda.

Williams responded to the selection of bishop-elect Mary Glasspool within hours but on Uganda, Lambeth Palace released a short statement last week saying he was in “private” talks with the country’s Anglican Church.

Although Ugandan ministers have said provisions for executions and life prison sentences for gays will be dropped, it will still lead to imprisonment for those ‘promoting’ homosexuality or having gay sex.

The Facebook group says: “The Archbishop of Canterbury has failed to exercise moral leadership to protect gays and lesbians in Uganda and has instead exercised political pressure to attack a bishop-elect in Los Angeles because she is a lesbian.

“As Anglicans who treasure their Communion and expect more from their Archbishop, in the Advent spirit of John the Baptist’s cry to the religious leaders of his time, we call on Rowan Williams to repent of his earlier statement.”

The Facebook group was set up by Susan Russell, a former president of Anglican gay group Integrity.

She told the Guardian that signatories include bishops and former staff of Lambeth Palace.

Yesterday, one of the most power Christian pastors in the US condemned the law, leading many liberal Anglicans to question why Williams has not spoken publicly about it.

Rick Warren, who is firmly against gay marriage, said the law was “terrible” and called on Ugandan church leaders to condemn it.

Outrage at BBC’s Ugandan gay debate: here.

The Unite union has called for the resignation of two Church of England bishops, claiming they allowed a Worcester vicar to suffer years of abuse, here .