NOT JUST PAGANS

Naked and unashamed: Christians strip down at a South Texas nudist community

Public nudity may seem antithetical to the modesty often promoted by churches, but to Christian naturists, the two go hand in hand.

Bill and Misty Katz pose in front of their home at Nature's Resort on March 16, 2022, in Elsa, Texas. Photo by Jeremy Lindenfeld

June 28, 2022

By 

Jeremy Lindenfeld

(RNS) — Outside the small Texas town of Elsa, a sheet metal fence too tall to see over surrounds a few acres of prime Rio Grande Valley land. In front of the compound’s drab, gray gate, bright orange letters spell out “Nature’s Resort.” The gate opens to reveal a seemingly ordinary community. RVs and small homes line the roads, péntaque and pickleball courts offer residents recreational spaces, and the front office acts as the community’s nucleus.

Nothing looks amiss, except that is, for what’s missing — namely, clothing.

Misty Katz, part owner of Nature’s Resort, finds comfort in shunning clothes. Growing up in South Africa, she was scolded by her parents for undressing in public when her clothes got dirty. She didn’t take those lessons too seriously. More than half a century later, she lives at a nudist (or naturist) resort in South Texas and doesn’t worry about dirty clothes anymore.

For as long as Katz has been a nudist, she has also been a Christian.

Public nudity may seem antithetical to the modesty often promoted by churches, but to Katz, the two go hand in hand. “Believe it or not, we are modest,” Katz says. “Modesty doesn’t mean you have to cover everything up. We don’t display our wares, we’re not adorning various parts of our bodies in a way that’s going to attract attention.

Her idea of modesty echoes Pope John Paul II’s 1981 book “Love and Responsibility,” in which he writes “nakedness itself is not immodest.” He goes on to explain that immodesty presents itself only when nakedness serves to sexually arouse.

Bill and Misty Katz woodwork in the nude at their home in Elsa, Texas, on March 16, 2022. Photo by Jeremy Lindenfeld

At Nature’s Resort, public nudity is not sexual. “The initial conception is that this is a sexual thing,” Katz says. “People think we’re all out on the front lawn having sex with each other, swapping partners. In fact, if there is any overt sexuality, you see that gate open real fast and somebody is ushered out.”

Some Christian critics of nudism, including Mary Lowman of The Christian Working Woman, see the lifestyle as an affront to God. On her website’s page The Christian Dress Code, Lowman claims “God’s dress code from the beginning has been to cover our nakedness.”

Even still, nudism attracts unlikely allies. Some nondenominational, hard-line conservative clergy accept nudism. Pastor Ron Smith, of McAllen’s Church of the King, vehemently opposes homosexuality, abortion and the transgender community, but when it comes to nudism, his strident views loosen up.

“I think it’s odd, I think it’s strange, but I have no proof it’s sinning,” Smith said. “We have a retired couple that sit in the front row every Sunday that live at a nudist camp. I believe they’re dedicated Christians.”

Because the Bible doesn’t explicitly forbid nudism, Smith says he cannot condemn those who practice it. In fact, the Bible condones nudism on several occasions: “Adam and Eve were in the garden talking to God every day. They were nude,” Katz says. “When David had his big victory in battle, he went dancing in the streets naked to praise God. So, that must be OK in God’s eyes.”

Pastor Ron Smith at Church of the King in McAllen, Texas, on March 17, 2022. Photo by Jeremy Lindenfeld

Katz isn’t the only Christian at Nature’s Resort. Chip and Daisy are a married couple who requested to exclude their last names so friends and family don’t learn of their nudism. They, like most everyone at Nature’s Resort, are winter Texans, retirees spending their summers up north and coming down to the Rio Grande Valley when temperatures start to drop.

Chip, a Black man, is also one of the only residents of color out of the up to 250 people in the community. Like Katz, Chip and Daisy find nudism fits neatly into their Christianity and see it enhancing their religious lives. “In a nudist environment, the true Christian belief of valuing others and not judging others is accentuated,” Daisy says. “Here, you don’t judge someone for what they look like or what they wear.”

“It’s one thing to be with Christians in a building,” Chip says. “It’s another thing to be with Christians who are nudists. There’s a deeper connectivity.”

Though Nature’s Resort is not explicitly religious, it is affiliated with the American Association for Nude Recreation, an organization with deep Christian roots. AANR, once named the American Sunbathing Association, and the American League for Physical Culture before that, was led by Ilsley Boone in the 1930s.

Misty Katz stands at the front desk of Nature’s Resort in Elsa, Texas. Photo by Jeremy Lindenfeld

Boone was a Dutch Reformed minister and a driving force behind popularizing Christian naturism in the U.S., where he preached a religiously enriching nudism. Christian naturism, popular in the early 20th century, continues to find success in the digital age on online forums.

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RELATED: Dissent from Traditional Plan dominates United Methodists’ top court meeting

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And though Nature’s Resort’s particular brand of nudism is not the Christian variety, some of its members have found the lifestyle deeply spiritual.

“I think it’s far easier being a Christian nudist than being a Christian nonnudist,” Katz says. “That’s because as a Christian, you’ve got to love everybody. And as a nudist, you do love everybody.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

200 witnesses to testify in ‘Vatican trial of a century’ on financial scandals

A trial that began a year ago has so far heard from 10 witnesses.

The dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Photo by Steen Jepsen/Pixabay/Creative Commons

June 22, 2022

By 

Claire Giangravé

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Earlier this month, Giuseppe Pignatone, one of the judges overseeing the Vatican’s “trial of a century,” concerning corruption and money laundering by Catholic Church officials, joked that he hoped the proceedings would end by 2050.

At least, it was thought to be a joke: At Wednesday’s session, the judges announced that the prosecution and defendants plan to call more than 200 witnesses in a trial that has already taken nearly a year to get through 10 defendants. 

The trial started in July of 2021 with defendants facing interrogation by Vatican prosecutors, judges and the lawyers of other defendants.

At the heart of the case is the controversial purchase by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State of a property at 60 Sloane Ave. in London, which according to Vatican prosecutors cost the church 350 million euros (about $370 million), drawn in part from donations to a papal charity called Peter’s Pence.

So far the trial has put a spotlight on turf wars and rivalries among members of the Vatican departments and offices that make up the Roman Curia. The hearing on Wednesday (June 22) focused on the role played by the fund managers and consultants who oversaw the Vatican’s investment portfolio.

Enrico Crasso, a former employee of the bank Credit Suisse who served the Holy See as an investment manager for 26 years, answered questions for the second time at the trial on Wednesday, and declared his innocence. He is charged with embezzlement, corruption, extortion, money laundering, fraud, abuse of office and varying types of forgery.

“Eleven indictments are not few,” Crasso said. “I hope that this court wants to judge my activity as a manager and does not put me in a position to pay for the activities of other (defendants).”

In his previous hearing, May 30, Crasso had said he was sidelined by the Vatican in 2014 when it chose to invest in Raffaele Mincione’s fund, Athena, which owned the London property. Mincione is also charged with fraud and embezzlement for allegedly draining profits from the investment through fees and commissions.

Proceedings in the Vatican finance trial on May 20, 2022. Photo by Vatican Media

Crasso questioned Mincione’s management of the fund, maintaining that the financier used the Vatican’s money to pay for his takeover of the troubled Italian bank Carige. Crasso said he told the secretariat that the costs of Mincione’s fund were excessively high.

Crasso said he broke with Mincione officially in 2016, more than two years after he first introduced him to Vatican staffers to pitch an investment in an oil operation in Angola, an idea that was scrapped in favor of the London property deal.

Crasso told the judges that his role was to act as a “bulwark in defending the Secretariat of State’s liquidity, and not a tool to fraud anyone.”

Crasso said he was present at some of the principal meetings that laid out the London property deal; he said he was “always summoned by Fabrizio Tirabassi,” who handled the finances of the Secretariat of State and is another defendant at the trial.

“I never had formal assignments” from the Secretariat of State, Crasso said.

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RELATED: Vatican knew about risks of London deal, says financier who brokered it

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The management of the London property was eventually handed over to another Italian fund manager, Gianluigi Torzi, who assured the Secretariat of State that he could convince Mincione to hand over the property. Crasso said he was called back into the deal by the secretariat to oversee the transition as a representative of Credit Suisse.

In November 2018, Torzi handed over the majority of the shares of the fund that owned the London property but kept 1,000 voting shares that kept control of the real estate in his hands. Vatican prosecutors have charged Torzi with embezzlement, fraud and money laundering, claiming he extorted $15 million from the secretariat to relinquish the voting shares.

Crasso acknowledged he was present during the signing of the deal in London but denied knowing anything about Torzi’s voting shares. Attending the meeting was “a very big mistake,” Crasso said, adding that a Secretariat of State official, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, asked him to attend.

Initially investigated by Vatican prosecutors, Perlasca is now a star witness in the proceedings.

Vatican judges fixed the next trial date for July 7, when they will interrogate remaining defendants and begin the task of interrogating the numerous witnesses before the tribunal goes on its summer break.

Buddhist leader in Bhutan fully ordains 144 women, resuming ancient tradition

Damcho Diana Finnegan, an American Tibetan Buddhist nun, called the ordination ceremony ‘a major step towards ending the institutionalized inequality between men and women in Tibetan Buddhism.’

Buddhist nuns take ordination vows as bhikshunis, or female monks, June 21, 2022, at the Ramthangkha monastery in Bhutan. Photo via Facebook/Zhung Dratshang གཞུང་གྲྭ་ཚང་། Central Monastic Body of Bhutan

June 21, 2022

By 

Haley Barker

(RNS) — On Tuesday (June 21), the Je Khenpo, the senior Buddhist authority in Bhutan, began ordaining a group of 144 women as bhikshunis, or female monks, at the Ramthangkha monastery in the tiny Himalayan country.

The ceremony “is of historical importance for all women in Buddhism and brings Tibetan Buddhism into the 21st century,” said Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen, a German Tibetan author. “For these nuns, it is a major opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to contribute to Buddhism.” 

Many of the new bhikshunis are Bhutanese, but some came to Bhutan from other countries in Asia. They are all being ordained in the Tibetan lineage.

A Facebook post on the central monastic body of Bhutan page posted the news, which was confirmed by Damcho Diana Finnegan, an ordained Buddhist nun and co-founder of the Dharmadatta Nun’s Community in Virginia. 

Asked about the ceremony, Finnegan called it a “major step towards ending the institutionalized inequality between men and women in Tibetan Buddhism.”

The ceremony is the culmination of a decades-long movement for full ordination for women in the Tibetan lineage, which has faced heavy resistance from top-level monks, scholars and political leaders across Asia. The bhikshuni movement has picked up steam in recent years as women worldwide have sought to restore a practice of ordaining women established, they say, by the Buddha himself, but which slowly disappeared from much of the Buddhist world until now. 

After the death of the Buddha, female monks were commonly considered one of the key elements of the four-pronged ideal Buddhist community, consisting of lay men, lay women, male monks and female monks. However, over time, war, famine and disease took the lives of bhikshunis across Southeast Asia and Tibet. 

Women have continued to live ascetic lives as nuns but have been barred from taking the next step to full ordination. Officially their status was held back by rules of the monastic code that require bhikshunis to be ordained by other bhikshunis, who didn’t exist.

To break this bind, some women have taken other routes to full ordination. In 1996, a group of Sri Lankan nuns was ordained with help from Korean bhikshunis of the Mahayana lineage, which has never been broken. Since then, hundreds of bhikshunis have been ordained in Sri Lanka, in what Tsedroen describes as an “ecumenical ceremony,” essentially reviving the population.

The Je Khenpo, seated left, the senior Buddhist authority in Bhutan, ordains a group of women as bhikshunis, or female monks,  June 21, 2022, at the Ramthangkha monastery in Bhutan. Photo via Facebook/Zhung Dratshang གཞུང་གྲྭ་ཚང་། Central Monastic Body of Bhutan

But in Bhutan, a handful of monks have taken ordination into their own hands and provided ordination to nuns without the presence of bhikshunis. Typically, this ceremony is only granted to a small number of women, and never on the scale seen on Tuesday. According to Finnegan, an ordination this large guarantees a sangha, or bhikshuni community, that will persist well into the future. 

“All other lineages of Buddhism have had sanghas of women fully ordain as monks. This is the first time Tibetan Buddhist women are given that opportunity,” she said. 

The current Dalai Lama has long encouraged bhikshuni ordination vows, and Bhikkhu Bodhi, a prominent monk in the Theravada lineage, practiced across India and Southeast Asia, has appealed to his legion of supporters to advocate for the bhikshuni movement. Influential Tibetan scholar-monk Geshe Lharampa Bhikshu Rinchen Ngudrup made a strong case for bhikshuni ordination in 2007 during a talk at the first International Congress on Buddhist Women’s Role in the Sangha after years of research.

In addition, lay people across Asia have called attention to the excellent behavior of nuns in comparison with male religious leaders. Scandals, such as fraud at Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand and an uptick in sexual assault charges against Tibetan lamas, have been rocking Buddhist communities around the world.

Thai journalist Sanitsuda Ekachai called attention to this dichotomy in her book “Keeping the Faith: Thai Buddhism at the Crossroads,” encouraging lay people to consider the future of the monastic order and how female monks could improve it.

Even with powerful voices and a clean track record behind the movement, gender equity in the Tibetan monastic order had yet to take off on the large scale that occurred today in Bhutan.

“This historic ordination ceremony may well create further pressure on other Buddhist communities in different countries to make full ordination available to nuns within Tibetan Buddhism,” said Susanne Mrozik, associate professor of religion at Mount Holyoke College. 

For some Buddhists, the fact that the ordinations began on the summer solstice is an auspicious sign, as are, according to the Facebook announcement, the appearance in Bhutan of “rainbows encircling the sun.”

Poll: Americans’ belief in God is dropping

In the latest Gallup Poll, belief in God dipped to 81%, down 6 percentage points from 2017, and the lowest since Gallup first asked the question in 1944.

June 21, 2022

By 

Yonat Shimron

“Trend in Americans’ Belief in God” Graphic courtesy of Gallup

(RNS) — Belief in God has been one of the strongest, most reliable markers of the persistence of American religiosity over the years. But a new Gallup Poll suggests that may be changing.

In the latest Gallup Poll, belief in God dipped to 81%, down 6 percentage points from 2017, and the lowest since Gallup first asked the question in 1944.

Even at 81%, Americans’ belief in God remains robust, at least in comparison with Europe, where only 26% said they believed in the God of the Bible, and an additional 36% believe in a higher power, according to a 2018 Pew poll.

Throughout the post-World War II era, an overwhelming 98% of U.S. adults said they believed in God. That began to fall in 2011, when 92% of Americans said they believed in God and, in 2013, went down again to 87%.

The latest decline may be part of the larger growth in the number of Americans who are unaffiliated or say they have no religion in particular. About 29% of Americans are religious “nones” — people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity.

“Belief is typically the last thing to go,” said Ryan Burge, assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. “They stop attending, they stop affiliating and then they stop believing.”

Photo by Chris Liverani/Unsplash/Creative Commons

Less surprising, the Gallup survey showed belief in God has fallen most among younger Americans. Only 68% of adults ages 18-29 said they believed in God (compared with 87% of Americans age 65 or older.)

The poll also found that belief in God is higher among married people (compared with those who are not married), women (as opposed to men) and those who did not go to college (versus college graduates).

But perhaps the most striking differences were in political ideology. Belief in God is correlated more closely with conservatism in the U.S., and as that gap widens it may be a contributor to growing polarization. The poll found that 72% of self-identified Democrats said they believed in God, compared with 92% of Republicans (with independents in between at 81%).

In recent years there has been a rise in the number of Americans who acknowledge being Christian nationalists — those who believe Christian and American identities should be fused.

“It could be that the increase in the number of atheists is a direct result of Christian nationalism,” said Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa who studies the nonreligious. “They seem to be dominating the rhetoric. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is legitimately backlash against it and people saying, ‘You know what? I’m an atheist.’”

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RELATED: Humanist chaplains guide nonreligious students on quest for meaning

The underground abortion my mother had, and the one she didn’t

'To pay tribute to my father, I got a foster-care license and fostered seven children over the better part of a decade. I saw firsthand what happens to unplanned babies born to people who should not be parents.'

The Edelhart family in 1967:

 Arthur and Harriett, with twins Courtenay, left, and Ashley.

 Courtesy of Courtenay Edelhart

By Courtenay Edelhart

June 26, 2022

When my 84-year-old mother found out that the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, she sighed heavily. “It won’t stop anyone,” she said. “People are going to die.”

She would know.

Years before I was born, my then-college student mother turned down a marriage proposal. Her mother and stepfather told her the whole point of college was to land a man—this was the 1950s—and if she was going to be turning down marriage proposals, they weren’t paying for her education anymore.

My mother had to drop out for a while to save money and apply for loans, but eventually she enrolled in a less expensive university and completed her education. With one hitch along the way: She unintentionally got pregnant.

My mother was unmarried. Her very religious Black and Christian parents would have lost their minds. And she hadn’t worked so hard to get back in school only to drop out again. So she turned to an underground abortion network that helped her induce a miscarriage with mysterious pills. The person she got them from wasn’t a doctor. She had no idea what was in the pills. She took them anyway. She was desperate.

Harriett (Bowe) Edelhart’s high school graduation photo. 

Courtesy of Courtenay Edelhart

More than a decade later, my mother became pregnant a second time, also by mistake because in the 1960s, it was hard for single women to get contraception. Plus, she had dated with a false sense of security, assuming that illegal abortion back in college had rendered her infertile. Her boyfriend was a decent guy, but when she met him he was in the middle of a messy divorce, and this new development would complicate it even further. Also, he grew up poor and was white and Jewish. Well, Jewish on paper, at least. He wasn’t religious in the slightest, but that nuance would mean nothing to my mother’s devoutly Christian, upper middle-class parents. Merely dating this man was scandalous enough. At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states. A biracial out of wedlock baby with a man who was technically still married was out of the question.

My mother told her boyfriend she wanted an abortion. After some discreet research, they tapped that underground network again. Had an appointment scheduled and everything. But at the last minute, my father talked my mother out of it. Not because he wanted me. It was because, first, he loved my mother and was afraid she could die if the procedure was botched. Secondly, abortion was against the law. If they got caught, they could get arrested.

Just their luck, it was twins. My parents got married after my father’s divorce finalized. But their marriage, too, would fail. They divorced when my sister and I were 13 years old.

My mother says she has no regrets about having her twins. Things were different than the first time she was pregnant. She had her college degree and a good job. She actually loved my father. Sure, her parents— and society — weren’t keen on it at the time. But the tides were changing. The Voting Rights Act had passed in 1965. Months after my sister and I were born in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to invalidate anti-miscegenation laws. The second time my mother was faced with an unwanted pregnancy, she felt more hopeful. That first time, however, would have been devastating.

I grew up hearing this story. I’ve been aware of it all my life. My mother wanted to make sure her daughters knew and appreciated the history. That we’d be passionate pro-choice feminists who would fight to make sure no one else had to endure the dreadful risk she’d illicitly taken once, almost twice.

I also grew up hearing my father’s horror stories about spending part of his childhood in foster care. Not because his mother and absent father were abusive, but because there was no safety net for my grandmother after her deadbeat ex left her with two children and a third on the way. She and her kids were quite literally starving. My father wanted his daughters to empathize with children who were hungry, neglected and abused. He devoted his life to those kids, spending his entire career as a social worker with Child Protective Services. That’s where he met my mother. She was a social worker, too. They wanted to repair the world.

To pay tribute to my father, I got a foster-care license as an adult and fostered seven children over the better part of a decade. I saw firsthand what happens to unplanned babies born to people who should not be parents. I heard the agonized cries of a drug-addicted newborn. I saw the terrified trauma of a toddler who’d been beaten and molested. I heard the wrenching sobs of a tween who had bounced around foster homes. I fought for the life of a suicidal teen.

When I tried like hell to get help for those children, most of the time I was told there was no public money for the services they needed. And few potential adoptive parents were willing to take them on. Nobody wanted them. Nobody cared.

I’ll keep fighting because both of my parents got their wish. I am a passionate supporter of a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body. I am also a passionate supporter of children. The two positions are not mutually exclusive


The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspective in Opinion.

Jim Obergefell: Justice Thomas Should Remember ‘The Right to Interracial Marriage is Only 6 Years Older’ Than Roe

By Sarah Rumpf

Jun 26th, 2022, 

Jim Obergefell spoke to CNN’s Jim Acosta on the seven-year anniversary of the landmark 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage, and discussed the Court’s recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, specifically concerns that the case will lead to other cases being overturned.

On Friday, the court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which looked at a Mississippi law banning virtually all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies and “severe fetal abnormality” but not for rape or incest.

In the opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court addressed whether various provisions of the U.S. Constitution conferred an “implicit constitutional right” to an abortion, finding that “[t]he Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” and specifically listed Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, granting right of married persons to obtain contraceptives), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts), and Obergefell.

These cases represented “demonstrably erroneous decisions,” wrote Thomas, and the court had a “duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”

It should be noted that this view was promulgated by Thomas alone; Alito, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with Thomas that Roe should be overturned, and Chief Justice John Roberts opposed overturning Roe but agreed with upholding the Mississippi law.

Still, Thomas’ concurrence was causing “growing alarm in the LGBTQ community,” commented Acosta during Sunday’s episode of CNN Newsroom.

Acosta noted the date was the anniversary of the Obergefell opinion, playing a video clip of President Barack Obama calling Obergefell to congratulate him on the court victory, and asked his guest for his reaction to the Dobbs opinion.

“It’s been a terrible several days for our nation,” Obergefell replied. “Half of our country lost the right to control their own body, and that should terrify everyone in this nation who believes in our ability to make decisions for ourselves.”

Thomas “put a target on the back” of other rights like contraception and marriage, and “that should terrify everyone in this nation,” he said.

Dobbs was a “terrible decision,” he continued. “We should be moving forward not backwards. And this court is taking us backwards, this extreme court is taking us backwards.”

Thomas did not mention Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case that found laws banning interracial marriage to be unconstitutional, Acosta remarked. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, is White, and has been the focus of multiple reports regarding her communications with people within former President Donald Trump’s administration, members of Congress, and people involved in the organization of protests that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“To me it’s a clear indication that if it’s a case that impacts him directly, it’s safe,” Obergefell said, “but if it’s a case that protects other people, other people who are unlike him, then we’re not very safe.”

“The right to interracial marriage is only six years older than a woman’s right to abortion,” he noted. “Our nation has a much longer history of denying interracial marriage. Do we want to go back to the late 18th century, the originalist who’s saying we can only interpret the constitution as of the time it was written? When that constitution was written, ‘We, the People,’ did not include blacks, indigenous people, it did not include women, it did not include queer people. That is not a more perfect union.”

Watch the video via CNN.

LYSISTRATA
Aristophanes inspires sex-strike in America following controversial abortion ruling

by STELLA MAZONAKIS



Life is imitating art in the United States, Greek art to be precise, as many women are calling for a sex-strike following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ruling that previously guaranteed women the constitutional right to abortion.

It’s seems Greek culture still has an armoury of ideas and devices that prove their utility even now, 2500 years later, since in a similar call, Greek playwright Aristophanes in his comedy Lysistrata performed in Athens in 411 BC saw Athens and Spartan women denying their husbands sex unless they put an end to the [Peloponnesian] War. That’s what inspired the ‘making love not war’ anti-war rallying call.

Lysistrata the heroine, persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes.

In New York on Saturday, abortion protestors were calling for a sex strike which started trending on Twitter reported the New York Post.

“If you’re a man who won’t get a vasectomy, even though it’s reversible, and you’re not out in the streets fighting for my rights, you do not deserve to have sex with me,” Brianna Campbell, a 24-year-old EMT, told The Post.

Caroline Healey, a 22-year-old event coordinator, also questioned why sex was more important than women’s rights.

“I think it’s absolutely valid for us to be withholding the Holy Grail that men seem to think is important,” she told The Post at an abortion protest in Manhattan’s Union Square.

“Why shouldn’t we withhold it if we’re always worried that they’re not going put a condom on, that they’re going take one off after we ask them to,” she added.

“If we can’t safely go out and have sex and know that we will have a choice after that, then why should we be expected to?”

Maya Demri, a survivor of rape, insisted that women need to “do everything in their legal power to get our rights back” after the high court struck down the landmark abortion ruling.

“I cannot sit here and imagine what my sisters in red states are going to do if they’re getting pregnant by rape and need to not just carry the tragedy of the worst thing that has happened to them, but also carry them in the body for nine months,” she told The Post.[New York Post]

Roe v Wade: Church that helped Jane Roe still aids abortion-seekers

By Chelsea Bailey
BBC News, Dallas, Texas

IMAGE SOURCE,NICK GIBSON, BBC NEWS
Rev Daniel Kanter preaches about abortion access at First Unitarian Church of Dallas in Texas

A Texas church in Dallas, one of the most religious cities in the United States, has become a haven for those seeking abortions. For members, its long history in the fight for reproductive choice brings hope for a post-Roe future.

It was well before dawn in Dallas but a group of women were already seated scrolling through their phones or picking at a free continental breakfast in the classroom where they had been told to gather. Bleary-eyed and yawning, they were waiting to board a flight that would change their lives.

Many were women of colour, all were from different backgrounds. A teenager came with her mom. Another woman drove through the night from Oklahoma.

But they all had one thing in common - each was more than six weeks pregnant and could not legally obtain an abortion in the state of Texas.

They had also all placed their trust in a seemingly unlikely source - volunteers with the First Unitarian Church of Dallas - who would fly them to New Mexico, where they could end their pregnancies.

The tension was palpable as the church's senior pastor, Rev Daniel Kanter, addressed the women assembled.

"God loves you. You have dignity and worth and your life is the priority here," he said. "If you're surprised a person of faith like me is standing in front of you saying that - that's a good thing. But it shouldn't be".

An earthquake Supreme Court decision in the US last week has reversed a 50-year precedent which had said that American women had a constitutional right to an abortion - and many of those who had campaigned for this reversal were prominent Christians.

Yet the issue of abortion and faith is a lot more varied. First Unitarian Church of Dallas, specifically, has a long history fighting for abortion access, having helped bring about the 1973 ruling that had guaranteed the right to the procedure.

That mission has not ended with the reversal of Roe v Wade - and First Unitarian's fresh fight to help women get abortions reveals much about surprising divisions among American Christians over the matter.

IMAGE SOURCE,PEW RESEARCH CENTRE

Before abortion was legalised in 1973, people would often turn to faith leaders for help with unintended pregnancies. In 1967, a network of Protestant and Jewish leaders founded the Clergy Consultation Service to provide counselling and referrals to doctors who would perform the procedure. It's estimated the service helped more than 400,000 people access abortions.

Harder lines emerged in the later decades of the 20th Century after Roe. Today, abortion is seen by many evangelical Christians and Catholics as a clear-cut case of murder, condemned in the Bible. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre, nearly three-quarters (74%) of white evangelical Protestants believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

Within those figures, though, are hidden nuances.

Almost two-thirds of black Protestants and a majority of white protestants who are not evangelical, say the opposite - that the procedure should be legal in all or most cases - as do a majority of Catholics.

The division often comes down to an existential question about when life begins, and a theological debate over how Jesus instructs followers to live their lives. For Albert Mohler Jr, an evangelical Baptist and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe "was absolutely necessary". For Mr Mohler, and thousands of evangelical Christians, the Bible is unequivocal on abortion.

"Every single life is made in God's image and thus is of priceless, infinite worth," he said, adding that Christians who say otherwise differ from him not just theologically, but morally.

"I have to work and pray that that division remains peaceful and insofar as it's possible, respectful," he said.

But for pro-choice Christians, it is supporting reproductive choice that's in keeping with the example Jesus set, according to Katey Zeh, a Baptist minister and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Christ "showed up for people in their vulnerable moments, especially for people who were impacted by systemic oppression and those who were pushed to the margins," she said. "I see Him being a clinic escort, being there inside to hold their hands."

The Unitarian Universalists have long been in the pro-choice camp.

"Before Roe, the clergy of my church were driving women to the Gulf of Mexico to get on boats to go out in international waters and have legal and safe abortion," Rev Kanter said.

The denomination as a whole has roots in Protestant Christianity, but now incorporates traditions from other faiths. Many Unitarian Universalists today still identify as Christian, however.

A sign outside an abortion clinic in Dallas

It was January 1970 when the women's group of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas's women's group met to discuss an issue dividing the nation then as now: abortion.

According to minutes seen by the BBC, they were joined by a young lawyer named Linda Coffee, who along with her colleague Sarah Weddington, was determined to file a lawsuit against the state of Texas over its restrictions to abortion access.

Ann*, who was seated among the women gathered that day, said that - much like the country - opinions about abortion among the women in the group at the time varied greatly.

"But the more we learned about how difficult it actually was [to get an abortion]... we just got radicalised," the now-92-year-old said.

As none of the women were pregnant at the time, none could serve as a plaintiff, so they helped by submitting a key legal brief in support of reproductive choice when Coffee and Weddington did go to court with the Roe v Wade case.

Media caption,
Watch: Lawyer Sarah Weddington was just 26 years old when she argued Roe v Wade

Today, that legacy continues and there are reminders of it throughout the church.

Signs in the lobby inform visitors that the church provides Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill, to anyone in need. There's also information about Our Whole Lives, the comprehensive sex education course that Unitarian Universalists offer from kindergarten through to adulthood. The programme emphasises healthy relationships, consent and communication, sex, and reproductive health access.

Many of the church's members shared their own stories with the BBC. There's Adryelle, who nearly died giving birth to her first child and said she could not imagine being forced to continue a pregnancy. Or Peg, who said she felt lucky because before abortions were legal in the United States, she had been able to have a safe and legal abortion while traveling in the United Kingdom.

Rev Kanter said that history was front of mind when he started the New Mexico abortion access network. The programme, which began when Texas passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country last year, is funded through donations from pro-choice people of different faith backgrounds across the country. To qualify for the network's assistance, the person seeking an abortion must be below the poverty line - but that's where the requirements end.

The church says its role is simply to facilitate access, not to encourage people to have - or not have - the procedure. That is a personal choice, Rev Kanter said.

On a recent Sunday, he shared from the pulpit the story of his own experience with abortion.

He spoke openly of falling in love, sex, youthful indiscretion, and ultimately a difficult decision with a former partner to end the pregnancy. Part of his decision to become a minister was to heal from the experience, he said.

Unbeknownst to many, the church hired plain-clothes officers who were seated among the congregation that Sunday, in acknowledgement of how volatile the issue has become.

With Roe v Wade overturned, more and more states will pass abortion bans. Rev Kanter said he expects to increase the frequency of the trips from Texas to New Mexico.

Rev Daniel Kanter assists a patient using the access network to get an abortion in New Mexico

On the night Roe v Wade was overturned, the church gathered again to join hands and pray for strength to continue their mission to help abortion-seekers.

"Hold this grief, but not too long," he told his congregants. "We will still do what we can to help women get safe and legal abortions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism

Unitarianism - Wikipedia 

Unitarianism is a nontrinitarian Christian theological movement that believes that the God in Christianity is one singular person. Most other branches of ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism

Unitarian Universalism - Wikipedia 

Unitarian Universalism (UU) is a liberal religion characterized by a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". ... Unitarian Universalists assert no ...

Rep. Jackie Speier: States Banning Abortion Should ‘Require Impregnators to Put Up a $350,000 Bond’ To Care for Child

By Natalie Korach

Jun 26th, 2022, 


Following the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) challenged state legislatures with abortion bans to shift priorities to the “responsibility of the impregnator.”

Landmark abortion court case Roe v. Wade was overturned Friday by a 5-4 ruling, effectively returning the legality of abortion to individual state authority. After the opinion was announced, “trigger laws” in 13 states came into effect sharply limiting or outright banning abortion.

Speier, who has been vocal about her experience with abortion, condemned the Dobbs decision Sunday when interviewed by CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Acosta played an emotional clip of the congresswoman speaking about her abortion and how it saved her life on the House floor. In 2011, in the midst of an hours-long debate over the funding for family planning programs, Speier gave her deeply personal perspective.

In response, the congresswoman said “I realize the luxury, frankly, that I had,” to receive the procedure, acknowledging that it was “taken away from women today across this country.”

“We’ve never had this kind of a Supreme Court decision that took away the rights of people,” continued Speier, “and it is confounding so many of us they could be so extreme as members of the Supreme Court.”

“We will not let this stand,” assured the congresswoman.

Speier has been vocal in her opposition to the Supreme Court decision on social media invoking her personal experience.

Acosta then questioned the congresswoman about statements made earlier in the day by fellow Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), in which she called for the impeachment of Supreme Court justices who “lied under oath.”

Speier responded, “There’s no question they lied and they did that under oath. So there should be consequences.”

“There has been nothing said about the fact that a woman doesn’t get pregnant with immaculate conception,” she continued. “There’s an impregnator and there’s not a word that’s been said about the responsibility of the impregnator.”

Speier proceeded to implore that legislatures restricting abortion within their states “require the impregnator to put up a $350,000 bond so that this mother can take care of that child.”

Watch via CNN

The Importance of Colombia’s Election

by Ted Snider Posted onJune 27, 2022

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has assumed the mantle of leader of Latin America’s struggle against US hegemony and the US’s colonial treatment of the region. He has called for “the replacement of the Organization of American States (OAS) by a new body that integrates all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.” He wants that new body to be “a truly autonomous body, not a lackey of anyone.” He has demanded an end to "impositions, interference, sanctions, exclusions and blockades." He has stressed regional integration and initiated a “new, very close relationship between Mexico and Cuba.” To demonstrate the sincerity of his support for regional inclusion and integration, he recently led a boycott of the US hosted Summit of the Americas.

López Obrador may soon be gaining a powerful partner. Brazil’s latest polls predict a victory for Lula da Silva. Lula DA Silva wore the mantle before López Obrador when he first served as Brazil’s president. Representing Latin America’s two largest economies, López Obrador and Lula DA Silva would make a formidable partnership.

But, though less in the spotlight, something equally important has happened in Latin American politics. On June 19, Colombia elected Gustavo Petro as president. Petro is the first president to be elected in Colombia in over three quarters of a century who leans to the left and away from Colombia’s elites and fealty to the United States.

But the significance of Petro’s election goes well beyond his position on the political spectrum or that Colombia is the third largest country in Latin America, meaning that, if Lula DA Silva is elected, he and López Obrador will lead a group of countries with left leaning governments who seek to integrate the region and balance American hegemony regionally that includes the seven largest nations in the region.

The significance is not just what Latin America gains but what the US loses. Colombia has long been the key to US projection into Latin America and a base of operations against Venezuela, a key nation in the challenge to US hegemony in its hemisphere. Biden has "said many times that Colombia is the keystone of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean." He has called the relationship between the two nations "the essential partnership we need in this hemisphere," and Colombia "the linchpin . . . to the whole hemisphere." The election of Petro could usher in the loss of this "essential partnership."

The US has long fostered extremely close ties with Colombia’s military and security forces. Columbia has been one of the biggest recipients of US aid, pulling in nearly nine billion dollars’ worth of military aid despite having, what Noam Chomsky has called, "by far the worst human rights record in the hemisphere".

Petro’s election signals a challenge to both regional and global hegemony for the US. Long the key ally in the region in opposing and isolating Venezuela and its elected president, Nicolás Maduro, Petro made re-establishing ties with Maduro and Venezuela a campaign promise. Some expect the reestablishing of relations to "be a radical, profound change" and "a 180-degree turn."

His election also signals a strengthening threat to US hegemony globally. Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research and an expert on Latin America, told me that, if Lula returns as president of Brazil, he will "be active in promoting economic integration in the hemisphere" but he will also "pursue good relations with both the US and China." Though China has now passed the US as the top trading partner of South America, as part of its "essential partnership" with the US, Colombia has focussed economically on the US and generally not participated in Latin America’s growing relationship with China and Russia. That loyalty to a US led unipolar world may be challenged, and Petro is likely to join Lula in pursuing good relations with both the American pole and the Chinese-Russian fostered larger multipolar world.

The election of Petro continues the tide of Latin American nations, including Argentina, Chile, Peru, Honduras and Bolivia, to elect governments that not only lean left but lean toward Latin American integration and a balancing of regional US hegemony. Joining Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua and lining up behind Mexico and, possibly, soon Brazil, this tide will be a powerful force confronting US hegemony in the region. It may also be a powerful balancing force against US hegemony globally.

Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

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