Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/religion/page/4/)
In the 14 years that I’ve lived in Minnesota, our family has been invited to exactly five Jewish holiday celebrations, and three of them were within the last month.
I think this “statistic” speaks to one big reason why our family is still unaffiliated. Continue Reading
Today’s news reports claim the Nigerian government and Boko Haram have reached a truce, and that the girls kidnapped six months ago will be returned. I want to believe. I want this to be true. And as much as I want to believe, I know that parents and families of 200+ girls want so immeasurably more for this to be true, for their girls to return. Continue Reading
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a well-funded religious right legal outfit, has inserted itself into the debate over a transgender-inclusive athletics policy being considered by the Minnesota State High School League.ADF, formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund, was founded in 1994 by half a dozen prominent religious right groups including Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the American Family Association. The group opposes reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and a secular society, and often uses its lawyers to insert itself into local debates.On Tuesday, the group announced that it has sent a letter to the Minnesota State High School League which is in the process of drafting a framework for how schools can create an inclusive environment for transgender athletes.The letter represents a fundamental misunderstandings about transgender students, misgendering them in the process: “Forcing students into vulnerable interactions with members of the opposite sex in secluded locker and hotel rooms disregards basic notions of personal dignity, which federal courts have recognized in a variety of contexts…. MSHSL and its member schools also have a common law duty to maintain school “property free of unreasonable risks of harm.”ADF also warned that religious schools might sue if the policy is implemented: “It is unlikely that a court would uphold the proposed transgender policy’s interference with religious freedom. Most, if not all, religious schools regard facilitating the denial and rejection of one’s God-given sex to be a grave sin. And religious students are precluded by basic modesty principles from sharing locker or hotel rooms with members of the opposite sex.”The group is also targeting transgender-inclusive policies in Wisconsin’s Sparta Area School District and Rhode Island’s Westerly Public Schools.Here’s the full letter:Download (PDF, 374KB)Related stories:Minnesota League tables trans-inclusive policy under mounting opposition (Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet, 2014)State athletics league mulls transgender inclusion in sports (Andy Birkey, The Colu.mn, 2014) Continue Reading
While at the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21st I had the pleasure of personally meeting performance artist Peterson Toscano, and hearing about his “The Queer Response to Climate Change” creation. He will be using storytelling, humor and skilled facilitation to perform “Climate Change: What’s faith got to do with it?” October 29th at 7 PM at All God’s Children MC Church 3100 Park Ave S as well as “Transfigurations–Transgressing Gender in the Bible” 30 October 2014 7:00 pm at Richfield United Methodist Church This is a Community Voices submission and is moderated but not edited. The opinions expressed by Community Voices contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the TC Daily Planet.As someone who has done spoken word comedy performances about global warming myself, I can attest that it is exciting and uplifting to bring together the diverse interests of faith community building, LGBTQ liberation and climate justice. Peterson recently wrote that he addressed these three important issues “always with the goal to hold out hope and to encourage us to dream and scheme about how we can envision and achieve a future world that is more just, clean, and stable for all.“ Peterson’s optimistic vision can only be held up by taking robust, coordinated action to address the climate crisis which I “voted” for by putting my body in the street for the People’s Climate March. While each climate march up to this point has been sponsored by a much small handful of organizations, this climate march was unprecedented as a diversity of over a hundred groups and organizations took part. A whole new meaning opened up for me when I saw a website about one of the groups in the march called “Queers for the Climate”. Continue Reading
It’s Thursday morning and I wake up with the realization that I will be going to masjid later in the afternoon for dugsi.
You probably think that I am going to write about my hijab, the difficulties I have faced in a predominantly Christian country, or some other predictable topic that Muslims write about.Well, I am not.This is a story about a young girl who came to a foreign country from Yemen with her mother when she was eight. She would soon grow up with two cultures, two religions, and two separate worlds.This girl is now 17 years old and has finally found herself.When I was in grade school, I remember being taught to love my founding fathers and was pushed to celebrate with Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce.“I am Arab,” I thought to myself, “how can some Britons be my ancestors?”I just accepted my new lifestyle to make people accept me.It was then that my mother noticed I was lost in my identity and decided to move me to a predominantly Muslim charter school in West St. Paul.We also moved to an area where most of the school staff and students resided. My life was soon filled with the company of Muslim immigrants who isolated themselves from American people.It was at age 10 that I began thinking about God all the time and noticed myself becoming even more religious than my own family members.Suddenly, I went from being a Western girl playing every sport there was and assimilating to American culture to an awkward tween who boycotted all music and alienated myself from my American peers.I also stopped eating turkey.EMBRACING BOTH IDENTITIESThe summer before my freshman year of high school, I went to a highly spiritual church camp that I had not been to since I was a little girl. I noticed changes. Continue Reading
The theme of the 14th annual Twin Cities Jewish Community Conference on Mental Health is “Creating Harmony in Our Lives,” and it will feature music from Shir Harmony, a local Jewish women’s a capella group, as well as a unique performance by an orchestra comprised of local musicians affected by mental illness.
Hebrew National hot dogs devised a popular slogan, in 1965: “We answer to a higher authority.”
Beatriz Ramirez and her two young children moved into Chicago’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in September. Rosa Robles Loreto has lived in Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church since August. In Philadelphia, the Indonesian Mennonite Philadelphia Praise Center and the Jewish Tikkun Olam Havurah stand ready to welcome immigrants seeking sanctuary. They are part of a new sanctuary movement, with religious groups from Maine to California committing to shelter immigrants in danger of deportation. Besides offering sanctuary to immigrants, they challenge the country’s leaders to change harsh and punitive immigration laws. Continue Reading
The Human Rights Campaign is organizing a series of vigils called Pray, Listen, Discern — Raising the Voices of LGBT Catholics including one in St. Paul on Thursday.