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Gender and Sexuality News Roundup (3/26/19)

March 26, 2019
By CBMW
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One mission of CBMW is to help Christians think through secular and ecclesial trends on gender and sexuality. Through this work, we pore over a lot of different news reports and articles as we attempt to wade through the ceaseless flow of information on the web. In our weekly Gender and Sexuality News Roundups, we aim to distill some of the more pertinent information for you.

The articles below are from a wide variety of sectors and publications, organized generally into three categories. They are presented in aggregate, not necessarily endorsed.

If you see an article that you think should be featured in future CBMW News Roundups, you can send it to [email protected] with the subject “News Roundup.”

 

Ecclesial Trends on Gender and Sexuality

North Carolina Baptist church ordaining trans woman to gospel ministry, Baptist News (Bob Allen)

“Saunders, 24, will be one of the first openly trans individuals to be ordained by a Baptist church in the United States. Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., a congregation now led by married lesbian co-pastors, ordained Allyson Robinson, a transgender woman, to the gospel ministry in 2014. Saunders, a ministry intern at Wake Forest Baptist Church who began her transition during her first year of seminary, introduces herself on social media as ‘probably the only bi, trans, Baptist preacher lady you know.'”

LGBTQ United Methodist leaders gutted by church’s anti-gay decision, NBC News

“Some jurisdictions of the UMC, including the Western Jurisdiction, which covers a large swath of the western U.S., and Germany, have stated that they will pursue the “One Church Plan” and continue to ordain church leaders regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

 

Secular Trends on Gender and Sexuality

The first time the U.S. considered drafting women — 75 years ago, Washington Post (Pamela D. Toler)

“The United States came one step closer to making women eligible for the draft last month when U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of Texas ruled that an all-male Selective Service registration is unconstitutional. Miller’s ruling challenged a 1981 Supreme Court decision on the subject, which held that an all-male draft was “fully justified” because women did not serve in combat positions. With women eligible for all military service roles, including combat, Miller argued that their exclusion from registration for the draft was no longer supported by the facts.”

Why Federal Laws Don’t Explicitly Ban Discrimination Against LGBT Americans, TIME (Katy Steinmetz)

“Polls show that most Americans oppose discrimination against LGBT people, and many believe that it’s already illegal. But federal laws don’t ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity the way they do regarding sex and religion. And the odds of Congress changing that in the immediate future are slim.”

Nancy Pelosi’s ‘Equality Act’ Would Be Disastrous. Here Are 5 Likely Victim Groups, The Daily Signal (Monica Burke)

“The Equality Act would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes under federal civil rights law. But whereas the original Civil Rights Act of 1964 furthered equality by ensuring that African-Americans had equal access to public accommodations and material goods, the Equality Act would further penalize everyday Americans for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.”

Michigan will no longer fund adoption agencies that deny LGBT parents, Chicago Tribune (Sarah Pulliam Bailey)

“The issue for faith-based adoptions and funding has flared up across the country. Programs that receive federal funding through the Department of Health and Human Services, according to an Obama administration rule, are barred from discriminating on the basis of religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. A South Carolina adoption agency that works only with Christian parents petitioned for an exemption from the HHS rule, and was granted one in January.”

Chick-fil-A Banned From Opening in San Antonio Airport, U.S. News and World Report (Alexa Lardieri)

“The company has long been under fire for its support of organizations that oppose gay marriage. The decision comes a day after Think Progress reported on Chick-fil-A’s newly-released 2017 tax filings, which show that the Chick-fil-A Foundation gave more than $1.8 million to three organizations with a record of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, an increase from the prior year. The donations include more than $1.6 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home and $150,000 to the Salvation Army.”

A Secret Database of Child Abuse, The Atlantic (Douglas Quenqua)

“Thus did the Jehovah’s Witnesses build what might be the world’s largest database of undocumented child molesters: at least two decades’ worth of names and addresses—likely numbering in the tens of thousands—and detailed acts of alleged abuse, most of which have never been shared with law enforcement, all scanned and searchable in a Microsoft SharePoint file.”

 

Gender and Sexuality Miscellany

The Story of Marriage in Seven Verses, Desiring God (David Mathis)

“Instead of just one verse or passage, I tried to select what I thought (imperfectly, of course) might be the Bible’s seven most important verses on marriage. Here are the seven, each with just a taste of why.”

May SSA Christians Have Non-Sexual Romantic Relationships?, The Gospel Coalition (Sam Allberry)

“[Friendship and marriage] aren’t merely less intense and more intense expressions of the same underlying reality, such that you can keep adding units of intimacy to friendship until it eventually becomes marriage. The architecture of both marriage and friendship are necessarily different.”

Gender Equality and Gender Ideology: Protecting Women and Girls, United Nations Forum (Ryan T. Anderson)

“New interpretations of gender are impacting how people understand what it means to be a woman or girl. Experts will speak on how these new interpretations are impacting the identity, equality, privacy, and safety of girls and women, how schools and social protection systems are being affected, and what the bioethical, physical and psychological consequences of implementing these new interpretations are.”

The Democratic LGBT Debate Is an Unhelpful Stunt, National Review (Brad Polumbo)

“On March 19, news broke that Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a special debate exclusively focused on LGBT issues in October, right as the election heats up. According to progressive gay-news site The Advocate, this forum will focus on “on the lives and rights of LGBTQ people” and offer “a chance to educate the potential next president” on “the challenges still facing queer Americans.””

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