Religion: Celebs Rumors

READ MORE: Christian Nationalist GOP Nominee Doug Mastriano Calling for ‘40 Days of Fasting and Prayer’ to Help CampaignBy the end of her lengthy rant she decreed, “God sees everything and by the grace of God, we will rise above this, but I’m not gonna let my children be raised – I’m gonna homeschool, you better believe it. I will not let my children be raised in a county like this.

The Heritage Foundation is ranked as the third most influential think tank – left or right – in the U.S. A right-wing D.C.

Christian pastor Aaron Thompson explained why he enjoys using anti-gay slurs while preaching the Bible in a video posted Sept. 15 on Twitter.Thompson is a pastor at Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Vancouver, Wash.

Yeshiva University can pick and choose from 87 student organizations to join and engage with fellow students. There’s the Alexander Hamilton Society, the College Diabetes Network, Engineering Club, Jewish Activism Club, Rubik’s Cube Club, Skiing + Snowboarding Club, College Democrats, and College Republicans, but there is not an LGBTQ club.Nor will there be, if Yeshiva University has its way.

5-4 decision Wednesday evening the U.S. Supreme Court opted to not block a state court’s ruling ordering a faith-based private university to recognize an LGBTQ students’ organization, but the order is quite likely temporary.Yeshiva University, which has four campuses in New York City, was ordered by a state court to recognize Y.U.

executing a search warrant seized the cell phone of Mike Lindell, a democracy-denying ultra MAGA activist who had Oval Office access to Donald Trump when he was president, promotes wild conspiracy theories, and is now bankrolling a far-right extremist described as a “fascist,” a “white supremacist,” and “one of the internet’s most rabid white Christian nationalists.”“We are the Christian Taliban and we will not stop until The Handmaid’s Tale is a reality, and even worse than that,” says Vincent James, who Lindell is financially supporting according to Right Wing Watch and Vice News.Lindell, of course, is known to millions as the “My Pillow guy,” the founder of the massively successful shredded foam manufacturer who is now using his vast wealth to promote his claims of massive election fraud, claims that have led some television stations, he says, to ban him from appearing in his own commercials.READ MORE: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Launches Paranoid Rant: ‘Had to Get on My Knees and Pray to God’ US Gov’t. Didn’t Kill HimLindell told supporters about the FBI executing a search warrant while he was at a Hardee’s drive-thru in his Mankato, Minnesota hometown, on his streaming show, the Lindell Report.“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us, and behind us and I said those are either bad guys or the FBI,” Lindell said, The Guardian reports.

LGBTQ student organization for now, the Supreme Court said in a Friday evening order from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.A lower court had ordered Yeshiva University, a private Orthodox Jewish research school in New York City to recognize the student group, but Justice Sotomayor, who has jurisdiction over the Second Circuit, which includes Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, temporarily stayed that ruling, “pending further order,” as lower court and state court cases continue.“A New York state trial court ruled that as a public accommodation, Yeshiva was covered under the New York City Human Rights Law and required to provide the Pride Alliance the same access to facilities as dozens of other student groups,” The Washington Post reports. “The group said that means access to a classroom, bulletin boards and a club fair booth.”Yeshiva is an Orthodox institution, and the “Orthodox tradition only supports heterosexual relations and only within the context of heterosexual marriage,” the Human Rights Campaign Foundation has said.Well-known University of Texas School of Law Professor of law Steve Vladeck called Justice Sonomayor’s decision “surprising.”“Justice Sotomayor, acting by herself, has stayed a New York state trial court’s injunction that had ordered Yeshiva University to recognize an LGBTQ student group.

Private and public schools alike participate in the National School Lunch Program, which funds meals for millions of students across the country.In May, the USDA had announced that schools participating in NSLP must create policies prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.But after lawsuits from a religious school and conservative-led states, the USDA clarified on August 12 that religious schools participating in NSLP can continue allowing discrimination against LGBTQ students and staff.“USDA regulations do not require a religious educational institution to submit a written request for a Title IX exemption in order to claim that exemption,” the memo read.The controversy stems from debates around Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded education programs. In a change from the Trump administration, the Biden administration has interpreted Title IX as also banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.The USDA’s announcement this May fell in line with Biden’s interpretation.“State and local agencies, program operators and sponsors that receive funds from [the Food and Nutrition Service] must investigate allegations of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation,” a May 5 press release read.“Those organizations must also update their non-discrimination policies and signage to include prohibitions against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.”On July 26, twenty-two states signed onto a lawsuit filed against the USDA policy.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is advocating against legislation in the Senate that would protect existing same-sex marriages but would not ensure same-sex couples could marry in their state if the U.S.

New York’s Yeshiva University is trying to bypass a state court ruling that orders the university to recognize a gay pride group on campus.One of the country’s oldest Jewish Orthodox schools in the nation, the New York-situated Yeshiva petitioned the Supreme Court to allow them to block the YU Pride Alliance from being granted official recognition at the university. In an “emergency petition” sent to the court on August 29, Yeshiva cites that it is a “deeply religious university,” and as such, believes it should be allowed to deny the group on the basis of religious beliefs.On June 14, the New York State Supreme Court had ruled that Yeshiva was not actually a “religious institution” under New York law, indicating that the university had to comply with New York City Human Rights Laws banning all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender.

titular character in “Padre Pio,” a film helmed by Abel Ferrara exploring the life of the Franciscan Capuchin mystic. Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione in southern Italy in 1887. He became famous for showing stigmata, or crucifixion wounds like those on the body of Jesus Christ.

died Monday at the age of 73 — revealed the vow in a February 2021 interview with the A Life of Greatness podcast, speaking candidly about her religious convictions.“I remember I was pregnant with Chloe, and I was close to losing her,” Newton-John recalled about her 1985 pregnancy with her only child.“I went to bed and asked God to save her and, if he did, I would say the Lord’s Prayer every night for the rest of my life and so I have,” she declared. “I think prayer is very powerful.”Newton-John went on to welcome Chloe in January 1986 with her then-husband, Matt Lattanzi.

more than 70 percent of Americans—including a majority of Republicans—support the freedom of same-sex couples to get married. More than 90 percent of Americans support marriage rights for interracial couples, who are also protected under the legislation.But religious-right leaders hostile to legal equality for LGBTQ people were angry that the bill received bipartisan support. They have refused to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling as legitimate, and they have been emboldened by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s call for the court to overturn rulings recognizing and protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and same-sex couples the way it overturned Roe v.

Herschel Walker, the Trump-endorsed  GOP nominee to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, has drawn tremendous criticism from both Democrats and Republicans alike, as the former NFL star hides from debates after hiding three of his four children.Walker is being scrutinized as Fox News tries to prop him up, after The Daily Beast recently revealed he has three other children that he has all but never publicly acknowledged.Christian Walker, who does not identify as gay but says he is attracted to men, is the only Walker child most Americans know about.On Wednesday “Fox & Friends” asked Walker about his other children, and he delivered a demonstrably false answer.READ MORE: ‘Pathological Liar’: Herschel Walker’s Own Advisors Don’t Trust Him, Think He Isn’t Mentally Fit for the Job – ReportAt the Longstreet Cafe in Gainesville, Georgia, apparently packed with an almost entirely white audience (the city is 68% white), Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade asked Walker about the “revelations about three children.”“What do you want people to know about that?” Kilmeade said, offering Walker an open door to discuss hiding the existence for three off his four children despite blasting Black fathers for not taking care of their offspring while declaring himself a good dad.“You have not been public about that,” Kilmeade added.READ MORE: Herschel Walker Claims Black Politicians Have Done “Absolutely Nothing” for Black Community“Well I never would be public about that,” Walker replied, “Because you know one of my kids who wanted to be in the media has gotten a lot of threats – he’s gotten a lot of threats.

The Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, released a new policy regarding LGBTQ students in its Catholic Schools that equates being transgender to being sexually abused. The Diocese, led by Bishop David Ricken, published the new gender policy last month in its Education Policy Manual for the 2022-2023 school year.The manual explains how to “restrict” participation in the Catholic education of transgender students, staff, volunteers, and ally parents.The manual contains a section titled “Catholic Principles of Human Sexuality,” which promote current Church doctrine on sexuality and gender, including the idea that there are only two sexes, that every person’s body, as created by God, cannot be altered through social transition or medical interventions, and that heterosexual marriage is the ideal relationship for raising children and continuing the propagation of the faith.The manual also compares homosexuality or “expressing a gender that is discordant with one’s biological sex” with other sinful behaviors that are viewed as reprehensible or crude among polite society, including: the use of vulgar language, “immodest dress or deportment,” masturbation, pornography, fornication, adultery, cohabitating outside of marriage, obtaining an abortion, and sexual harassment or abuse. Section 5045 of the “Education Policy Manual” mandates that trans and non-binary people be addressed as their gender at birth, rather than based on how they identify.Based on this understanding, schools are expected to refuse to allow trans-identifying children to use their preferred names or pronouns, access gender-specific facilities that do not match their assigned sex at birth, or take puberty blockers to prevent the onset of secondary sex

picked up the garbage can from his front yard and threw it at a drummer in what appears to be the Bangor Protestant Boys Band as they marched down the street. The entire band suddenly rushed the perpetrator, who then ran inside his home. But band members seemingly won the fight when they picked up a large trash can on the man’s property and threw it at — and smashed — his front window.

writing for MSNBC’s ReidOutBlog, Ja’han Jones outlined how the Christian Right is facing renewed moral scrutiny and a crisis of “credibility” — at exactly the moment they have captured the Supreme Court and have begun striking down rights and protections they have long declared to be counter to moral society.Specifically, he argued, the latest rash of sex abuse allegations against conservative Christian institutions puts their moral authority on the line.The Catholic Church has long faced criticism for overlooking and shielding priests accused of molesting children — but now, noted Jones, other denominations are coming under scrutiny for similar alleged misconduct.“First, there’s the scandal still unfolding at Agapè Boarding School, a Christian facility for young men in Missouri that’s facing a slew of child abuse allegations. Agapè pitches guardians on its ability to ‘biblically teach your child the importance of submission to authority and the joys of being an obedient law-abiding citizen,'” wrote Jones.

scandal-ridden institution notorious for alleged anti-LGBTQ views and gay conversion therapy among other high-profile controversies.Pratt, 43, denied the allegations during an interview with Men’s Health for its June cover story, saying that he has never been to the church nor does he know anyone from the house of worship, which once attracted the likes of Justin Bieber.“I never went to Hillsong,” said the “Jurassic World” star, who has been the subject of several controversies in the past months.“I’ve never actually been to Hillsong. I don’t know anyone from that church.”In 2019, “Umbrella Academy” star Elliot Page was one of the first people to slam Pratt over his supposed ties to Hillsong after the “Avenger” star appeared on Stephen Colbert to talk about his faith. “If you are a famous actor and you belong to an organization that hates a certain group of people, don’t be surprised if someone simply wonders why it’s not addressed,” tweeted the actor, who came out as a trans man in 2020.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday appeared to agree it is a “blatant falsehood” that a far-right Christian ministry that has claimed “homosexuals say yes” to pedophilia and promotes anti-LGBTQ lies is a “hate group” that deserves to be placed on the same map and the KKK and neo-Nazis.Justice Thomas’ rant appears as the only opposition to the Court’s decision Monday to not take up a case that would effectively revisit the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v.

Roe v. Wade, the Heritage Foundation announced that it is leading The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a coalition of Christian nationalist, pro-voter suppression, anti-LGBTQ-equality, anti-government, Big Lie-promoting, and Trump-cheerleading groups to “position the movement to take the reins of government” after what they expect will be a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election.

Same-sex marriage has never been more popular in the United States than it is today, according to a recent poll. According to Gallup’s annual Value and Beliefs poll – taken every year during the month of May – 71 percent of Americans claim they support marriage, besting the previous high of 70 percent recorded in 2021.When Gallup first began the poll back in 1996, only 27 percent of Amercians supported gay marriage. Despite this dismal first poll, support for same-sex nuptials would steadily rise in the subsequent years.

U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has hired a far right wing agitator and activist who appeared to support sexual relationships between boys as young as 13 and older men.In 2016 Milo Yiannopoulos said, “I think in the gay world some of the most important, enriching and incredibly life-affirming, important shaping relationships very often between younger boys and older men.”Those remarks were part of a video in which “Yiannopoulos discussed romantic relationships between teenage boys and adult men while being interviewed for the Drunken Peasants podcast in early 2016,” NBC News had reported in 2017.

Controversial US Representative from North Carolina, Madison Cawthorn, lost his seat Wednesday after losing the North Carolina Republican primary to State Senator Chuck Edwards.Edwards, a three-term Senator, will go on to face Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, a Christian minister, in the  elections in November.In May, a video surfaced of him nude and humping a man’s face.Madison Cawthorn says the Daily Mail article about a video showing him butt naked humping his male cousin’s face was “locker room talk.”One problem: there’s no talking in the video. Watch the video and his response here.

By Dr Christopher Pepin-NeffAs Australia celebrates the 2022 International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia & Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on Tuesday, 17 May, another day looms large, the May 21 federal election. Together, these days represent an important statement about where the LGBTQI community is going in 2022 and beyond as we face a resurgence of hate-fueled stigma. Now Peter Dutton stands in the wings to inherit the Prime Minister role from Scott Morrison if the Coalition is re-elected.

seemingly poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and anti-choice activists plotting to implement a nationwide “heartbeat bill” that will ban abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, the “mastermind” of the heartbeat bill strategy is running for Congress and plotting to use the strategy behind the Texas’ 2021 draconian “heartbeat bill” to target schools that teach about LGBTQ issues.Janet Porter, a longtime right-wing conspiracy theorist and religious-right activist, appeared on fellow radical right-wing activist Dave Daubenmire’s “Pass The Salt” program last month.

a stunning unanimous decision, finding that Boston violated the First Amendment free speech rights of an anti-LGBTQ group that had requested the city fly a Christian flag at city hall. That group, Camp Constitution, says part of its mission is to “expose some of the abuses and perversions that have brought our nation and economy so far down.”Like the Supreme Court’s very narrow decision in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, the ruling, which is very specific, runs the risk of being used by the right to initiate more religion-based attacks against minority Americans.The decision, written by retiring justice Stephen Breyer, disturbingly also cites Boston allowing the LGBTQ Pride flag to fly in front of its city hall as an example of how the city granted many other groups’ requests but engaged in discrimination against the Christian group.“Between 2005 and 2017,” the decision reads, “Boston approved the raising of about 50 unique flags for 284 such ceremonies.

convicted in 2011 of sexually assaulting two teen girls he married, claiming they were his “spiritual” wives.In 2007, Jeffs attempted to hang himself in his Utah jail cell and was force-fed at an Arizona jail in 2009. After his conviction, he was put into a medically-induced coma after fasting in a Texas prison and remains behind bars in the Lone Star State to this day. Several of Jeffs’ children and followers have spoken out since his arrest in 2006, but a new wave of accusers — including some who were closest with him — are speaking out in Peacock‘s new documentary, “Preaching Evil: A Wife on the Run with Warren Jeffs.”In an interview with The Post, Jeffson described his father’s abuse and threats of eternal damnation as “emotional” and “manipulative.”“Warren Jeffs controlled everything from the things you eat, to the things you wear and — if he could — even the things you think,” Jeffson told The Post.

blasted the Republican lawmaker who baselessly called her a groomer who supports pedophilia by proving that she’s the better person – and by providing the way to respond to the right’s hateful lies.Her speech on the Michigan Senate floor decimating state Senator Lana Theis has gone viral, making local and national headlines, and appearing on national television.“We have to push back against hateful garbage,” Sen. McMorrow said on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

and launched shortly after Lentz was fired for adultery in November 2020. In an email to congregants in February 2021, now-disgraced church founder Brian Houston announced the investigation was complete and had unearthed “significant ways” the NYC operations had “failed to reflect Hillsong global culture” but offered little further information, The Post reported at the time. Those details have now finally come to light: A version of the 51-page report was leaked to the Christian Post, which on Monday published many of its most shocking allegations, including that working with Lentz “caused” many churchgoers “to suffer from mental illness,” that his wife Laura reportedly once punched a former nanny and current Hillsong pastor in the face “with a closed fist” and that, in addition to his alleged affair with fashion designer Ranin Karim, he reportedly had at least one more with a woman he met at a Brooklyn deli and saved in his phone contacts as “Germany.” The investigation was conducted by the NYC law firm Zukerman Gore Brandeis & Crossman, LLP.

Franklin Graham spent the weekend promoting anti-LGBTQ extremist hate to his nearly 10 million Facebook followers, including by attacking The Walt Disney Company, criticizing the Biden administration’s support of medically-necessary treatment for transgender children, posting a video of his home state’s Lt. Governor preaching jaw-droppingly vulgar attacks on transgender people, and even calling for “regime change” in the United States because he opposes science that support LGBTQ children and teens.Graham kicked off his attacks on Thursday, the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), calling the U.S.

announced this January that he had made the decision to “step aside completely” from leadership of the multinational church he and wife Bobbie founded in 1983.The move followed months of Houston incrementally resigning from his various Hillsong positions amid numerous scandals and an ongoing court case accusing Houston of hiding his late father’s child sexual abuse.Now, Houston has resigned following an internal misconduct investigation that found merit to two women’s years-old complaints he committed “indiscretions” with them while under the influence of pills and alcohol.“We would like to advise you that Pastor Brian Houston has resigned as Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church and the board has accepted his resignation,” the multinational church told members in a website post on Wednesday.“Hillsong Church was birthed out of Brian and Bobbie’s obedience and commitment to the call of God and we are extremely grateful for all that Brian and Bobbie have given to build His house. We ask that you continue to pray for them, and the entire Houston family, during this challenging time.”In addition to Houston’s formal resignation from the church, Hillsong has also purged his preaching from its website, the religion-focused news site Protestia reported.Hillsong did not respond to The Post’s request for further comment.In a statement released on March 18, the church said Houston had sent “inappropriate” text messages to a female staff member, leading to her resignation nearly a decade ago.

which some on TikTok claim doubles as the Shekinah Church, a Pentecostal religious sect that people believe is a cult.Derrick’s sister, Melanie Wilking, spoke at length alongside parents Kelly and Dean Wilking in a video posted Feb. 24, in which they beg for Derrick’s safety and return home, alleging that she is being held hostage by 7M.“You don’t need to cut us off.

The Guatemalan Congress voted to ban same-sex marriages on Tuesday, March 8.The Conservative-dominated congress passed the “Life and Family Protection Law” by 101 to eight votes. The law also sentences women to a minimum of five years in prison for seeking an abortion and bans the teaching of sexual diversity in schools which it defines as “promoting in children and teenagers policies or programs that tend to lead to diversion from their sexual identities at birth.”The law goes on to state that teaching “anything other than heterosexuality is normal” is prohibited. Congressman Walter Felix, left-wing opponent of the law, said, “The human rights of significant parts of the population are being violated.” In order to be passed into law, it must be signed by Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.Lucrecia Hernández, a lawmaker opposed to the law, stated that the “law stigmatizes people, discriminates and foments intolerance and hate speech and crimes.” She has urged Giammattei to veto it. Conservative Giammattei is expected to approve the law.© Star Observer 2022 | For the latest in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTIQ) news in Australia, be sure to visit

gushed with praise for Vladimir Putin this week after the Russian dictator unleashed a military invasion against Ukraine. While somewhat shocking given the timing, Witzke’s admiration of Putin’s “Christian nationalism” has a long precedent among U.S.

running for Congress in her home state of Ohio.When Porter ran for state office in Ohio in 2016, we exposed her long history of radical right-wing extremism:For years, Porter used her daily radio program and weekly column to promote a variety of conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama’s birth, alleging that his election was the result of a massive communist conspiracy. After her prayers failed to prevent Obama from taking office and subsequently cursing America, Porter went to work warning her fellow conservatives that Obama would orchestrate food shortages in order to starve them to death, use a swine flu outbreak as an excuse to lock them up in concentration camps, and use Obamacare to deny them healthcare and eliminate them.Porter has also long warned that increasing acceptance of gay rights will turn Christians into criminals who will eventually be rounded up and tossed in jail, going so far as to try and prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on the issue of gay marriage.

New Zealand has voted to protect LGBTQ youth from so-called “conversion therapy.”In an almost unanimous vote, the New Zealand Parliament voted 112 to eight in favour of banning the controversial  practice. So-called “conversion therapy” is the discredited and dangerous practice that is intended to change, often by force, a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and expression. The New Zealand Herald reported that it is now an offence to “perform conversion practices on a child or young person aged under 18, or on someone with impaired decision-making capacity. Such offences would be subject to up to three years’ imprisonment, and up to five years where it has caused serious harm, irrespective of age.”Leader of End Conversion Therapy NZ Shaneel Lal tweeted, “The ban on conversion therapy is a win for humanity, not just the queer community.