Everything is ready for the wedding between Fabio and Franco, a young Italian gay couple. The announcement has been made, the guest list drawn up, the suits selected and the cake topper chosen. Yet, one important detail is missing: the location.

The possibility of celebrating in Rome, where they live, will depend on the ability of Italy’s parliament to approve a pivotal yet contentious law on same-sex civil unions.

“We don’t have much hope, to be honest. Political opposition, fostered by part of the [Catholic] Church, is fierce,” says Fabio. “ I think we will have to get married abroad, probably Portugal.”

Italian lawmakers have attempted to pass gay rights laws in the past but legislation has stalled amid strong opposition from Catholic parties and centre-right inertia. Matteo Renzi, prime minister, on Sunday repeated his pledge to pass legislation by the end of the year, but his centre-left Democratic party has struggled to find a unified position on the issue.

Pressure increased last month when the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for not giving same-sex couples legal recognition and protection. The country is the only large western European country that does not recognise either civil partnerships or marriage for gay couples, although some cities including Rome and Milan have opened registries for same-sex partnerships, leading to limited local rights.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2f93a1de-4716-11e5-b3b2-1672f710807b.html

The Southern Baptist Convention is deeply in the red, coming in $21 million under budget. That means they will have to lay off 600-800 people from its International Mission Board.

What’s striking is how they’re trying to let everyone down gently by saying this is all part of God’s Plan:

… God is not surprised by these financial realities. He has reigned sovereign over the IMB for 170 years, and He will continue to reign sovereign over the IMB for years to come. God has reigned sovereign over the direction of each personnel’s life to this point, and He will reign sovereign over these lives in the days to come. Because He is sovereign, IMB leadership encourages all of its personnel to seek Him, and ask Him how and where He is guiding each of them for the sake of His name. IMB leadership believes that, without question, God will continue to lead every one of its personnel on mission. It is expected that the 600-800 people who step aside from the IMB in the next six months will not be stepping “onto the sidelines of mission,” but instead will be moving into a new phase of involvement in mission.

That’s one way to put it.

You’re fired! But don’t take it personally. God just wants you to work from home now… without pay. Even though we might have been able to prevent this by not spending $210 million more than we had over the past six years. But Jesus didn’t come by to say no, so we figured it was cool.

I’m sure God will also wipe away the tears of everyone who’s about to be let go.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/08/28/southern-baptist-convention-will-lay-off-hundreds-of-people-as-part-of-gods-sovereign-plan/

The Missouri State University chapter of Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) recently asked students to tell them “what 3 words they’d use to describe God”.

One of those students wanted to know what this was all about, so she attended their meeting last night. After singing worship songs and hearing announcements, a group leader revealed a word cloud with the most popular responses from the survey.

“There was an audible gasp,” says the tipster:



You can see a giant “Fake” right in the middle. It’s surrounded by “racist,” “myth,” “egotistical,” “imaginary,” “delusion,” “controlling,” “sadistic,” and “narcissistic.”

Looks about right, don’t you think?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/08/28/when-christians-asked-people-to-describe-god-in-three-words-the-plan-backfired/

When most people thinks about Las Vegas they picture some combination of gambling, burlesque, night clubs and legalized prostitution—the pleasures that earned Vegas the nickname Sin City. But when Sociologist Lori Fazzino thinks about Las Vegas, she pictures churches.

Seventy-seven percent of Las Vegas residents say they are religious, mostly Christian; and Vegas caters to a largely Christian population of tourists, many of whom party hard on Saturday night and then attend one of the 30 churches surrounding the strip on Sunday. And yet, the city’s public image makes it a target for revival meetings, “church planting” and missionary outreach by conservative Christians who see the city as ripe for redemption. According to Fazzino, that makes Sin City a fascinating place to study religious belief and non-belief.

Fazzino is an instructor and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Nevada, and a former Evangelical Christian. Her research explores social movements and identity, religious conversion and deconversion, and in particular how people leaving their religion arrive at a new worldview and community. In this interview she discusses challenges faced by secular groups and individuals in a city that is enamored with both sin and salvation.

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/22/atheist_are_as_moral_as_theists_an_interview_with_a_sin_city_religious_sociologist_partner/

A pregnant teenager's family smashed open her concrete tomb when they believed they heard her screaming the day after she was buried, it has been reported.

Video showed relatives of Neysi Perez, from Honduras, desperately hammering at the concrete surrounding her coffin.

They reportedly found the glass viewing window in the 16-year-old's coffin had been smashed and her fingertips were bruised.
Neysi's family rushed her to hospital, but medics found no sign of life and could not revive her. The teenager, who had been three-months pregnant, was later reburied in the same mausoleum in La Entrada General Cemetery.

Perez had initially suffered an apparent panic attack outside her home in La Entrada following a burst of gunfire. When she started foaming at the mouth, her parents believed she had become possessed by an evil spirit and called the local priest to perform an exorcism.

When she became lifeless, she was taken to hospital where doctors pronounced her dead. She was then buried at the cemetery.

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/pregnant-teenager-neysi-perez-wakes-up-in-coffin-a-day-after-her-funeral-10472094.html

New science from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory may finally have an answer to a question billions of years old: Where did life come from?

The study, led by Laura M. Barge and published in German science journal Angewandte Chemie, demonstrates how vents on the ocean floor can generate enough electricity to power a small lightbulb. It was a eureka moment, one that seems to support a theory first formed in 1989: that these ocean floor vents were the source of an electric zap that may have shocked the first life on Earth into existence, like a miniature version of Frankenstein's monster.

The research seems to run contrary to the religious theory of intelligent design. Life may have begun with a spark — but if so, it wasn't divine. It was a tiny but constant jolt of electricity on the ocean floor, the result of organic chemistry.

http://mic.com/articles/124083/where-did-life-come-from-new-science-confirms-theory

Kentucky Clerk: It's My Job To Tell Gays They're Going To Hell
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 8/26/2015 1:20 pm

As we reported, local Kentucky official Casey Davis said in a radio interview earlier this week that he will defy a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples even “if it takes my life.”

The Casey County clerk also told West Virginia radio host Tom Roten on Monday that he believes that, as a Christian, he should be exempt from performing such job duties because his religion requires him to not only oppose same-sex marriage but also to tell gay people that they are going to Hell unless they repent and get washed in “the blood of Jesus Christ.”

“When you stand for what’s right and when you tell someone of the danger that they are in, and I think that when a person lives a lifestyle of sin whether it is homosexuality or drunkenness or drug addiction or adultery or thievery or any kind of sin that you continue in or live in, you are endangering yourself of spending eternity in Hell,” Davis said. “So in my view of what the Bible says, when you’re truly loving someone, you stand and you lovingly tell them, ‘This is not the way to Heaven, this is not the way of right.’”

Davis continued to claim that he is the victim of religious persecution: “I think that this is a war on Christianity, I think same-sex marriage just simply brought it to the surface, but it is a war on Christianity.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/kentucky-clerk-its-my-job-tell-gays-theyre-going-hell

Besides the tragedy that guns can bring, there is no deadlier combination for moral and legal responsibility than guns and God. Just ask the family of Caroline Sparks, a two-year-old toddler who was shot with a .22 rifle by her brother- who was five years old, and received the gun as a birthday gift.

What is most difficult to comprehend is the family’s response. Little Caroline was described by her family in the video as a “church-going girl who enjoyed singing and playing outdoors,” as if she understood and chose to accept Divine Revelation at 2 – and go to church.

Acknowledging the tragedy, Caroline’s uncle said “It’s just tragic…It’s something that you can’t prepare for,” as if you should ever have to. The family believes that Caroline is in a “better place.”

The grandmother said “It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess…I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.”

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/family-of-toddler-shot-dead-by-5-year-old-brother-it-was-gods-will/