Latest news with #SouthernBaptistConvention
News.com.au
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘Scared': Ellen DeGeneres reveals huge secret about her Hollywood pals
Ellen DeGeneres has claimed that she knows of A-list actors that are still 'scared' to come out as gay. During her last ever stand-up tour, the infamous former chat show host joked that she had been 'kicked out of show business twice' - the first time being when she came out as gay in 1997. In a new interview, one of the first she's done since leaving show business and moving to the countryside in the UK, DeGeneres opened up about how little she feels the entertainment industry has evolved since she was first shunned. 'If it was [better], all these other people that are actors and actresses that I know they're gay, they'd be out, but they're not, because it's still a problem,' she said during an appearance at Sunday at the Everyman. 'People are still scared.' She added that it's 'a really hard decision' that doesn't suit everyone, adding that things are better today 'in some ways' but not others. DeGeneres went on to reference a controversial move by the Southern Baptist Convention to endorse the reversal of a Supreme Court case allowing same-sex marriage. At the time of writing, nine states in the US have introduced bills that could do the same while under the rule of President Donald Trump. 'The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage,' she said. 'They're trying to literally stop it from happening in the future and possibly reverse it. Portia and I are already looking into it, and if they do that, we're going to get married here.' 'I wish we were at a place where it was not scary for people to be who they are. I wish that we lived in a society where everybody could accept other people and their differences. 'So until we're there, I think there's a hard place to say we have huge progress.' Elsewhere in the interview, DeGeneres confessed that she has already grown a little 'bored' of her new life. When quizzed if she would ever consider launching a chat show in the UK, she responded: 'I mean, I wish it did, because I would do the same thing here. I would love to do that again, but I just feel like people are watching on their phones, or people aren't really paying attention as much to televisions, because we're so inundated with information and entertainment.' She added that while she didn't know what she would do in the future, one thing was for sure: She'd pick her next move 'very carefully'. 'I just don't know what that is yet,' added the star. 'I want to have fun, I want to do something. I do like my chickens but I'm a little bit bored.'
Atlantic
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
I Left My Church—And Found Christianity
A decade after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Southern Baptist Convention wants to roll it back. In June, the SBC overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution, 'On Restoring Moral Clarity Through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family,' which defines marriage as an exclusively heterosexual covenant and calls for the overturning of Obergefell. For many Americans, gay marriage feels like a settled issue. For Southern Baptists and others who share their theology, the question of the legality of gay marriage is still open. In their view, political and theological opposition is the only possible Christian response to gay marriage, and continuing to challenge marriage equality is a moral duty. The Church they have shaped has no room for the alternative path that many gay Christians have found: not leaving our religion, but embracing our sexuality alongside our faith. I grew up in conservative, evangelical churches. For my undergraduate degree, I attended Union University, a Southern Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee. I graduated in 2013, and in the years leading up to Obergefell I saw how the growing cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships was haunting Southern Baptist leaders, who viewed it as an existential threat. Their idea of Christian faithfulness in America became synonymous with fighting for a narrow, biblically literalist sexual ethic to be the law of the land. The resolution from the Southern Baptist Convention echoes the arguments I heard as a student: Secular laws are meant to reflect God's moral order, and calling a same-sex partnership a marriage is flatly lying. In one of my ethics classes at Union, the professor insisted that Christians should strongly oppose the legalization of gay marriage as a matter of love for our neighbor. We should not let others enter into something we knew would be destructive, no matter how much they might think they wanted it. One of my classmates suggested that people might be born gay. Would this require a more compassionate response? The professor was unfazed. 'I'm sure there is a biological component, and that doesn't change my view. You can have cancer that is not your fault, and some people are born with cancer of the soul.' David A. Graham: New, ominous signs for gay rights keep emerging The threat Southern Baptists perceived was not just to the social order at large. I heard dire warnings that the legalization of gay marriage would become the catalyst for renewed Christian persecution in America. I heard sermons describing a future where our Church would be dismantled because we refused to perform same-sex marriages. Gay marriage was not a matter of individual freedom; the real freedom at stake was our religious liberty. These predictions have not come to fruition in the 10 years since Obergefell, but the fears persist. In 'On Restoring Moral Clarity,' it crops up in references to laws compelling people to 'speak falsehoods about sex and gender' and the right of each person to 'speak the truth without fear or coercion.' Though churches still have the freedom to refuse to perform gay marriages, ordain openly gay people, or serve Communion to those in same-sex relationships, the idea that Christians are legally forced to accept LGBTQ identities remains a powerful rhetorical tool. My alma mater also benefits from religious exemptions to nondiscrimination laws: In 2020, Union University rescinded its admission of a student entering its nursing program after learning that he was gay. As it did then, the current student handbook at Union prohibits 'homosexual activities' and the 'promotion, advocacy, defense, or ongoing practice of a homosexual lifestyle.' Despite national reporting and a flood of stories from gay alumni about the damage these policies caused, the university continues to exclude LGBTQ students. When I was a student at Union, I did not know I was a lesbian. Maybe it is more accurate to say that I could not know. I believed in and yearned for the God the Church had taught me about. I could not reconcile what I had been raised to believe God wanted from me with the truth of my sexuality. When I finally realized I was gay, I was no longer in the Southern Baptist Church. After graduating from Union, I joined a congregation in the Anglican Church of North America, a conservative denomination formed in a split from the Episcopal Church over women's ordination and the inclusion of gay members. My new church's leaders felt no need to lament Obergefell when it passed, but they still taught that same-sex relationships were antithetical to Christianity. When I came out to them in 2018, the choice set before me was either lifelong celibacy or leaving my beloved community behind. According to my Southern Baptist education, I was also choosing whether to leave God behind. The evangelical voices in my life framed my dilemma as a choice between faithfulness to God and weakness—a capitulation to secular logic and a selfish desire for pleasure. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus calls on his disciples to 'deny themselves and take up their cross.' Gay Christians are all too familiar with these words as weapons. Everyone has a cross, we are told, and it just so happens that ours is living without the romantic partnership we are built to flourish within. Pastors and mentors assured me that I was following God's design, so my sacrifice would eventually lead me to 'have life … abundantly,' which Jesus promises in John 10:10, no matter how painful the interim. The final sentence of 'On Restoring Moral Clarity' says that Christians proceed 'trusting that' God's 'ways lead to human flourishing.' No amount of despair, suffering, and death (most literally reflected in increased suicidality among LGBTQ people of faith) experienced by gay Christians has managed to challenge this presupposition. It is a matter of faith that our suffering is godly. We continue to receive counsel to take up our cross in the hope of a distant resurrection. I spent years telling myself that I could love my Church enough to make up for all the love I would never have. I hoped that the emptiness that burned in my chest could be transformed. It was only one rule. Could I really not follow just one rule? But that one rule was not one simple sacrifice. It was the total subjugation of my ability to give and receive love, an all-encompassing demand of fealty to the authority of my Church. The ground shifted under me as I fought to stay in the Church. By the summer of 2020, I was in a deep crisis of faith. I saw gay Christians happily married while retaining their commitment to faith, and I could not in good conscience deny the Holy Spirit I saw at work in these relationships. I realized that the choice was not between God and my desire for a relationship. It was between my church community and my own integrity. My decision to leave was agonizing. I sobbed through conversations where a pastor recited our Church's theology of marriage. I prayed for a way forward. In the end, the only way forward was out. Today I work for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), at a congregation that fully affirms all LGBTQ people. I am effectively estranged from the communities that I grew up in and committed to as an adult. At first, I worried that embracing my sexuality alongside my faith meant choosing a less serious, less disciplined form of Christianity. Instead, I have found that in leaving my Church, I found only deeper love for God. The cross I took up did not turn out to be forgoing romantic partnership for the rest of my life. Instead, it was listening to the voice of the Spirit within me even when it cost me more than I knew I had. I was not surprised to lose friendships and the network of support that I had had in the evangelical Church. What took longer to accept was the unmooring of my identity, the need to find a new center for my spirituality once I let go of the theology that shaped me. To affirm the goodness of my sexuality, I had to find a new home. Stephanie Burt: A strange time to be trans In my Southern Baptist university and the evangelical Churches I grew up attending, I often heard that opposition to gay marriage was a sincerely held religious belief that Christians should be allowed to practice. I never heard this same language extended to Christians who affirmed the goodness of same-sex relationships. I heard only that theological affirmation of LGBTQ identities was a weak attempt to appease secular culture. For many Christians, affirmation of queer identities is an equally sincere religious conviction. The churches that embrace LGBTQ people as beloved members of the community are motivated by Christian love for God and neighbor. We see the beauty of God's design in our real, embodied lives, and we seek human flourishing that is more than an abstract promise of finding meaning in the pain. The gay and trans Christians I know are the most committed people of faith I have ever met. We had every reason to leave, and yet we are still here. We are here because we still believe in Jesus, and we still believe the Spirit works through this beloved, holy, and achingly human Church. Historically, the Church has seen marriage as a vocation, a calling from God to be formed by a particular way of life. When gay Christians seek to commit their life to their partner through marriage in the eyes of God and the law, they are asking for the religious liberty to act on their sincerely held convictions. For 10 years, Obergefell has protected our right to practice our faith as our conscience dictates. May we continue to have the freedom to love as God leads us to for many generations.
CBS News
05-07-2025
- Climate
- CBS News
North Texas fire departments head to central Texas to help with search & rescue efforts
The search and rescue teams from several North Texas fire departments are in central Texas, assisting after flash flooding left dozens of people dead. At least 27 fatalities have been reported so far, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said in an email Saturday morning. The dead include 18 adults and 9 children. Six of the adults and one child remain unidentified, Leitha said. Officials have conducted more than 160 air rescues, Leitha said. In total, 850 uninjured and 8 injured people have been rescued as of Saturday, he said. The Fort Worth Fire Department sent two teams to the area, including 15 divers and swift water team members. Dallas Fire Rescue has deployed a "water-squad" team of six people. The Denton Fire Department also sent a team of six people with two boats. The Southern Baptist of Texas Convention and Disaster Relief is also sending volunteers to the area to help out. Search and rescue operations are ongoing There are hundreds of people on the ground from various units helping with search and rescue operations, officials said, which include drones and helicopters. "We brought in over 100 troopers this morning," Col. Freeman Martin, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said during Friday night's news briefing. "And they've worked all day, rescues, high water vehicles, boats, rescue divers, seven rescue helicopters with hoist capabilities." The governor signed a disaster declaration for several counties during the news conference Friday night, saying it "ensures all the counties will have access to every tool, strategy, personnel that the state of Texas can provide to them, which will be limitless." "We will stop at nothing to ensure that every asset and person and plane, whatever is needed, is going to be involved in the process of rescuing every last person and ensure everybody involved in this is going to be fully accounted for," Abbott said. Earlier Friday, Abbott asked that Texas residents "heed guidance from state and local officials and monitor local forecasts to avoid driving into flooded areas." Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in a statement posted to social media that he had spoken to Mr. Trump, as well as other state officials. "President Trump committed ANYTHING Texas needs," Cruz said. Lorena Gullen, who owns a restaurant right next to an RV park that was affected by the floods, said "raging water" swept away vehicles, some with people still inside. Residents at the park had been celebrating the Fourth of July.
The Hill
16-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Have gay rights stalled with Trump back in power?
When President Trump attended a production of 'Les Misérables' in Washington last week, there were four men dressed in women's clothes seated in the audience. Yes, they put on a daring show of drag queen power at the Kennedy Center, knowing that Trump was coming to the play. The drama before the play led to applause for the drag performers. Trump got none of the traditional standing ovation for a president. That 'in-your-face' moment for the gay rights movement comes after Trump fired the Kennedy Center's board earlier this year, having condemned them for allowing drag performers on stage in the past. 'No more drag shows or other anti-American propaganda' Trump wrote on social media in February. And it comes as the Southern Baptist Convention voted last week to lobby for the return of laws banning gay marriage. Also, it comes after right-wing-inspired bans on library books dealing with homosexuality. And there is no forgetting Trump's 2024 campaign advertising positioning former Vice President Kamala Harris as standing for transgender people: 'Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.' As the Kennedy Center protest showed, public acts of resistance to Trump are rising, especially calls to fight for and assert gay and transgender rights. A new Gallup poll shows only 38 percent of Republicans now agree that 'gay or lesbian relations' are morally acceptable. That is a steep drop from 2022, when 56 percent of Republicans said homosexuality was acceptable. Similarly, Republican support for same-sex marriage has dropped to 41 percent, according to Gallup, down sharply from a high of 55 percent in 2021. In contrast, 88 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of independents continue to support marriage equality. That 47-point gap in opinion between Democrats and Republicans is the widest Gallup has recorded since it began tracking public opinion on this issue 29 years ago. And with Trump in the White House, the poll finds only 38 percent of Republicans agree that gay behavior is moral. That is a different galaxy from the one where 86 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents see no moral sin in same-sex relations. Open opposition to gay rights among Trump-friendly Republicans picked up in 2022 after Justice Clarence Thomas, writing in opposition to abortion rights, argued that the court should revisit the 2015 ruling that the Constitution gives gay people the right to marry. Nervous gay rights supporters responded by pressing Congress to pass, in 2022, the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act. It requires every state, no matter its state laws on gays, to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states as legal. But the fight has since become more intense as activists face the reality that Trump's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs include reversing acceptance of gay rights. Senate Democrats last week pressed to finish work on a bill to stop the Trump administration from kicking transgender people out of the military. That action, based on an executive order signed by Trump on his first day in office, has already led to more than 1,000 servicemembers choosing to leave the military before they are expelled. In May, the Supreme Court ruled that the ban could take effect while courts determine if it is constitutional. 'If you are willing to risk your life for our country and you can do the job, it shouldn't matter if you are gay, straight, transgender, Black, White, or anything else,' said one of the bill's cosponsors, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). But there is a twist to this political story. As resistance to Trump rises among Democrats on tariffs, mass deportations and belittling gays, splits remain among MAGA opponents. Several old-school Black, white and Latino politicians in Washington are uneasy that the public will accept a movement that highlights gay rights to go along with Black, Latino and women's rights. 'Being gay is not the same as being Black' is a refrain I heard again and again while working on my new book on race relations. Their message is that older, socially conservative, church-going Democratic voters can be lost by aggressively backing gay rights. Thirty years ago, a conservative Republican friend told me a joke: 'What's the difference between being Black and being gay? If you're Black, you don't have to tell your mom.' Democrats split in 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' a policy designed to allow gay Americans to serve in the armed forces if they kept their sexuality private. Those arguments from old-school Democrats faded in 2011 as gay Americans won the legal right to serve openly in the military without fear of discharge or discrimination. Just four years later, the Supreme Court upheld the right of gay couples to marry in a 5-to-4 decision. It is curious that despite Trump's distaste for gay rights, he appointed Scott Bessent, an openly gay billionaire, to serve as Treasury secretary. President Biden appointed an openly gay veteran, Pete Buttigieg, as Transportation secretary. Both men are married with children. Their sexual orientation was neither a qualification nor a disqualifier. That, in itself, is a milestone. Roughly 9 percent of Americans now identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to polls. Wouldn't it be something if, in 2028, the presidential contest is between two gay men? Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.'
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Southern Baptists' call for the US Supreme Court to overturn its same-sex marriage decision is part of a long history of opposing women's and LGBTQ+ people's rights
The Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members over the past two decades and faces an ongoing sexual abuse crisis. At its June 2025 annual meeting, however, neither of those issues took up as much time as controversial social issues, including the denomination's stance on same-sex marriage. The group called for the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges – the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage – and the creation of laws that 'affirm marriage between one man and one woman.' Messengers – Southern Baptists' word for delegates from local churches – also asked for laws that would 'reflect the moral order revealed in Scripture and nature.' They also decried declining fertility rates, commercial surrogacy, Planned Parenthood, 'willful childlessness,' the normalization of 'transgender ideology,' and gender-affirming medical care. This detailed list targeting women's and LGBTQ+ rights was justified by an appeal to a God-ordained created order, as defined by Southern Baptists' interpretation of the Bible. In this created order, sex and gender are synonymous and are irrevocably defined by biology. The heterosexual nuclear family is the foundational institution of this order, with the father dominant over his wife and children – and children are a necessity if husbands and wives are to be faithful to God's design for the family. The resolution, On Restoring Moral Clarity through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family, passed easily in a denomination that was taken over from more moderate Southern Baptists by fundamentalists in the early 1990s, largely in response to women's progress in society and in the denomination. Southern Baptists were always conservative on issues of gender and sexuality. As I was entering a Southern Baptist seminary in the early 1980s, the denomination seemed poised to embrace social progress. I watched the takeover firsthand as a student and then as a professor of women and gender studies who studies Southern Baptists. This new resolution is the latest in a long history of Southern Baptist opposition to the progress of women and LGBTQ+ people. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Southern Baptists began to embrace the women's movement. Women started to attend Southern Baptist seminaries in record numbers, many claiming a call to serve as pastors. While Southern Baptist acceptance of LGBTQ+ people lagged far behind its nascent embrace of women's rights, progress did seem possible. Then in 1979, a group of Southern Baptist fundamentalists organized to wrest control of the denomination from the moderates who had led it for decades. Any hope for progress on changes regarding LGBTQ+ rights in the denomination quickly died. Across the next two decades, advances made by women, such as being ordained and serving as senior pastors, eroded and disappeared. The SBC had passed anti-gay resolutions in the 1970s defining homosexuality as 'deviant' and a 'sin.' But under the new fundamentalist rule, the SBC became even more vehemently anti-gay and anti-trans. In 1988, the SBC called homosexuality a 'perversion of divine standards,' 'a violation of nature and natural affections,' 'not a normal lifestyle,' and 'an abomination in the eyes of God.' In 1991, they decried government funding for the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference as a violation of 'the proper role and responsibility of government' because of its encouragement of 'sexual immorality.' Predictably, across the years, the convention spoke out against every effort to advance LGBTQ+ rights. This included supporting the Boy Scouts' ban of gay scouts, opposing military service by LGBTQ+ people, boycotting Disney for its support of LGBTQ+ people, calling on businesses to deny LGBTQ+ people domestic partner benefits and employment nondiscrimination to protect LGBTQ+ people, and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act that limited marriage to a woman and a man. The gender and sexuality topic, however, that has received the most attention from the convention has been marriage equality. Since 1980, the SBC has passed 22 resolutions that touch on same-sex marriage. The SBC passed its first resolution against same-sex marriage in 1996 after the Hawaii Supreme Court indicated the possibility it could rule in favor of same-sex marriage. The court never decided the issue because Hawaii's Legislature passed a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In 1998, the convention amended its faith statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, to define marriage as 'the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment.' The denomination passed its next resolution in 2003 in response to the Vermont General Assembly's establishment of civil unions. The resolution opposed any efforts to validate same-sex marriages or partnerships, whether legislative, judicial or religious. In 2004, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriages in that state, the convention called for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. It reiterated this call in 2006. When the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the SBC passed another resolution in 2008 warning of the dire consequences of allowing lesbians and gay men to marry, as people from other states would marry in California and return home to challenge their states' marriage bans. In 2011, the convention offered its support for the Defense of Marriage Act, followed in 2012 by a denunciation of the use of civil rights language to argue for marriage equality. The resolution argues that homosexuality 'does not qualify as a class meriting special protections, like race and gender.' When Obergefell was before the Supreme Court, the SBC called on the court to deny marriage equality. After Obergefell was decided in favor of same-sex marriage, the convention asked for Congress to pass the First Amendment Defense Act, which would have prohibited the federal government from discriminating against people based on their opposition to same-sex marriage. That same resolution also offers its support to state attorneys general challenging transgender rights. This was not the first time the SBC had spoken about transgender issues. As early as 2007, the denomination expressed its opposition to allowing transgender people to constitute a protected class in hate crimes legislation. In 2014, the convention stated its belief that gender is fixed and binary and subsequently that trans people should not be allowed gender-affirming care and that government officials should not validate transgender identity. In 2016, the denomination opposed access for transgender people to bathrooms matching their gender identities. In 2021, the convention invoked women's rights – in a denomination famous for its resistance to women's equality – as a reason to undermine trans rights. In its resolution opposing the proposed Equality Act, which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications, the SBC argued, 'The Equality Act would undermine decades of hard-fought civil rights protections for women and girls by threatening competition in sports and disregarding the privacy concerns women rightly have about sharing sleeping quarters and intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex.' This most recent resolution from June 2025 returns to the themes of fixed and binary gender, a divinely sanctioned hierarchical ordering of gender, and marriage as an institution limited to one woman and one man. While claiming these beliefs are 'universal truths,' the resolution argues that Obergefell is a 'legal fiction' because it denies the biological reality of male and female. Going further, this resolution claims that U.S. law on gender and sexuality should be based on the Bible. The duty of lawmakers, it states, is to 'pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law – about marriage, sex, human life, and family – and to oppose any law that denies or undermines what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' By taking no action on sexual abuse while focusing its efforts on issues of gender and sexuality, the convention affirmed its decades-long conservative trajectory. It also underlined its willingness to encourage lawmakers to impose these standards on the rest of the nation. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Susan M. Shaw, Oregon State University Read more: Data on sexual orientation and gender is critical to public health – without it, health crises continue unnoticed Southern Baptist Convention votes to expel two churches with female pastors – a religion scholar explains how far back these battles go How women in the Southern Baptist Convention have fought for decades to be ordained Susan M. Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
