The north Aceh district of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD), a predominantly Muslim province in Indonesia that has implemented sharia law since 2001, has passed legislation ordering separate classrooms for male and female students from secondary school level through university. The bylaw, or qanun, was approved on April 30 by district legislators. According to Fauzan Hamzah, Read more
Media have this week reported that Peter Westmore, the head of the leading Australian Catholic-based lobby group campaigning against same sex marriage in Australia, attended his daughter’s wedding to another woman in New Zealand last November. The headline for the news item read “Catholic crusader Peter Westmore blesses daughter’s gay marriage in New Zealand.” Liberal Read more
The city of Houston has issued subpoenas demanding a group of pastors turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or Annise Parker, the city’s first openly lesbian mayor. And those ministers who fail to comply could be held in contempt of court. “The city’s subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both Read more
Former Football Ferns player Melissa Ray and sales representative Natasha (Tash) Vitali won a ZM Radio competition to have an all-expenses-paid wedding in the Unitarian Church in Ponsonby at 8am on the day same sex marriage became legal last August. They went by horse-drawn carriage to a reception at the Cloud on the Auckland waterfront, Read more
Two hundred and twenty Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people from throughout New Zealand and the Pacific are at Waitangi to thrash out the direction the church will take in the next couple of years. Over the next three days, they will discuss its role in helping alleviate child poverty, and where it goes in Read more
A big gay rainbow shone out over Auckland for the annual Big Gay Out yesterday. And being an election year, a rainbow array of politicians scrambled to be seen and heard at one of the biggest gay events of the year. Prime Minister John Key, a regular attendee, arrived fresh from seeing Australia’s leader Tony Read more