In
this Issue:
Commentary:
Let’s put
more of the Bible on Ballot
H4PJ Equality Coalition: GLBT Measures on Colorado Ballot
Angels in America Tickets on Sale: Tickets expected to sell
fast
Investors to attack Shell over environment
Christian-ism: Believer spells out the difference in faith
and politics
Commentary: Let's put more of the Bible on
ballot
By Ed Quillen
Originally published by the Denver Post
 Given our penchant for initiatives, referenda, constitutional
amendments and the like, Colorado ballots can be long and
confusing. This year's promises to be even more complex
than usual, since there could be as many as four
marriage-related items.
One is already assured of a spot. It's the Domestic Partnership
Benefits and Responsibilities Act, and last week the General
Assembly agreed to refer it to voters. Also called "1344" for
its legislative bill number, it would give same-sex couples
some rights, such as the ability to make medical decisions
for each other and to adopt each other's children.
That
is much too fair and humane to suit some Coloradans, and
so there are petitions circulating for an amendment to
the state constitution to supersede 1344 by forbidding
any legal recognition of any status "similar to marriage."
To counter that, there's a proposal to protect 1344 by
amending the state constitution to declare that the provisions
of 1344 are not "similar to marriage." And there's
another constitutional amendment proposed for the ballot
(this one designed to ensure a heavy right-thinker turnout
at the polls) that would duplicate a state law defining marriage
as the union between one man and one woman.
So we have 1344, a referred domestic-partnership
law. We may see the anti-1344 constitutional amendment,
the protect-1344 constitutional amendment, and the
one-man one-woman constitutional amendment.
The simplest solution to all this is one I proposed several
years ago: Enact a domestic-partnership law that applies
to all couples, and remove "marriage" from all
state laws.
Why? As the right-thinkers often remind us, "marriage
is a sacrament." Consider other sacraments, like baptism,
confirmation and penance. Thanks to certain enlightened provisions
in the state and federal bills of rights, the government
does not tell churches how to perform these sacraments, nor
who may receive them. It's entirely up to the church, as
it should be.
Click
here to continue reading.
H4PJ
Equality Coaliton Update
H4PJ plans to champion Equality
in Colorado and 5 other states that are considering discriminatory
amendments. However, the cost of producing religious based
material calling for equality is large. Focus on the Family
and other religious extremists will spend millions
in Colorado alone on writing discriminatory into the
constitution forever! Join the thousands of people
that have.
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You
can support this cause in several ways:
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Tickets
on sale for Angels in America
Sunday, May 21 | 6:30 pm |
Bath House Cultural Center
 Hope
for Peace & Justice presents a benefit performance
of Tony Kushner’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning
epic Angels in America-Part One: Millennium Approaches
on Sunday, May 21 at 6:30 p.m.
The performance
will be at the Bath House Cultural Center, 521 E. Lawther
Drive, Dallas, TX 75218, on White Rock Lake.
The cast
features Hope for Peace & Justice staff member David
Plunkett as Joseph Porter Pitt. By purchasing your tickets
to this performance, you help us raise money for important
campaigns, programs and workshops. Your $50 ticket includes
an invitation to a post-show dessert reception.
Click
here to buy tickets.
In the
first Dallas production of this “gay fantasia on
national themes” in more than a decade, Risk Theatre
Initiative (RTI) offers an intimate, non-traditional presentation.
Widely considered to be the most ambitious American play
of our time, Angels in America transports it’s audience
from earth to heaven, from New York City to Salt Lake City
to Antarctica, from the frightening confines of an agoraphobic’s
mind to the crushing guilt of leaving a loved one you can
no longer love properly, to the bright white light of hope
regained in the face of ultimate loss. In what is becoming
a tradition for the young company, RTI defies expectation
and perceived limitations with Kushner's intensely human,
politically charged and theatrically magical exploration
of change and loss on personal, national and metaphysical
levels.
Click
here to buy tickets today!
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Hope
for Peace & Justice needs your support to continue
to provide a progressive, religious response to the
Religious Right. Donations, at any amount, are greatly
appreciated.
Click
here to Donate to H4PJ |
Investors to attack Shell over environment
by John Madeley
Originally Published by The Observer (UK)
 Royal Dutch Shell will come under pressure from shareholders
at its annual meeting in The Hague and London on 16 May
to clean up its environmental act.
A strongly worded shareholder resolution calls for 'a
major improvement in Shell's performance in terms
of community and stakeholder consultation, risk analysis,
and social and environmental impact analysis'.
And the oil and gas company is facing a double whammy
over its performance: an EU-funded project, Advance,
has assessed the environmental performance of 65
European manufacturers for 'sustainable value', or
non-financial corporate performance in monetary terms.
The highest ranked company at present, getting a
sustainable value of more than $33.4 billion, is
DaimlerChrysler. Shell ranks lowest on the list,
with a negative value of $230 billion.
Advance claims the survey is the most comprehensive of
its kind, but Shell says it does 'not take full account
of sustainability practices, as its focus is quite narrow,
and in such a limiting survey the oil and gas sector will
factor poorly'.
The shareholder resolution was initiated by the faith-based
Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility, which
has monitored Shell for years and has the backing of 130
of its shareholders, representing almost a million shares.
The council claims that Shell's Corrib pipeline project
in County Mayo, Ireland, 'indicates a policy deficit' with
regard to accepting environmental impact assessments done
by other firms. It also points to oil spills on Sakhalin
Island, Russia, and to last December's contempt of court
proceedings filed against Shell Nigeria for its 'failure
to stop the flaring of poisonous waste gases' in the Niger
Delta.
Shell
says it is committed to complying 'with all relevant local
standards'.
My Problem with Christian-ism
A believer spells out the difference between faith and a
political agenda
by Andrew Sullivan
Originally published by Time Magazine
 Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the
religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about
faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social
conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion
has been taken away from them.
The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian
right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe
strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the
corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics
who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues
like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith
society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless
respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their
core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have
no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a
single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life
are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors'
choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the
contrast helps them understand their own faith better.
And there are those who simply believe that, by definition,
God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and
souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be
so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate
of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the
role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for
many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen
faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means
having great humility in the face of God and an enormous
reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on
anyone else.
I would
say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into
one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people
of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse
by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one
political party, the Republicans, and believe that their
religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides
are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and
the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue
may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put
our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is
a conservative Republican?
Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party
of death" because of many Democrats' view that some
moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester
abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops.
Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political
opponents "godless," the title of her new book.
And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote
has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base.
What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would
be to construct something called the religious left.
Many of us who are Christians and not supportive
of the religious right are not on the left either.
In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of
the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican,
by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus
insisted. What part of that do we not understand?
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here to continue reading.
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