Latest news with #SouthernBaptists
USA Today
24-07-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Could the Supreme Court revisit marriage equality? New appeal offers chance
Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, wants the high court to overturn that decision. WASHINGTON – A former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2015 because of her religious beliefs is hoping the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority wants to scrap the court's 10-year-old decision extending marriage rights to LGBTQ+ couples. Kim Davis asked the court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges in an appeal filed on July 24 about the compensation she was ordered to pay a couple after denying them a marriage license. Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel, the conservative legal group representing Davis, said that decision threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman. "The High Court now has the opportunity to finally overturn this egregious opinion from 2015," Staver said in a statement. More: He was at the center of a Supreme Court case that changed gay marriage. Now, he's worried. Mary Bonauto, a senior director with GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, said Davis' legal team is trying to shoehorn an opportunity to relitigate Obergefell into a narrow legal question of whether the former clerk should have to pay damages. "There's good reason for the Supreme Court to deny review in this case rather than unsettle something so positive for couples, children, families, and the larger society as marriage equality," Bonauto said in an emailed response. Davis attracted international attention when she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, landing her in jail on a contempt of court charge for five days. When Davis was sued by David Ermold and David Moore, she argued legal protections for public officials prevented the challenge. Lower courts let the suit proceed and the Supreme Court in 2020 declined to intervene. More: Southern Baptists vote to seek repeal of historic same-sex marriage ruling Justice Clarence Thomas wrote at the time that while Davis' case was a "stark reminder" of the consequences of Obergefell, it didn't "cleanly present" questions about that decision. After the district court ruled against Davis, she was ordered to pay $100,000 in damages to the couple and $260,000 for their attorneys fees and expenses. Her appeal to the Supreme Court opens with comments made by the dissenting justices in the 5-4 decision issued 10 years ago. Since then, the court's makeup has changed to a 6-3 conservative supermajority. Opinion: I was the named 'opposition' in Obergefell v. Hodges. I've never been happier to lose. Still, Carl Esbeck, an expert on religious liberty at the University of Missouri School of Law, said there's "not a chance" the court is going to overturn Obergefell. That's in part because Congress passed a law in 2022 guaranteeing federal recognition of same-sex marriage rights, he said. "It would be a useless act to overturn Obergefell," Esbeck said. "The politics have simply moved on from same-sex marriage, even for conservative religious people." Geoffrey R. Stone, who teaches law at the University of Chicago, agreed the court is unlikely to scrap Obergefell despite its willingness in recent years to overturn precedents on abortion and affirmative action. While a majority of the current justices may disagree with Obergefell, the decision is generally approved by the public, he said. "For that reason, and to avoid the appearance of interpreting the Constitution in a manner that conforms to their own personal views," Stone said in an emailed response, "even some of the conservative justices might not vote to overrule Obergefell."
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi are considering getting remarried in the UK
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are considering getting remarried in the UK after Southern Baptists voted to endorse a resolution that would look to overturn Obergefell v Hodges - the Supreme Court case that legalised same-sex marriage across the US in June 2015 - last month.
News18
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
Ellen DeGeneres And Portia de Rossi May Remarry In The UK Amid Uncertainty In The US
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi may remarry in the UK if the US overturns same-sex marriage. They moved to the Cotswolds after Trump's 2024 re-election. Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi are considering getting remarried in the UK if the US overturns same-sex marriage. The couple-whose move to the Cotswolds in South West England was spurred on by the re-election of President Donald Trump in 2024 – tied the knot during an intimate ceremony at their home in Los Angeles, California, in 2008. But after a vote by Southern Baptists in June to endorse a resolution that would look to overturn Obergefell v Hodges – the Supreme Court case that legalised same-sex marriage across the US in June 2015 – Ellen and Portia are 'looking into" saying 'I do" in the UK to protect their marriage. Speaking to TV presenter Richard Bacon, 49, during her In Conversation with Ellen DeGeneres event at Cheltenham's Everyman theatre on July 20, she revealed: 'The Baptist Church in America is trying to reverse gay marriage. '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. A reversal of Obergefell would not ban gay marriage, but would call 'for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one women". Later in the talk, Ellen, 67, expressed her sadness that not all societies accept people of all sexualities. She said. '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." Ellen confirmed she and Portia, 52, moved to the UK because of Donald Trump, 79, being re-elected as President of the United States in November 2024. Admitting that 'everything here is just better" after leaving the Republican Party-led country, the former talk-show host said: 'We got here the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis, and I was like, 'He got in.' And we're like, 'We're staying here.'" Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why many Americans still think Darwin was wrong, yet the British don't
One hundred years after a Tennessee teacher named John Scopes started a legal battle over what the state's schools can teach children, Americans are still divided over evolution. Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee law by teaching evolution, in a highly publicised July 1925 trial that led to national debate over evolution and education. The trial tested whether a law introduced that year really could punish teachers over evolution lessons. It could and did: Scopes was fined US$100 (£74). But here's the weird part: while Americans remain deeply divided about whether humans evolved from earlier species, our British predecessors largely settled this question decades before the Scopes trial. According to thinktank Pew Research Center data from 2020, only 64% of Americans accept that 'humans and other living things have evolved over time'. Meanwhile, 73% of Brits are fine with the idea that they share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. That nine-percentage-point gap might not sound like much, but it represents millions of people who think Darwin was peddling fake news. From 1985 to 2010, Americans were in what researchers call a statistical dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution — which is academic speak for people couldn't decide if we were descended from apes or Adam and Eve. Here's where things get psychologically fascinating. Research into misinformation and cognitive biases suggests that fundamentalism operates on a principle known as motivated reasoning. This means selectively interpreting evidence to reach predetermined conclusions. And a 2018 review of social and computer science research also found that fake news seems to spread because it confirms what people already want to believe. Evolution denial may work the same way. Religious fundamentalism is what researchers call 'the strongest predictor' for rejection of evolution. A 2019 study of 900 participants found that belief in fake news headlines was associated with delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism and reduced analytic thinking. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. High personal religiosity, as seen in the US, reinforced by communities of like-minded believers, can create resistance to evolutionary science. This pattern is pronounced among Southern Baptists — the largest Protestant denomination in the US — where 61% believe the Bible is the literal word of God, compared to 31% of Americans overall. The persistence of this conflict is fuelled by organised creationist movements that reinforce religious scepticism. Brain imaging studies show that people with fundamentalist beliefs seem to have reduced activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for cognitive flexibility and analytical thinking. When this area is damaged or less active, people become more prone to accepting claims without sufficient evidence and show increased resistance to changing their beliefs when presented with contradictory information. Studies of brain-injured patients show damage to prefrontal networks that normally help us question information may lead to increased fundamentalist beliefs and reduced scepticism. Fundamentalist psychology helps explain the US position in international evolution acceptance surveys. In a 2006 study, of over 33,00 people from 34 countries from 34 countries, only Turkey ranked lower than the US, with about 27% accepting evolution compared to America's 40% at the time. Among the developed nations surveyed, the US consistently ranks near the bottom — a pattern that persists in more recent international comparisons. Research shows that political polarisation on evolution has historically been much stronger in the US than in Europe or Japan, where the issue rarely becomes a campaign talking point. In the US, anti-evolution bills are still being introduced in state legislatures. In the UK, belief in evolution became accepted among respectable clergymen around 1896, according to church historian Owen Chadwick's analysis of Victorian christianity. But why did British religious institutions embrace science while American ones declared war? The answer lies in different approaches to intellectual challenges. British Anglicanism has a centuries-old tradition of seeking a 'via media' — a middle way between extremes — that allowed church leaders to accommodate new ideas without abandoning core beliefs. Historian Peter documented how British religious leaders actively worked to reconcile science and religion, developing theological frameworks that embraced scientific discoveries as revealing God's methods rather than contradicting divine authority. Anglican bishops and scholars tended to treat evolution as God's method of creation rather than a threat to faith itself. The Church of England's hierarchical structure meant that when educated clergy accepted evolution, the institutional framework often followed suit. A 2024 paper argued that many UK church leaders still view science and religion as complementary rather than conflicting. The British experience proves it's possible to reconcile science and faith. But changing American minds requires understanding that evolution acceptance isn't really about biology — it's about identity, belonging, and the fundamental question of who gets to define truth. People don't reject evolution because they've carefully studied the evidence. They reject it because it threatens their identity. This creates a context where education alone can't overcome deeply held convictions. Misinformation intervention research suggests that inoculation strategies, such as highlighting the scientific consensus on climate change, work better than debunking individual articles. But evolution education needs to be sensitive. Consensus messaging helps, but only when it doesn't threaten people's core identities. For example, framing evolution as a function of 'how' life develops, rather than 'why it exists, allows for people to maintain religious belief while accepting the scientific evidence for natural selection. People's views can change. A review published in 2024, analysed data which followed the same Gen X people in the US over 33 years. It found that, as they grew up, people developed more acceptance of evolution, though typically because of factors such as education and obtaining university degrees. But people who were taught at a private school seem less likely to become more accepting of evolution as they aged. As we face new waves of scientific misinformation, the century since the Scopes trial teaches us that evidence alone won't necessarily change people's minds. Understanding the psychology of belief might be our best hope for evolving past our own cognitive limitations. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Edward White is affiliated with Kingston University.
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.
