Here’s how it’s looking out there as we slide into the long holiday weekend …

There’s a lot of talk here in D.C. about Thursday’s House and Senate committee vote to repeal the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy about gays in the military. Conservatives, led by the Family Research Council, obviously don’t like it. President Obama‘s Twitter feed says this: “I have long advocated for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, & am pleased that the House & the Senate have taken steps to do just that.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wants to sideline the U.S. Episcopal Church from much of the internal life of the Anglican Communion (but does not propose banishing the U.S. church into utter darkness) for its decision to ordain a lesbian bishop in Los Angeles.

Speaking of sidelining, News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch is apparently taking bids for Beliefnet — here’s hoping our friends over there get to keep their jobs. A Baptist church in Tennessee thinks its secretary of 47 years (picture, above left) embezzled $1.5 million — looks like she was using it on hairspray.

Meanwhile, some 40 Italian women who claim they were had affairs with Catholic priests have petitioned the pope to allow clergy to get it on: “Don’t be shocked, Your Holiness! In order to become effective witnesses to the need for love, they need to embody it and experience it fully, in the way their nature demands it.” A church-related news agency says 37 priests, missionaries or seminarians were killed in the line of duty around the world in 2009, the highest number in 10 years.

There’s another cross controversy — this one in Illinois, where supporters of the 11-story Bald Knob Cross of Peace got a $20,000 state grant to rehab the 47-year-old cross; a Chicago-area atheist has threatened suit unless supporters return the $20,000 state grant. In neighboring Iowa, a math teacher at a Catholic school got canned after voting in a Facebook poll that she didn’t believe in God. Two Florida teachers who allegedly sprinkled holy water on an atheist colleague might be the next ones to to get canned.

In North Dakota, state officials have agreed to issue a license plate to a man who wanted ISNOGOD after the man pointed out the state had approved plates like ILOVGOD. Those “Fatwa on Your Head?” bus ads that caused such a stir in Miami and then New York are now the subject of a lawsuit in Detroit, where transportation officials declined to run the ads by a group offering to help Muslims who want to leave the faith.

A Jewish men’s group in Florida has offered to help repair a Florida mosque that was the target of a pipe bomb, and President Obama toasted the political, cultural and other achievements of American Jews at the first-ever White House reception for Jewish Heritage month.

New Hampshire officials are looking into whether leaders of a Baptist church knew about the rape of a 15-year-old girl and then sent the alleged rapist out of state to cover it up; the girl was forced to apologize to the church for getting pregnant out of wedlock, and was told by the pastor that if she lived in “Old Testament times” she would have been stoned to death.

South Korea‘s constitutional court says excess frozen embryos (mostly in storage at infertility clinics) are not “life forms.”

Militants attacked two Ahmadi mosques in Afghanistan, with reports of 60+ deaths; Ahmadis are a minority sect in Islam who (according to the LAT) “believe their late 19th century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet of God, a belief condemned by many Pakistani Muslims who regard Muhammad as Islam’s final prophet.” The Spanish city of Lleida has banned Muslim women from wearing face-covering veils at municipal buildings.