As Mitt Romney mulls another run for the White House, he and advisers have decided there will always be some voters who will vote against him because of his Mormonism. A retired construction worker in Minnesota has constructed a six-foot-square chapel. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed that controversial guns-in-churches bill into law.
Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a bill to allow same-sex civil unions, saying the move “is essentially same-sex marriage by another name.” Some conservatives are crying foul over a new Google HR policy that will compensate gay and lesbian employees for the federal taxes paid on domestic partner health benefits.
A federal judge has ruled that a company can have the word “hell” in its name, rejecting Pennsylvania officials’ argument that the name was blasphemous. WaPo assesses the tenure of Catholic University President David O’Connell, who’s heading to New Jersey to become a bishop. As Presbyterians meet in Minneapolis this week, new statistics show their membership has dropped by half since the 1960s.
The president of the University of California and Jewish groups are at odds over the university’s response to several reported anti-Semitic incidents. President Obama and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu kissed and made up, and made nice for the cameras, after an Oval Office summit yesterday.
Pope Benedict XVI is due to issue new universal rules for handling abusive priests, aides say, gathering together a type of “best practices” that will be binding on the entire church (David Gibson says its more or less status quo). Belgian police are investigating whether retired Cardinal Godfried Danneels (once considered a contender to be elected pope) knew about sex abuse but failed to stop it.
A Connecticut priest is accused of embezzling $1 million and spending it on male escorts, and Vatican officials have given the green light to open the tomb of a Rome crime boss to see if it holds clues to the fate of a 15-year-old girl who’s been missing since 1983.
Iranian officials have issued a list of “acceptable” (i.e., non-Western) male hairstyles — from Politics Daily: “Ponytails, spikes, mullets and mohawks are now forbidden, but Elvis-style locks, floppy fringes and Simon Cowell-esque flattops get the ayatollahs’ seal of approval.”
The upcoming Aug. 4 vote on Kenya‘s new constitution is pitting Christians against Muslims in a dispute over whether to allow Islamic Shariah courts to remain in the constitution. There’s confusion in Uganda over whether a decapitated body belongs to a gay rights activist or not. Two Moscow art curators are facing three years in the clink for hosting an exhibit that included, among other things, Jesus as Mickey Mouse and Vladimir Lenin.
The predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church is launching an outpost in Spain (which allows gay marriage). Indian Baptists who helped implement a ban on alcohol sales haven’t been invited to talks about repealing the ban. Israeli tourism officials are seeing dollar signs in expanding Christian tourism to Jesus’ native Galilee.
And finally this (and I’ll let WaPo speak for itself on this one, because I couldn’t put it any more clearly): “Some Holocaust survivors are criticizing Virginia Railway Express for awarding an $85 million contract to operate and maintain its trains to a company partly owned by the French railway that transported people to Nazi concentration camps.”
