2 Comments

nobody.really
February 15th, 2013 | 10:48 am

In Uzbekistan, religious literature that has not received state approval, including the Bible, is confiscated and destroyed. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Barnabas Fund report that people are imprisoned for teaching religion, including the 4-year imprisonment of Pastor Dmitri Shestakov. Forum 18 reports that Uzbek police raid unregistered religious services and beat, fine, and threaten participants. The US State Dept. says that Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights, and designated it a “Country of Particular Concern” for religious persecution. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights expresses concern about its wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights. Freedom House lists Uzbekistan in its list of “The Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies”.

And in the post, “Are there Limits to Religious Liberty?,” Nathaniel Torrey states, “In Uzbekistan, what many Christians fear in the face of measures like the HHS mandate have become a reality….”

So why, exactly, do people object when I compare the campaign for civil rights for homosexuals to the campaign for civil rights for blacks?

Tim Kelleher
February 15th, 2013 | 3:57 pm

Thanks for the link to the interview with Robert Taft, SJ. His perspective on issues of liturgy, and the relationship between Rome and Orthodoxy, is almost always a guaranteed fog-cutter.