This was a private event held and paid for by the group for a set amount of time at the park. It is a normal occurrence at parks like this. If this had been a Christian church doing the event it would have caused no backlash and been accepted. But because it was a Muslim sponcered event with mostly clothing of this sect of the Islamic faith that also encouraged the eating of foods not normally eaten by Christians it caused a backlash of Islamophobia. Hate for people and customs different from the Christian religion practiced by white people is common in the nearly theocratic Texas. Hugs
The park is available for rent at a cost of $5,000 an hour, Dallas News reported.
A private event at a Texas city-owned water park has been canceled following backlash and a direct threat by Gov. Greg Abbott to withhold more than $500,000 in state public safety funding.
A spokesperson for the City of Grand Prairie said Thursday the city canceled the DFW Epic Eid Celebration scheduled for June 1 at the Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark.
“After further review and in the best interest of the City of Grand Prairie, the June 1 Eid event at Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark has been canceled,” the spokesperson said.
The event at the city-owned waterpark was initially promoted with flyers describing it as “Muslims only” and included a modest dress code requiring burkinis for women, halal food, a private prayer room and rules encouraging attendees to maintain personal space and “lower the gaze.”
After backlash on social media, organizers updated promotional materials to state that “all are welcome,” provided attendees follow the modest dress code.
Abbott’s Public Safety Office shared a letter with The Christian Post that had been sent to Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen warning that the “DFW Epic Eid” event “was publicly and openly advertised as discriminating based on religion” and therefore violated agreements between the city and the Public Safety Office.
The letter from Public Safety Office Executive Director Andrew Friedrichs said the event “purports to be public facing and discriminatory at the same time” and compared it to advertising for a “Whites only” event.
“All Muslims — but only Muslims — may attend,” Friedrichs wrote. “An event at a city-owned pool that was publicly and indiscriminately advertised as ‘Whites only’ would surely violate the Constitution.”
Event organizer Dr. Aminah Knight later updated the online flyer to clarify that the DFW Eid Celebration is a “privately organized and privately funded event held through a standard rental of Epic Waters, just like many other private gatherings hosted at the park.”
“At its core, this event is about creating a space where individuals and families, particularly those who value modest dress and a modest environment, can come together and enjoy a recreational setting comfortably,” Knight wrote.
Knight added that anyone “of a different faith who wants to celebrate the Eid holiday with us and adhere to the modest dress code” is welcome to attend.
A screenshot of an online flyer for a 2025 “Muslims only” event at the Epic Indoor Waterpark in Grand Prairie, Texas. | Screenshot/Facebook
A Facebook post shared by Knight in May 2025 promoting last year’s event included a flyer calling it an “exclusive Muslim-only event” and stating that the taxpayer-funded facility was “closed to the public” for “Muslims only.”
It is unclear whether the City of Grand Prairie approved the flyer or its contents. The city did not respond to CP’s request for comment by Thursday afternoon.
While the 2026 event flyer listed Knight as the organizer, a video shared on social media by Muhammad Abdullah, listed as the director of Outreach & Youth at Al-Hedayah Academy in Fort Worth, claimed he organized the event.
In a video posted Tuesday, Abdullah blamed “Islamophobia” for the public response to the now-canceled event and said, “By the way, I’m organizing that with my wife.”
CP reached out to Al-Hedayah Academy, where Abdullah is pictured as a member of the mosque’s “spiritual team,” seeking clarification Thursday on whether the mosque was involved in organizing the event.
According to Knight, more than 600 people attended the event last year, and all “lovers of modest fashion and those who are curious about Eid and what modesty at a waterpark can look like” are welcome to attend.
Owned by the city of Grand Prairie near the Dallas and Tarrant County border, Epic Waters — which has no ties to the planned Muslim-centric development formerly known as “EPIC City” — is an 80,000-square-foot waterpark with a retractable roof and the longest indoor lazy river in North Texas, according to its website.
Epic Waters opened in 2017 after voters approved a 0.25% sales tax, according to city documents. The park is available for rent at a cost of $5,000 an hour, Dallas News reported.
My webcomic about a transgender girl’s page, Assigned Male Comics, is currently down because it got hacked during the night, along with my personal page and the french version of the comic. After receiving several thousands of death threats in the past few days for making my art, my address was also posted on several forums. I am currently in a safe place and my roommate and I will move away before the end of the week.
Today. May 17th. International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. I just want people to be aware that this is what you get for being trans on the internet and for reframing transness into something positive and empowering. I’d also like to acknowledge that this attack was mostly planned because of four explicit reasons :
1. I am a woman
2. I am trans
3. I support non-binary people
4. I support intersex people.
I will keep making my comics, no worries. Folks at Facebook are currently making sure this won’t happen again before I can put my page back up. Nothing was lost.
I know many of my readers will be worried. This is my personal profile, also if you can share this as widely as possible so it reaches them, it would be greatly appreciated.
I also set up a Paypal donation email if you want to help with the relocating : sophie@assignedmale.com
Thanks everyone for your support. ❤
President Trump privately advocated for painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, located next to the White House, with a “magic paint with silicate." A panel of experts is warning the so-called magic paint could be incompatible with the ornate federal office building's granite exterior.
The No-Bid Contract That Is Turning Washington’s Reflecting Pool Blue – “President Trump handpicked a firm he said had worked on his swimming pool to repair the iconic site near the Lincoln Memorial.”www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/u…
Turns out the House candidate endorsed by @hoyer.house.gov in MD-5 is a lobbyist for Ellison-owned Oracle, and didn’t initially disclose his six figure bonuses for that work. Vote for @libradunn1.bsky.social on June 23rd. wamu.org/story/26/05/…
A federal magistrate questioned how Cole Tomas Allen has been placed in near solitary confinement, with little access to visitors and calls. Judge Zia Faruqui said it was like nothing he’d seen with other defendants, including J6ers with prior offenses accused of political violence.
1. ICE has not paid for detainee medical care for 7 MONTHSThe termination of payments to providers has coincided with a MASSIVE SPIKE in detainee deaths.This is a health crisis and a moral crisis. Follow along for details.🧵
2. On October 3, 2025, the Trump admin stopped paying 3rd parties for medical care for ICE detainees.In November 2025, ICE said the situation was an “absolute emergency” that needed to be fixed “immediately” to “prevent any further… loss of life.”
3. According to the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC), payments to third parties were supposed to resume on April 30. ICE has contracted with a private firm, Acentra Health, to process reimbursements. But April 30 came and went, and still, nothing is being processed.
4. Meanwhile, detainee deaths at ICE facilities are skyrocketing.From 2018 to 2024, the average number of people who died in ICE custody annually was 8.9. Since ICE stopped medical reimbursements on October 3, 2025, people have been dying in ICE custody at a rate of 51.7 people annually.
5. Beyond the data, there are numerous examples of individual cases that suggest essential medical care is being denied to ICE detainees. Details in today's Popular Information.
⚡️ Update: Zelensky's decree authorizing Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow includes coordinates of Red Square.It remains unclear whether Ukraine intends to carry out strikes elsewhere.
I remember when penny candy went to nickel candy under Pres. Nixon, and applied what we learned in our school “Weekly Readers” to figure that out. Of course there were larger problems. A few years later, my dad lost his business due to general economic woe with high inflation, and I’m pretty sure everyone remembers how personal and smaller business econ went in the 80s. I don’t know why we have to repeat history, when certainly more than a few people can remember this stuff. But, here it is in a concise video. Sharing it would be awesome!
Democratic TN state Rep. Justin Jones burns a Confederate flag in the state Capitol, Thursday, May 8, 2026, video screengrab
Yesterday, the Ku Klux Klan, we mean Tennessee state Legislature, rushed through new maps to eliminate the state’s last remaining Democratic congressional seat in Congress, and racist pigfuck Governor Bill Lee signed them, because that’s what white supremacists do when Donald Trump’s partisan hack Supreme Court says it’s unconstitutional for them not to hurt Black people by gutting the last remaining piece of the Voting Rights Act.
The lawsuits are already being filed, and to be sure, Republicans don’t even understand the war they started yesterday. As we wrote, it’s useful to remember that Republicans always, 100 percent of the time, overplay their hands.
We quoted Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who until yesterday was running in a primary against long-serving Congressman Steve Cohen to represent what was the Ninth District, in Memphis. We guess how exactly that will end up is undetermined at this exact moment, but Pearson said earlier this week at a rally that “[I]f we keep marching, if we keep pressing, if we keep fighting, the future that our descendants will live into will be a better one than this one. And our message to the Republican Party, our message to that racist, white-supremacist president Donald Trump is that we will fight.”
Pearson, if you remember, is one of the two Black men in the Tennessee Three, back when the grand wizards of the Tennessee Lege first bent over and showed everybody their Klan-hood-shaped buttplugs, expelling the two men from the state House for taking to the House floor to try to defend their constituents against gun violence. Also for being Black men, because they didn’t expel the white woman, Knoxville Rep. Gloria Johnson, for being part of the same protest. (Voters of course sent the two Justinsright the fuck back to the Legislature.)
Both Justins were of course present yesterday to witness what white supremacist Tennessee Republicans really think was the Birth of a Nation. And there were many protests in the Tennessee state Capitol yesterday. Justin Jones of Nashville set a Confederate flag on fire, or at least a paper version of it.
And then he stomped that sad loser little bitch of a flag — a flag the greatest losers who ever lived died defending, and their family legacies are less valuable than dried dogshit because of it — right on out.
And what are people saying about that, and about iconic pictures photographers captured of that? “Hang it in the Louvre.”
Oh, it’s gonna be in museums and history books all right.
Rep. Jones, “Brother Jones” as he refers to himself on Instagram, posted videos and images of the already iconic moment.
The South will not rise again, until it’s paid for all its sins of racism and white supremacy.
Today, I left the Capitol Klan Rally, where my white Republican colleagues took off their white hoods and dismantled Black political power in our state. It’s shameful, it’s immoral, and it will go down in the history books alongside the legacy of George Wallace and Bull Connor.
Tennessee has shamefully become the first state to pass a new, racist congressional map following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
When I walked into the building it was 2026, and when I walked out it was pre-1965. This racial power grab against Black voters is purely rooted in control and elimination of their voices in our democracy. Today’s Jim Crow laws passed in our legislature spit on the graves of our Civil Rights martyrs who bled and died for the right to political power and representation.
They are dragging us backwards in history but we refuse to be moved.
I burned the Confederate flag, because the neo-Confederate caucus that assembled today will be defeated again. Their vision of the South, rooted in plantation politics and racial division will not win. Instead we must use this moment to ignite our rebellion and movement even more towards real justice and multiracial democracy. We must build towards a South that can RISE ANEW.
We will not go back!
“Burn it, young brother,” said Joy-Ann Reid in response. So say we all.
In this interview Graham Platner responds to his detractors accusations against him. He discusses the tattoo and the Jewish times report that says he had talked about it while working at a bar during the time frame he was not working there. So there is not any credible evidence that he knew what the tattoo was. As he said why would he have danced with it in full display to his extended Jewish family? He makes sense. He understands that people may not like him because he is not polished as a politician. He also says he stumbles verbally and struggles to correct and improve himself. It was a hard hitting interview and Platner came off as very reasonable. Hugs
Now, in this must-watch interview, Mehdi Hasan speaks to Platner not just about his vision for a progressive “political revolution” in Washington DC but also about some of his controversies, including his social media and his tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol.
The Trump administration is demolishing Social Security’s customer service, making it harder and harder for Americans to get their earned benefits. Now, Ted Cruz reveals the full scheme: They are wrecking Social Security so they can rob it.
Trump’s ONLY GOALS AS PRESIDENT –
1) Make a lot of money for himself, his family and his rich supporters – and use the presidency to get business deals for him and his sons around the world
2) Use the DOJ to go after literally anyone he feels slighted him, criticized him or “injured” him, while also covering up and erasing his past misdeeds (Epstein) and erasing the history of January 6
3) Slap his name and likeness on everything he can – cash, coins, buildings, airports, highways, and get royalties for the use of his name
4) Strengthen his ties to Vladimir Putin and other dictators and oligarchs to get as much power as much as he can
5) Going down as one of the great men of history, like Alexander the Great or Napoleon
Trump DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT –
1) The basic job of a president
2) The economic well being of Americans
3) The functions of government to serve the people
4) America’s relationship with allies or reputation around the world
5) The United States if it doesn’t relate to him or his needs
Trump is talking about future inaugurations being held in his ballroom
Shell first-quarter profits up 115% from $3.2bn to $6.9bn.Will rise even more due to Trump's illegal wars.Bumper payouts for execs and shareholders; higher inflation, poverty, misery for us.120,000 Britons a year die in fuel poverty,Must levy windfall taxes.
Tennessee Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a proposed congressional map that slices into the state’s majority-Black district and will likely secure them an all-GOP federal delegation.Tennessee unveils new congressional map poised to erase Dem seatwww.politico.com/news/2026/05…
⚡️UPDATE – NAACP files emergency petition to Block the racist @GovBillLee Republican 9-0 map that strips representation from majority-Black Memphis: “In violation of clear and unambiguous Tennessee statutory law and the mandates of the TN Constitution” http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/p…
A red-state governor is facing a recall effort in his own state that was launched by voters upset with him canceling elections amid a redistricting effort.
BREAKING:ABC has accused Trump's FCC of violating its free speech rights — arguing that regulators had a "chilling effect" on free speech by trying to punish political content they disagreed with.
Exclusive: A frustrated President Trump over the weekend upbraided FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for not moving quickly enough to approve flavored vapes and nicotine products.
A white male New York Times employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the paper discriminated against him by not giving him a promotion because he is a white male.
EXCLUSIVE: Since SCOTUS ruled in Callais v. Louisiana, we’ve been answering questions about what it means for elections.But one still stands: who is Callais, one of the plaintiffs who targeted the state’s second majority-Black district?He’s an election denier who attended the Jan. 6 protest.
BREAKING: In a PANIC, Kash Patel ordered polygraphs for at least two dozen current and former members of his security detail looking for leaks. Those would be the folks that would see him drinking or wake him the next morning. http://www.ms.now/news/kash-pa…
Anytime Donald Trump is accused of being a pedophile, his base runs to the rescue as if they were personally slapped in the face. Currently, there are over 80 comments on this cartoon on my Facebook page, with the bulk of them being MAGAts demanding “verifiable” evidence that Trump is a pedophile. Of course, the same people who are demanding “verifiable” evidence are posting memes with fake quotes about Joe Biden and his daughter.
But how is this for verifiable evidence? Donald Trump went on the Howard Stern show in 2005 and bragged about walking into dressing rooms for teenage contestants in his beauty pageants. He bragged about it as if he had just won Michigan.
A week before the US went to war with Iran, Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, invited the head of his church to lead prayers at the Pentagon. From his pulpit in Idaho, Doug Wilson, a 72-year-old ultraconservative pastor, preaches that homosexuality is a sin, women who dress immodestly are “sluts”, and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the “silliest thing in the world”.
Despite Hegseth’s evangelising, Wilson says the Trump administration is far from morally pure. He says the president is “not someone I would call a godly Christian man”, and disagrees with Trump’s appointment of a gay man, Scott Bessent, as his Treasury secretary because homosexuality is not just a sin, it is “a bad one”.
Of all his gripes, however, Wilson is most indignant about the 1960s sexual revolution, a moral catastrophe that he condemns frequently in his blog posts, sermons and books. He thinks women should dress modestly. But what is modest dress? “Not what they’re doing now,” he says. “I could pick on yoga pants.” He continues: “Men know what they think of hookers, which is not very much. When you’re just giving it away to every slob on the bus who wants to look, you’re degrading the currency.”
Does that mean Wilson and his followers sympathise with the dress codes enforced by Shia clerics in Iran? “No, because wrapping them up in a bedsheet is another way of degrading them. It is possible to be modest and attractive — attractive without attracting. Bundling them up the way really conservative Muslims do is a different kind of degradation. Like you’re not a person. But for a woman to dress like a slut is a different kind of degradation. Both kinds of degradation play off of each other.”
Wilson appeared here last month when he called for criminalizing homosexuality and outlawing all LGBTQ events.
In March, Wilson declared that under his Christian nationalist theocracy, all non-Protestant public events – such a Catholic parades that venerate the Virgin Mary – would be banned.
Also in March, a separate pastor at Hegseth’s church prayed for God to kill Senate candidate James Talarico.
Pete Hegseth’s pastor: ‘Women who dress immodestly are sluts’
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued the New York Times for discriminating against a white, male employee who claims to have been denied a promotion based on his demographic attributes. It marks the third lawsuit President Trump or his administration has filed against the Times in less than five years.
The Times also filed its own lawsuit against the Defense Department last year over its restrictions on journalists. A federal judge ruled in the outlet’s favor in March. The EEOC said Tuesday that the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges the Times violated the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.
The federal agency, which sits under the executive branch, pointed to the lack of promotion for a “well-qualified white male employee” along with the Times’ diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and a 2021 “Call to Action” to increase non-white and female representation in its leadership. “Federal law is clear: making hiring or promotion decisions motivated in whole or in part by race or sex violates federal law. There is no diversity exception to this rule,” EEOC chair Andrea Lucas said in a statement.
People at the paper say the claim is absurd. “I’m sorry, there are plenty of white guys at the top of the New York Times. Not really something that’s holding you back,” said the reporter. To name one prominent example, Joe Kahn, the paper’s executive editor, is a white male, as are many members of the masthead.
Rhoades Ha, the Times spokesperson, said, “The allegation centers on a single personnel decision for one of over 100 deputy positions across the newsroom, yet the EEOC’s filing makes sweeping claims that ignore the facts to fit a predetermined narrative.”
The employee originally filed the complaint in July 2025 with the EEOC office in New York. One staffer noted it could now be impossible for the Times to take action against the complainant: “This person now has job security for good after this suit. What a mess.”
Purely by coincidence, yeah, last week the NYT reported on the “deeply demoralized” work culture at the EEOC.
EEOC chief Andrea Lucas last appeared here when a judge ruled that she can have the names of Jewish employees at the University of Pennsylvania.
She appeared here in January 2026 when she ended federal guidelines against anti-LGBTQ workplace harassment.
In December 2025, Lucas appeared here when she posted a video seeking plaintiffs in lawsuits for anti-white male workplace discrimination.
A white male New York Times employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that the paper discriminated against him by not giving him a promotion because he is a white male.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.
Some of the hundreds of LGBTQ+ Catholics and their families who joined a Holy Year pilgrimage to Rome, celebrating a new level of acceptance in the Catholic Church and crediting Pope Francis for the change, walk through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Sept. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The Vatican released a report on Tuesday (May 5) that included the testimony of two married gay Catholics and acknowledged the church’s role in “the solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.” The report also reflects on the negative impacts of conversion therapy, or “the devastating effects of reparative therapies aimed at recovering heterosexuality.”
“ It’s a big deal because they included testimonies and published testimonies from two LGBTQ people, both of them married, which is also unusual for the Vatican to do,” said the Rev. James Martin, a founder of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic ministry. “As far as I know, it’s the first time that in any official publication of the Vatican, they’ve included witnesses and testimonies and stories from LGBTQ Catholics in any kind of detailed way.”
The report comes from a group of theologians, including bishops, priests, a sister and a layperson, convened by the Vatican to study “controversial” issues raised by the Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’ signature listening initiative, to which Martin was a delegate. Though church reform advocates hoped — and traditionalists feared — that the synod would bring major changes to church teaching around gender and sexuality, the decision to relegate contentious issues, such as LGBTQ+ inclusion, to study groups instead of general discussion was widely seen as a damper.
As expected, the synod study group report does not announce major changes to church doctrine, but it does suggest that the Catholic Church address the impasse between “doctrinal firmness” and “pastoral welcome” by listening and using a transdisciplinary approach, such as incorporating insights from psychology, alongside the Bible and church doctrine.
“ It’s a really good — I would even say historic — document,” said Yunuen Trujillo, a lesbian lay minister from Los Angeles. “ It’s still calling for all Catholics to engage in a process of discernment that is respectful of people’s lived experiences.”
Trujillo, author of “LGBTQ Catholics: A Guide to Inclusive Ministry,” said it might take a while for LGBTQ+ Catholics in the pews to feel the impact and noted that the document only focuses on lesbians, gays and bisexual people. “But I do believe it would be a positive impact, not a negative one,” she said.
In this Oct. 4, 2023, file photo, Pope Francis, far right, participates in the opening session of the 16th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Marianne Duddy-Burke, a married lesbian Catholic and DignityUSA’s executive director, said, “ The most significant thing for me was the recognition that top-down trying to dictate behavior and morality on the basis of dogma isn’t working,” adding she was “hopeful” to see the report using the language of a “paradigm shift.”
The “paradigm shift” the report proposes is a move away from applying abstract theological principles to on-the-ground realities and instead seeing theory and practice as a “virtuous cycle.” For the two to effectively inform each other, the report argues, requires a focus on relationships, transparency and learning. The document offers this theological framework not just for LGBTQ+ issues but for broader use, including in nonviolent activism and protest.
This synod document was written by the study group, not the pope, but its release to the public would have required his authorization.
The report’s release garnered some blowback, a portion of which fell on Pope Leo XIV. Far-right Catholic news organization LifeSite published a story on the report, raising concerns that the report was questioning “the sinful nature of homosexuality” and leaving unresolved the “debate on same-sex ‘marriage.’” Co-founder John-Henry Westen released a video warning that the report’s pro-LGBTQ+ stance makes clear the meaning of “synodality” under Leo.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics expressed surprise to see the Vatican publishing the testimonies of married gay men.
“ I was expecting a rather bland report. And this was not that,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which serves LGBTQ Catholics. “ In days gone by in the church, they would try to tick off the token box by getting someone who had certain traits and characteristics, but who was just not critical of the church in any way.”
Martin said this is the first time he remembers seeing conversion therapy “critiqued that strongly” in a Vatican document. “There have been certain bishops who have been very muted in their critique of conversion therapy, but then there have also been bishops who have used organizations whose techniques really verge on conversion therapy,” he said.
One gay Catholic wrote of “wounds from the Christian community” in his Vatican-released testimony. “I cannot ignore the scars I carry. I have witnessed the devastating effects of ‘conversion therapies’ and the break-up of families, which felt like an attack on God’s sensitive and blameless creation. These experiences deeply hurt, because they target the inherent dignity of a person who simply bears the love of another of the same gender.”
But the married Portuguese man also wrote of his deep faith in the Eucharist and his sharing “a life of faith, service, and love” with his husband. “I live my life in profound peace with God, who knows me from my mother’s womb.”
“I feel the Church needs to move beyond mere ‘welcoming’ and ‘pity,’” he wrote in the testimony. “We need to proclaim the unspoken truth: God loves you and desires your wholeness. Sexuality is one part of our life, and difference is a hallmark of Creation.”
DeBernardo said the testimonies of LGBTQ+ people and their advocates have also been moving for the 17 bishops who have participated in three different meetings with New Ways Ministry in recent years. “We had a bishop at the end of the meeting in tears because he was so regretful of the way he had thought about LGBTQ people,” DeBernardo said.
“Dialogue really is the first step,” said DeBernardo. “ The genius of Pope Francis is that he realized that people had to start talking with one another, and learning about each other and not having the fear and the stereotypes.”
For Duddy-Burke, who represents a grassroots group led by LGBTQ+ Catholics that was banned 40 years ago from meeting in Catholic spaces — and who said she has struggled for years as a result to even have these conversations — the document inspires hope: “We didn’t have a place at the table and, and this document says that it’s time that we did,” she said.
At the same time, Duddy-Burke worries about whether those who hold the power will continue to dialogue and be willing to have their “minds and hearts changed.”
“And how will that be managed in parts of the world where it’s absolutely unsafe and it’s sometimes illegal, you know, for people to come forward as queer?” she asked.
The synod report also addresses “active nonviolence,” highlighting the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Filipino “People Power” and Polish “Solidarity” anti-government movements, as well as the experience of a Catholic Serbian conscientious objector. Peace has been a major focus of Leo’s pontificate, and his recent anti-war statements have led to conflict with the Trump administration, which has used theological language to promote its war in the Middle East.
In the Vatican report, the theologians suggest that “just war theory,” which Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance has referenced to defend the war, is “inadequate” in the modern context. “Since war can no longer be confined to military targets but overflows into civilian life, taking on new forms (hybrid, asymmetrical, etc.), the recourse to frameworks used in the past for legitimate defence — and even more so for ‘just war’ — appears increasingly inadequate,” they write.
On Tuesday, the Vatican also released the report of another Synod study group dedicated to bishop selection and other bishop issues. That report proposed broad consultation — including the perspectives of lay people, in addition to clergy and religious — when it comes to potential bishop candidates as well as ideal future bishop qualities.
Scottie's Playtime 