Quickies

Global Quickies: Mormons in Mexico, Challenging the Church in Germany, and The Last Sworn Virgin of Montenegro

MEXICO
“Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, have been detained in Anáhuac, Chihuahua, Mexico after residents contacted police expressing outrage when four LDS missionaries tried to baptize children without the consent of their parents.”

QATAR
“A Dutch woman who reported being raped while on holiday in Qatar has been jailed since mid-March and could face charges of adultery, according to her lawyer.”

GERMANY
The Church in Germany still has a relationship to the state much closer than in many other western democracies. But the public showing of a British comedy classic [Life of Brian] could change that.

HONDURAS
1 month-old baby suffered brain damage after his mother took him to a healer to cure him of the evil eye.

SIERRA LEONE
“Ongoing human rights crisis in Sierra Leone: thousands of adolescent girls who became pregnant—often due to sexual abuse or exploitation—are still being denied the right to attend school!

KENYA
“A Kenyan court has upheld the use of anal examinations to determine a suspect’s sexual orientation, dismissing the argument that the procedure amounts to torture and degrading treatment.”

CANADA
“Canadian politicians have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill to change the wording of their national anthem to make it more gender-neutral.”

PAKISTAN
“Police in Islamabad are investigating a senator from Pakistan’s upper house of parliament, after he allegedly threatened a female rights activist with rape during a live TV debate about violence against women.“

UK
Prince William is on the cover of a gay magazine, but nor everyone is happy about it.

AUSTRALIA
An Australian politician tweets hateful message after the Orlando attack, the Internet collectively tells him to delete his account.

MEXICO
Two government employees in the state of Jalisco have been fired for homophobic comments on social media after the Orlando shooting. One was legal director for human rights for a municipality, while the other was an employee at a state ministry for development and social integration.

FRANCE
“Young people in refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk are being sexually exploited and forced to commit crimes by traffickers, according to a Unicef report.”

NIGERIA
“Sponsors shy away from backing female football teams in Nigeria because of “the misconception” that they are “synonymous with lesbianism”, a senior Nigerian football official has said.”

MONTENEGRO
The last sworn virgin of Montenegro: An unusual practice has stubbornly endured in remote villages in the Balkans since medieval times. Traditionally, if the head of a household in this strongly patriarchal society died without a male heir, one of his daughters could choose to become a man.

Featured image by Eduardo Arraes (source)

Daniela

Born and raised in Mexico City, Daniela has finally decided to abdicate her post as an armchair skeptic and start doing some skeptical activism. She is currently living in Spain after having lived in the US, Brazil and Italy. You can also find her blogging in Spanish at esceptica.org.

Related Articles

3 Comments

  1. Man, LDS at it again. I would like to point out AGAIN that Moroni, Nephi, Lehi, and all the rest of them…didn’t exist. There’s no ancient connection between Israel and the Americas (even though in the early days of AIM, we saw Israel as a model for our own independence).

    Sad about the refugee children. I have to say, it’s sadly the norm for children forcibly uprooted from their home and taken to another country where they don’t speak the language to be exploited this way.

    Oh, in other news, apparently some people are complaining that Joe Jonas read the names of the Orlando victims at the NYC vigil.

  2. The Mormon presence in Mexico should raise red flags already.
    (Off the top of my head)
    I gather that the original expansion of ‘colonies’ into Mexico came just as the ‘prophets’ discovered that god had changed his mind about polygamy. While, within the US, for the sake of Utah statehood, ‘traditional marriage’ was pared down to one of each gender, the same ‘prophets’ continued to contract plural marriages in secret, and used the border as a barrier against discovery.

  3. Anyone else feel uncomfortable at the article constantly referring to someone who wants to be known as their father’s son as “her”? Obviously forcing people to live as a particular gender in order to retain the family wealth is not good, on the other hand generally if someone asks me to refer to them as male I try to do so.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button