Diane Vera

Looks like the religious right wing has succeeded in stalling the same-sex marriage bill in the NY State Senate.

Below are some news stories from June 1. (I've bolded some who/what/when/where details that I should research further later.)

( News stories from June 1 )

And now for some more recent news stories on same-sex marriage, mentioning various religious right wing groups. Some stories from yesterday, June 3:

( News stories from June 3 )

And now for some news stories from today, June 4:

( News stories from June 4 )

Last month, New Governor David Paterson announced he would introduce a bill in the state legislature to legalize same-sex marriage here in New York State. Some relevant news stories:

• New York governor to push same-sex marriage bill by Laurie Segall, CNN, Thu April 16, 2009


• Paterson Unveils Same-Sex Marriage Bill by Jeremy W. Peters AND Sewell Chan, New York Times City Room blog post, April 16, 2009


• NY governor introduces bill to allow same-sex marriage by Michael Virtanen, Associated Press, Gay & Lesbian Times (San Diego, CA), Thursday, 23-Apr-2009

The latter article mentions two of the main opponents of same-sex marriage: (1) State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., who is also pastor of the (Pentecostal) Christian Community Neighborhood Church in the Bronx, and (2) the new Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

( More about Rubén Díaz and other opponents of same-sex marriage in New York )

( Díaz's forthcoming protest, and a pro-gay counterdemonstration )

( More about same-sex marriage in general )

Here's a news story I missed during the time I took a break from monitoring online developments having to do with Satanism:

( London Daily Mail story about Pope setting up exorcist squads )

See also the following posts on my Theistic Satanism blog (listed below in forward chronological order):

• Full-blown alleged SRA case in Italy - Friday, April 27, 2007
• Some news from Italy, about Satanism and about the Catholic Church - Monday, April 28, 2008
• More about Satanism and the Catholic Church in Italy - Friday, May 2, 2008
• Blaming "Satanists" for Catholic clergy sex scandals??? - Saturday, May 3, 2008
• How they'll clean up after you at a Maltese hospital - Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Talk To Action has a weekly series by Frank L. Cocozzelli on "The Catholic Right," about the Catholic religious right wing. The most recent post in the series is Jindal, Rising, about Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Frank Cocozzelli apparently lives in Brooklyn, judging by his post My Son's School, in which he identifies his parish as St. Finbar's in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York.

( Links to all posts in the series )

P.S.: My list of Frank Cocozzelli's posts includes quite a few posts about Opus Dei, but none about the Legion of Christ. On Talk to Action, I just now posted Catholic religious right wing: Legion of Christ, to inform him about the latter order.

Something I missed when it happened, but I just came across it recently: As of January 2008, it seems that the Vatican has revived the hullabaloo about Harry Potter. However, I find two very different accounts of this:

• Potter "Driving Kids to Satanism" by Cameron Millar, Daily Star (U.K.), 16th January 2008


• The Vatican Revives the Harry Potter Debate by Emil Steiner, Washington Post, January 15, 2008

( My observations here )

The Washington Post article ends by asking: "... one has to wonder why the Vatican would want to revive this debate. Could the recent revelations of Dumbledore's sexual orientation have something to do with it?"

A while back I noticed a trend, among conservative and traditionalist Catholics, to blame the clergy pedophilia scandals on an alleged conspiracy by Satanists to infiltrate the Catholic hierarchy. For more about this, see my article The "Satanic Ritual Abuse" scare -- it's BAACK! The alleged conspiracy of "Satanic pedophiles" in the Catholic clergy.

Now it seems that this same alleged Satanist conspiracy is being blamed for clargy sex scandals involving adults too. Not only that, but one priest has even used this claim in an attempt to get himself off the hook.

( Read more )

Just yesterday I got a LiveJournal account and began exploring here. Among other things I joined a few "communities" that looked relevant to Satanism. One of these was satanicnews ("Satanism in the news"). At first I assumed -- wrongly, it turns out -- that the owner of this community was a Satanist with an interest in keeping tabs on our public image.

Soon after I joined, a post appeared quoting a newspaper article about an alleged SRA case that just now erupted in Italy. This struck me as very significant, because, given the mood of Satanic panic that seems to have gripped Italy these past few years, it is almost surprising that I had not heard of any full-fledged SRA allegations there earlier. Sooner or later it was bound to happen, I guess.

So I wrote a post about it, Full-blown alleged SRA case in Italy, in my new blog on Google blogspot.

Only then did I take a closer look at "satanicnews" itself.
( Read more )