January 6, 2007: Reverend Magdalen announced today that she has received a call from her lawyer stating the custody battle has been won. She will rejoin her son on Monday, January 8, 2007. The official judge’s decision will be made public then.
Full Story: The High Weirdness Story.
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The highest legal body in Conservative Judaism, the centrist movement in worldwide Jewry, voted yesterday to allow the ordination of gay rabbis and the celebration of same-sex commitment ceremonies.
The decision, which followed years of debate, was denounced by traditionalists in the movement as an indication that Conservative Judaism had abandoned its commitment to adhere to [...]

Muslim scholars from around the world have called for female genital mutilation to be banned and those who carry it out to face punishment.
At a conference on the subject in the Egyptian capital Cairo, the scholars said governments should enforce existing laws against the practice.
Full Story: BBC.
(thanks Honky Tonk Dragon)
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The United States has removed Vietnam from a list of countries which it says severely violate religious freedom.
The list is published by the state department and includes Iran, China, Sudan and North Korea.
Vietnam was removed from the list just days before President George W Bush travels to Vietnam for a meeting of the Asia Pacific [...]

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.
Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be [...]

I haven’t posted anything about Haggard here, so I’ll leave you with a few words from Trevor Blake on American Samizdat:

I advocate the decriminalization of drug use among adults and sex work among adults. I don’t care whether or not Pastor Haggard used drugs or bought sex. I think it is generally wrong to ‘out’ [...]

South Dakota voters overturned on Tuesday a state abortion ban that supporters had championed as the best chance to challenge a 33-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing the procedure.
Full Story: Reuters.
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New Jersey’s highest court ruled yesterday that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples under state marriage statutes.
The court left the task of naming the newly recognized right — whether marriage, civil union, or something else — up to the New Jersey Legislature, which must vote within 180 days, leaving open [...]

The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.
Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do [...]

The maker of the morning-after pill said it received assurances Tuesday that the government would quickly settle a three-year battle to sell the emergency contraceptive without a prescription to at least some women.
Full Story: Buffalo News.
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