The Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing two children of his Washington, D.C., parish has been found guilty.

Urbano Vazquez was convicted Thursday on four felony counts of child sexual abuse.

Vazquez groped a 9-year-old girl and 13-year-old girl in 2016, two years after he was ordained as a priest in the Capuchin Franciscan religious order.

Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson, who ordered the mass firing of any teachers at the diocese’s schools, also had no problem allowing school administrators to threaten a gay student with expulsion if he didn’t stop speaking out for social justice.

The archdiocese has admitted it instructed all schools under its umbrella to immediately enforce all employment contracts – effectively a blanket order to fire any LGBTQ staff members. Over 70 schools in central Indiana are under the archdiocese’s administration.

“To effectively bear witness to Christ, whether they teach religion or not, all ministers in their professional and private lives must convey and be supportive of Catholic Church teaching,” the archdiocese said in a statement sent last week.

A New Jersey mayor called the LGBTQ rights movement "an affront to almighty God" at a town council meeting and warned that people who support "unrighteous laws" will be held accountable.

Barnegat Township Mayor Alfonso Cirulli, a former assistant principal, began Tuesday by condemning a state law that requires LGBTQ-inclusive material be taught in public school. He said the law "crossed over the line into absurdity" and politicians "have no right to promote the LGBT agenda."

A bishop has claimed if a pregnant woman enjoys anal sex, this will transfer to the baby and it will be gay.

The shocking revelation came from The Most Reverend Metropolitan Neophytos (Masouras) of Morfou of the Church of Cyprus on Tuesday (23 July).

In a short video posted to YouTube, he said the lack of spirituality and knowledge of Christ and the Orthodox religion creates homosexuals.

And the ‘fault’ lies with the parents, who ‘pass on’ the ‘sickness’ of homosexuality, the bishop claimed.

Basically, when a woman enjoys anal sex or any ‘abnormal sexual contact’, ‘a desire is created, which is then transmitted to the unborn child’.

Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed what was dubbed the essentially anti-LGBTQ "Save Chick-fil-A" bill into law. If it weren’t enough that Abbott signed the bill over a month ago, late last week he thumbed his nose at LGBTQ people even more and participated in a TV ceremony celebrating the bill’s signing while he and his team were surrounded by Chick-fil-A food and beverages. He then tweeted the moment out to his supporters.

“No business should be discriminated against simply because its owners donate to a church, the Salvation Army, or other religious organization,” Abbott said.

“No business should lose a government contract because of their religious beliefs. The save Chick-fil-A legislation that I’m about to sign is a victory for religious freedom in Texas.”

Three upstate New York siblings abused their elderly father ?— both mentally and physically ?— for years because they claimed God told them he was unfaithful to their mother.

When Brittney Ready and her wife Stacey enrolled their youngest daughter Callie in the daycare program of Parkview Christian Academy of Waco, Texas, they hoped their child would continue being raised in the Christian faith, just like they’d done at home. Instead, Callie was rejected because her parents are lesbians.

In a public Facebook post, Brittney wrote that the school called she and her partner in when they had an opening for their daughter.

Brittney said, “With excitement we went in this afternoon ready to see the place and get her started. The director was super sweet and welcoming to us and Callie! We go to leave with paperwork in hand only for the administrator to call us into his office to let us know that he heard that Stacey and I are “mates” (first off we aren’t animals) and because of that they cannot welcome her (Callie).”

When Brittney asked why her child was no longer welcome, the administrator reportedly said, “bylaws are bylaws” and that the school’s Christian faith disallowed the school from accepting Callie.

A Catholic priest who linked autism to homosexuality has canceled his upcoming Australian tour. Church authorities canceled his tours in Ireland and Canada also canceled his tours.

Father Dominic Valanmanal from India was scheduled to appear at a five-day retreat in the southern city of Melbourne.

Syro Malabar Eparchy of St Thomas the Apostle in Melbourne had planned to host the retreat. It announced the cancellation but did not give a reason for it.

The weather report in Buenaventura, Colombia, calls for thunderstorms this Sunday. That is a bit unfortunate, since it may prove tricky to differentiate between precipitation and holy water falling from the sky.

That afternoon, on the Lord's day of rest, Monsignor Rubén Dario Jaramillo Montoya, a Catholic bishop in the city, plans to hop in a helicopter and soak what he has described as crime-ridden streets with the blessed liquid. The ritual was set to be part of a religious feast celebrating Buenaventura's patron saint. But Montoya's real hope, he told a local radio station, was to "exorcise all those demons that are destroying our port."

An Indiana Catholic high school has fired a married gay teacher to remain within the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

The decision means Cathedral High School in northeast Indianapolis will avoid the punishment the neighboring Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School received just last week for following its conscience and refusing to fire its own gay and married employee.

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Cathedral High School’s board of directors said in a letter on Sunday that if the school kept the gay teacher on staff, it would lose its nonprofit status, its diocesan priests and its ability to offer the Eucharist, a central Christian rite, among other consequences.

Leaders said they hoped the gay teacher’s termination won’t “dishearten” students.

The Trump Administration’s leaked gender memo, the recent transgender military ban, and the expansion of the global gag rule aren’t coincidences. They are part of a well-coordinated, funded global movement designed to control our communities by restricting the rights and bodily autonomy of women, LGBTQI communities, and people of color — eerily reminiscent of Reagan era oppressive tactics.

For LGBTQI communities, this kind of backlash is not new. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, the Reagan administration demonized our communities, as did right-wing forces around the world, spreading the false notion of the "gay plague" and blaming men who have sex with men for the transmission of the HIV virus. LGBT people were denied equal access to healthcare, faced intense violence, were stigmatized, stripped of basic rights, and often forced into the shadows. But we fought back.

Today, we know the far-right are sewing those same seeds of paranoia, creating gender panic with the use of an intentionally ambiguous organizing framework termed "gender ideology"by some and "anti-gender ideology" by others. Originating in the 1990s, gender ideology is a construct that depicts efforts to expand rights for women, LGBTQI people, and people of color, as radical, dangerous, and elitist, arguing that we are a threat to traditional family values.

At first, you might not realize the flyer was put there by a white supremacy group.

The poster, in shades of black, white and teal, features Andrew Jackson on horseback. The accompanying text reads: "European roots, American greatness."

Flyers like this, posted across the country by American neo-Nazi and white supremacist group Identity Evropa are popping up far more than they used to. Others feature George Washington. According to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacy propaganda increased by 182 percent in 2018 compared with the year before.

The increase in flyers and other propaganda reflects a relatively new strategy for hate groups, the ADL says. Under intense scrutiny, white supremacists are reluctant to show their face in public, so they're relying more on leaflets and posters to spread hate without putting themselves at personal risk, it adds.

A tax-filing business in Indiana refused to serve a lesbian couple, citing the business owner’s religious beliefs.

Bailey Brazzel says she has gone to Carver Tax Service in Russiaville, Indiana, to have her taxes done for years.

But she won’t be going back anymore.

She and her new wife Samantha – they were married this past July – went to Carver Tax Service and were told by Nancy Fivecoate, who runs the business, that she would not prepare their taxes.

At first, officials at the U.S. Indian Health Service overlooked the peculiarities of their unmarried new doctor, including the children’s toys he hoarded in his basement on the reservation. They desperately needed a pediatrician at their hospital in Browning, Mont.

By 1995, after three years, they became convinced Stanley Patrick Weber was a pedophile and pushed for his removal from the government-run hospital.

“You’re going to have to leave,” Randy Rottenbiller, its clinical director at the time, recalled telling the doctor after learning a child patient had stayed the night in his house.

But the Indian Health Service didn’t fire Mr. Weber. Instead, it transferred him to another hospital in Pine Ridge, S.D. He continued treating Native American children there for another 21 years, leaving behind a trail of sexual-assault allegations.

America is, quite famously, a nation founded on the principle of freedom of religion. As a result it is easy to understand why many people would be uncomfortable with certain kinds of religious practices (mostly notably prayer) and education in public schools. A little over a week ago President Trump tweeted his support for the introduction of Biblical literacy classes in schools, drawing attention to efforts by a variety of Christian groups to put the Bible back on the high school agenda.

Following Trump’s statement there was a flurry of media coverage of the issue. Fox News reported that “at least six states, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia have introduced legislation this year pushing for public schools to offer Bible literacy classes,” noting that these classes would be electives. (The Indiana bill is not actually a Bible course bill at all. It demands that the previously existing world religions electives class has to include a conversation about the Bible).

There is a strategy here: Project Blitz, an initiative sponsored by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation and the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislative Network, has been orchestrating the push to create these bills.

As prominent SMU religious studies professor Mark Chancey has written, it’s actually already legal to teach the Bible in schools, so in some sense these bills are unnecessary. Courses like the one Trump is tweeting have been around for a century. Chancey told The Daily Beast that “it is important to recognize that Bible course bills and their sponsors may have different motivations…sometimes a bill is clearly about more than just biblical literacy, and that's definitely the case with Project Blitz bills.” Other measures that Project Blitz has called for includes the promotion of the motto “In God We Trust,” the introduction of a “year of the Bible” and the limiting of the rights of same-sex couples and transgender people. Chancey told me, “Project Blitz is weaponizing Biblical Literacy for the cultural wars.”