The Biden administration has surprised LGBTQ advocacy groups by forcefully telling a federal court they will defend Christian schools’ religious freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ students. The Department of Justice (DOJ) says it shares the “same ultimate objective” as the college and universities that have been accused of bias.

The Biden administration’s and the Christian schools’ interests are “identical,” the brief says, with both committed “to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.”

The incident unfolded at the McKinley Senior High School in Canton on May 25 when the 17-year-old player said that head coach Marcus Wattley told him to sit in a chair in the middle of their gym and eat an entire pepperoni pizza. The student had been absent from a voluntary strengthening and conditioning practice.

Gilbert said that the student was under threat of having the other players being punished if he refused to eat the pizza. They also implied that he might be kicked off the team, he claimed. The student received therapy over the trauma from the incident.

Minnesota’s major hospitals and healthcare systems are stepping up their urgency ahead of Thanksgiving this week with a messaging campaign that declares “There’s no more time to be ‘Minnesota Nice.'”

The campaign is called “Fight COVID MN.”

“We need to pull this lever, which is a little bit more in your face,” said Dr. Rahul Koranne, the president and CEO of the Minnesota Hospital Association.

One of the first two posters shows a healthcare worker in PPE with text that says, “We’re not the front line. You are. We’re your last chance.”

The other reads, “We’re sure it’s good, but is Grandma’s pumpkin pie really to die for?”

“I think it’s time to get pretty aggressive,” said Dr. Omobosola Akinsete, HealthPartners’s chair of infectious diseases.

My wife and I (we’re both women) are in an interfaith marriage. I’m a member of a tiny religious minority and my wife is an atheist. Before we got married, we agreed we’d raise our kids in my religion—monthly religious service attendance, religious summer camp, etc.—and then let them choose whether to pursue the religion when they turn 18 and move out. My parents were much more prescriptive with me and I ended up rebelling against it for a long time. It was important to me that our kids make a choice for themselves once they turned 18.

However, my wife is tacitly supportive but pretty much “opts out” whenever she can. She works long hours and basically never wants to come to our religious service because she wants to catch up on sleep. I end up taking the kids by myself. My kids are teens and, seeing my wife opt out, are wondering why they can’t opt out either—which is super valid. My parents always warned me I shouldn’t marry outside the faith so I can’t talk to them about this, because all I’ll get is an “I told you so.” I can’t make my wife a role model for a religion she doesn’t believe in, but it’s incredibly important that my kids have a strong religious foundation and then make the choice from there. What should we do?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a quasi-independent agency of the federal government, is suing grocery chain Kroger, alleging that two employees were fired because they refused to wear aprons bearing a rainbow heart.

“The women believed the emblem endorsed LGBTQ values and that wearing it would violate their religious beliefs,” says an EEOC press release. The suit alleges the company violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans religious discrimination in employment.

The two, Brenda Lawson and Trudy Rickerd, worked at a Kroger store in Conway, Ark., near Little Rock. They have “sincerely held religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin,” according to the EEOC complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Let’s imagine we were giving an award for the worst social problem in the world today. Do you have any nominations?

Did I hear someone say international conflict? Racial prejudice maybe? Environmental destruction anyone? Millions of homeless refugees? Exploitation of women? Turns out there’s one problem that connects all of those, and it’s one you hardly ever hear politicians talk about.

Overpopulation may not be root of all evil, but it is indeed at the root of many of the world’s other miseries.

Just do the math. As a minimum, every additional person needs a certain quantity of food to eat and clean water to drink. Extra people could, in theory, live without clothes on their backs or roofs over their heads, but most of us would not wish for a world with more people, if they had to live homeless and naked against the elements. Beyond basic needs for food, water, and shelter, more people need more energy -- to light their homes and cook their food, and if that level is reached, they’ll be in the market for still more -- to power their refrigerators and washing machines. At moderate levels of economic development, people start to desire cell phones, big screen televisions, and cars to drive. And at the highest levels, they want second homes and vacations in far-away destinations, which they reach by flying on gas-guzzling airplanes.

One solution is to simply open our borders, to allow more of the world’s desperate people to come to the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. That is the case Samantha Power made in her painful stories of the desperate people she encountered as a journalist and later as U.N. ambassador, which triggered the earlier open letter. The statistics seem to indicate that most immigrants are not criminals or terrorists, but are, compared to those who grow up in first world countries, actually more eager to work long and hard hours. Cafaro acknowledges the obvious -- that the opportunities in a first world country are substantially greater than those in a third world country. And if you are rich or middle class American, there are benefits from immigrants – cheaper labor and better bottom-lines on stock dividends (as large corporations have used the availability of cheaper immigrant labor to break unions, and drastically cut salaries and benefits for their employees). But Cafaro notes that those economic benefits to middle and upper-class Americans translate into severe costs for the poorest Americans. Middle-class people are generally out of touch with how those economic benefits to them translate into the hefty costs associated with unemployment or underemployment among African-Americans, poor whites, and native Hispanics. Many of these less fortunate groups have lost the union jobs that permitted their parents to live reasonably comfortable lives. This in turn leads to loss of health care benefits, and many other unpleasant downstream consequences.

The governor of Texas has warned that he could reimpose a lockdown on the state if coronavirus prevention measures were not heeded, as states across the U.S. battled to get the pandemic under control.

Friday brought 63,900 new cases nationwide - a new record, according to data from Johns Hopkins University analyzed by CNN.

Bioethicist Dr Zeke Emanuel said up to 250,000 Americans could die directly from the coronavirus by the end of the year.

A Texas pastor has apologized for failing to keep people socially distanced at his evangelical church, after he and dozens of congregants reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.

Calvary Chapel of San Antonio has held multiple indoor, in-person services since it reopened in early May, right after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) let the state’s stay-at-home order expire. As hospitalizations and positivity rates surged in Texas over the past few weeks, members of the church began testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

The church has at least 50 cases of the novel coronavirus, lead pastor Ron Arbaugh told ?NBC-affiliate WOAI-TV on Saturday. Most of the positive cases are staff members ? including Arbaugh, his wife, at least one other main pastor, and children’s ministry staff. The majority of impacted individuals have reported mild symptoms, the pastor said.

Oprah Winfrey has warned African Americans to take the coronavirus outbreak seriously because it is 'ravaging our community' and 'taking us out'.

The TV mogul said the coronavirus outbreak continued to have a devastating impact on black communities across the United States but that people weren't getting the message about the risk of asymptomatic carriers.

Speaking to CBS This Morning on Tuesday, Winfrey said it was important for black people to understand that pre-existing conditions including diabetes and asthma put them at greater risk if they contracted the virus.

She also voiced concerns for her own health, saying she was staying indoors because she suffered from pneumonia last year and that her 'lungs never really fully cleared'.

In a televised address, Duterte said it was vital everyone cooperates and follows home quarantine measures, as authorities try to slow the coronavirus contagion and spare the country's fragile health system from being overwhelmed.

The Philippines has recorded 96 coronavirus deaths and 2,311 confirmed cases, all but three in the past three weeks, with infections now being reported in the hundreds every day.

"It is getting worse. So once again I'm telling you the seriousness of the problem and that you must listen," Duterte said late on Wednesday.

"My orders to the police and military ... if there is trouble and there's an occasion that they fight back and your lives are in danger, shoot them dead."

"Is that understood? Dead. Instead of causing trouble, I will bury you."

The Howard County Prosecutor’s Office on Monday charged Helen Martin, 56, with murder and neglect of a dependent resulting in death, WTHR reports. Officers with the Kokomo Police Department took the grandmother into custody on Saturday after responding to a report at a private residence of an individual who was unconscious.

Upon their arrival, police found Martin’s unresponsive 4-year-old grandson being treated by first responders, according to another WTHR report. He later died after being taken to the Community Howard Regional Health Hospital.

Martin’s husband Brian Martin told police upon their arrival that his wife had drowned the child, and Helen allegedly admitted that she’d held the boy’s head underneath the water while giving him a bath, WTHR reports.

The woman from Illinois wrote to the Santa Rosa’s Press Gazette’s ‘Dear Abby’ column to explain her dilemma.

She said she had previously been in an abusive relationship, but broke it off 14 years ago and stayed single to raise her “small son to adulthood”.

She finally found someone she had “strong feelings” for, and who felt the same about her, around seven months ago.

The woman wrote: “My feelings for my boyfriend are strong, and it’s mutual. He is giving, kind, caring, hardworking and protective. We are very much in love.

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has announced that it is “not of the view” that services need to stop to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

This statement was issued two days ago, in the wake of UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s March 16 briefing that said everyone must avoid both “mass gatherings” and “pubs, clubs, theatres and other such social venues”.

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland said: “Although many have interpreted UK government advice and remarks [about coronavirus] as meaning that all services in church buildings should cease, and have stopped meeting, the Church Interests Committee is not of that view.”

Yes, really.

Beaches in the Hamptons are starting to fill up earlier than normal and rental properties are now scarce with New Yorkers fleeing the city as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread.

The beachside communities in Long Island have seen a surge in population ever since New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a stay-at-home order to help stop the spread of the virus.

The unusual surge so early in the year has prompted local leaders in the Hamptons to urge Gov Cuomo to ban non-locals from the area during the outbreak.

Locals in the Hamptons, which is usually a summer hotspot for New Yorkers getting out of the city, have reported larger than normal crowds at beaches and busier beachside parking lots.

You have to hand it to Cardinal Raymond Burke – if nothing else, he’s consistent. He used to let HIV wreak havoc on people. Now he wants coronavirus to do the same.

Burke has been one of the fiercest anti-LGBTQ prelates in the Catholic Church. He has called homosexuality an “ailment” and told parents that they should not allow their children to meet same-sex couples. Burke has also been a leader in decrying the use of condoms to prevent HIV. Of course, the Vatican’s refusal to acknowledge condoms can save lives no doubt contributed to the death toll from AIDS.

Given his condom opposition, you might think that Burke simply wanted to consign LGBTQ people to death. But no, he’s an equal opportunity grim reaper. He wants to do the same for pious Catholics.

In a message to his followers this weekend, Burke says people should keep going to church, despite the calls from public health authorities in Italy to avoid groups.

“Just as we are able to purchase food and medicine, while taking care not to spread the coronavirus in the process, so also [sic] we must be able to pray in our churches and chapels, receive the Sacraments, and engage in acts of public prayer and devotion, so that we know God’s closeness to us and remain close to Him, fittingly calling upon His help,” Burke writes.