Free Republic

Gays and lesbians seeking a spiritual journey through organized faith might find several roadblocks in society, especially with media focus on the anti-gay stances of many churches, but one woman found a welcoming congregation in Geneva. Pamela Rumancik, 49, who’s openly lesbian, recently finished a year of training as a minister at Geneva’s Unitarian Universalist Church. Her role was assistant minister, leading services and performing weddings and memorial services. Rumancik grew up Catholic and was always involved with the church. “I couldn’t be a minister in the Catholic Church, but I could as a Unitarian,” she said...“As a Catholic, I...

New York’s state’s Catholic bishops continue to blast the state’s passage of homosexual marriage this week, with one bishop calling on Catholic schools and other institutions to shun lawmakers in protest of the vote. In an op-ed Sunday in the New York Daily News, Nicholas DiMarzio, bishop of Brooklyn, called on members of his diocese to “not to bestow or accept honors, nor to extend a platform of any kind to any state elected official, in all our parishes and churches for the foreseeable future,” a statement that may signal a new era in church-state relations in the Empire State....

Some may have seen Mr. Díaz, a Democrat and a Pentecostal minister, as the Latino representative on the issue, but several same-sex couples in Queens — from Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico — would debate that, if they were not so busy planning their weddings. “He pretends to speak for all of us, for Latinos, and I really do not think he does,” said Ana Maria Archila, a Colombian who decided on Friday night to marry her longtime partner after the State Senate voted to make same-sex unions legal.....Advocates for the two groups say that immigrants and gay...