RELIGION HEADLINES FRI 10-24

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(SRN NEWS)-

(  )  The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a male weightlifter who wants to compete against women.  The court found that USA Powerlifting’s policy barring J. C. Cooper from competing in its women’s division is discriminatory under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.  However, the justices sent part of the case back to a lower court to determine whether USA Powerlifting has a legitimate business purpose for excluding Cooper.  The governing body says it looks forward to telling a jury “why excluding a transgender woman from competing in the women’s division was for legitimate reasons, for maintaining fairness in athletics.”

(  )  An Alabama board is seeking to prohibit public libraries from placing books that promote transgenderism in children’s sections.  The Alabama Public Library Service Board of Directors is considering a rule change that expands the existing requirement for youth sections to be free of material deemed inappropriate for children.  The new proposal would add any material that “positively depicts transgender procedures, gender ideology, or the concept of more than two biological genders.”  The state board held a lengthy and sometimes heated public hearing this week ahead of next month’s expected vote.

(  )  Saudi Arabia has appointed a prominent ultraconservative scholar as the country’s new grand mufti, the kingdom’s top religious scholar.  That is not good news for the country’s small, persecuted Christian minority.  The grand mufti is one of the top Islamic clerics in the world of Sunni Muslims making his pronouncements that much more closely followed.  Most of Saudi Arabia’s Christians are underground, even though the government allows a certain amount of open worship and celebration of holidays.  It is feared that the new grand mufti will lead government officials to roll back some of those accommodations.

(  )  Aid To The Church In Need is warning that Islamic terrorism is a growing threat to the safety of Christians all around the globe.  In a new report the religious freedom group says “Global jihadism has entered a distinct, new phase of transnational evolution.  Major organizations, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, despite currently lacking clear central leadership, have continued to pursue their objectives.”  Sub-Saharan Africa has become a hotbed of Muslim terrorist activity with active cells operating to devastating effect in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan and Burkina Faso.