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Malawi president pardons engaged gay couple: Couple had been sentenced to 14 years hard labor

The president of Malawi, under pressure from UN and human rights groups, has pardoned a gay couple who were recently sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment with hard labor after they became engaged in a traditional ceremony.

President Bingu wa Mutharika, speaking as UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon visited his African country May 29, said he ordered their immediate release on humanitarian grounds. Ban called Mutharika’s decision “courageous,” according to BBC News. “This outdated penal code should be reformed wherever it may exist.”

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This just in: Heather has two daddies

Sunday was Father’s Day, and the White House issued the standard presidential proclamation any major feast of the Hallmark Cycle
calls for. Pretty bland stuff, until this: “Nurturing families come in
many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single
father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian.”

African Lutherans press opposition to gay rites: Church leaders in Tanzania and Ethiopia

Three months before a major assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, church leaders in Tanzania and Ethiopia—who represent the two largest Lutheran constituencies in Africa—have expressed opposition to “same-sex marriages and those who support the legitimacy of such marriage.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America last year urged members to allow congregations that choose to do so “to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships,” but delegates did not call them marriages—reserving that term for heterosexual couples.