1. The Philippines President, Rodrigo Duterte, lashed out at the Roman Catholic Church, saying that it will not survive long given the clerical sex abuse scandal involving predatory priests that has engulfed the institution. He said, “When they get horny, the sons of bitches, they go after nuns. If they’re gay, they go after young boys. Who needs a religion like that?” He added, “The Catholic Church? In about 25 years, it will disappear. No more. People will forget it.”
2. Agung Kurnia Ritonga, a 22-year-old student at the University of North Sumatra in Medan, is on trial for insulting Islam in an Instagram post by mocking the burning of an Islamic flag in October last year. A tawhid flag presumed to belong to Hib-ut-Tahrir, a banned militant group was burned by three Muslim youths on Oct. 21, 2018. Ritonga's post was said to have insulted the tawhid flag that has script describing the monotheistic God in Islam and God himself. He wrote, "What's the matter if the tawhid flag is burnt? Your God apparently gets burnt also? So, don't take many recitations that teach culture, that makes fools. Your God is just silent over there, playing guitar, getting drunk, and writing porn poetry, why are you so busy?" A local mosque official who made the complaint said he was satisfied with the trial's outcome and agreed with the jail term demanded by prosecutors. Prosecutors in Indonesia have demanded an 18-month jail term and a $715 fine for the Christian student.
3. The guy known to TV audiences as the "My Pillow" guy, who also happens to be a conservative Christian activist, Mike Lindell, told the crowd that Donald Trump was "chosen by God&". He met Trump in 2016 and knew that God had chosen him. He said, "As I stand before you today, I see the greatest president in history. Of course he is. He was chosen by God."
4. Youtube took all paid advertising away from videos that contain anti-vax messages saying they contain dangerous and harmful content. The change was made after advertisers started to pull their own ads from the anti-vax videos which only happened after Buzzfeed News asked them about it. Youtube has also introduced a new information panel pertaining to vaccines.
5. Chick-fil-A, a company whose Christian owners are known to donate to anti-gay groups, used Starship's 1986 classic "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" as a background song for their ad. Singer Grace Slick said that Chick-fil-A pisses her off. She let the company use her music knowing she was going to give all the money made from that deal directly to a group fighting for LGBTQ rights.
6. Politicians who advocated for LGBTQ rights needeed to be voted out before all of society was destroyed, Pat Robertson said on The 700 Club. After all, the "gay agenda" involved making sure "their weird way of doing sex is legitimized." Robertson was angry over a story about how a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia was going to close down because it did not want to abide by the city's non-discrimination ordinance. He said, "The incredible thing about the homosexuals is they are willing to destroy lives and destroy the whole fabric of society so long as they and their weird way of doing sex is legitimized.”
7. Brendan Johnston, a male high school wrestler in Colorado was competing for a state championship but gave up on that dream when he realized his bracket included two girls. He forfeited both matches and knocked himself out of the tournament rather than wrestle them. He explained, "There is something that I really do find problematic about the idea of wrestling with a girl, and a part of that does come from my faith and my belief. And a part of that does come from how I was raised to treat women as well as maybe from different experiences and things.”
8. Skye Moore, a teacher at the Chapin Baptist Child Development Center, was fired from the pre-kindergarten school for no reason other than existing as a gay woman. Moore was named "teacher of the month" several times while working at the school. Chapin Baptist Church Pastor Michael Hull decided her engagement to another woman made her dispensable.
9. Arizona State Rep. KElly Townsend says that making people get vaccinated is what Communists do. A Republican, Gov. Doug Ducey, said he would veto any bills that might lower vaccination rates in his state. Townsend thinks his anti-plague is un-American, she she
explained in a Facebook post. Her post, "And finally, I am going to demand, as a mother of an injured child from her vaccines, that we insist that we spend the time and money on discovering what in these vaccines is causing so much injury, instead of insisting on taking your liberty in the name of the collective."
10. "Love Is In The Aisle: A dating show at Walmart" is a marketing campaign launched by Walmart. The second episode featured two gay men getting to know each other on a shopping trip. A Christian hate group claims the ad is homosexual propaganda that needs to be eradicated from the internet. The American Family Association has sent an action alert urging its "nearly 1 million friends and supporters" to sign a petition complaining that Walmart "has chosen to begin promoting the normalization of homosexuality in conflict with the beliefs of its customer base."
