Notre Dame: If You Can Play, You Can Play

(Via Towleroad)

FEMEN Mock Notre Dame Suicide

Yesterday a member of the Ukraine-based group FEMEN went topless at the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral and posed with a toy gun pointed at her mouth. The demonstration mocked the Tuesday suicide of anti-gay activist Dominque Venner at the same location. The message on the woman's chest reads: "May fascist rest in hell."

Catholic Groups Sue Obama Administration

The University of Notre Dame, the Archdiocese of New York, and over 40 other dioceses and Catholic groups have filed a freedom of religion lawsuit against the Obama administration. Catholic News Service reports:

"This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference," the archdiocese says on the website. "It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs." The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.

Notre Dame Students Protest For More Inclusive LGBT Policies

Spurred by the recent anti-gay cartoon published in the student newspaper, yesterday a large group of Notre Dame students rallied at the school's administration building to demand that the school president accept a letter calling for a more inclusive and welcoming campus environment for LGBT students.

Notre Dame Editor Resigns

The editor of Notre Dame's student newspaper, Kara King, has resigned in the wake of an anti-gay cartoon published last week.

King resigned in a letter published in the paper Monday. In the letter, she wrote, “A miscommunication between another editor and myself led to the comic running without me first reading and approving the material. Regardless, no excuse can justify the comic even being considered for publication, and the duty to censor it fell to me. I failed to do so, and am solely responsible for providing a forum for this message of hate.” The offending antigay editorial cartoon called a baseball bat the “quickest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable.”

Anti-Gay Cartoon Runs In Notre Dame Student Newspaper, Editor Apologizes

The editor of Notre Dame's student newspaper has issued an apology for a viciously anti-gay cartoon that ran in this week's edition. "What's the quickest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?" A baseball bat. The punchline in the cartoon was originally going to be "AIDS," but the artist "didn't want to make fun of fatal diseases." GLAAD is on the case:

In a statement to the press today, The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) claimed “The Observer made a dangerously misguided decision that promoting violence was somehow superior to making fun of HIV/AIDS. Both versions of the cartoon were abhorrent.” GLAAD contacted The Observer’s editor, Jenn Metz, who relayed a tearful apology by phone. She explained that she was not present when the decision to run the cartoon was made, and that she was incredibly upset that others on staff had made that decision.

An apology printed in the paper this morning included the following: "The editors of The Observer would like to publicly apologize for the publication of “The Mobile Party” in the Jan. 13 edition. The burden of responsibility ultimately lies on us for allowing it to go to print. 
There is no excuse that can be given and nothing that can be said to reverse the damage that has already been done by this egregious error in judgment. 
 Allowing this cruel and hateful comic a place on our pages disgraced those values and severely hurt members of our Notre Dame family — our classmates, our friends. For this, we sincerely apologize. Unfortunately, the language of hate is an everyday reality in our society.”

Obama Heckled At Notre Dame

Anti-abortion activists have been steaming about President Obama's invitation to speak at Notre Dame's commencement and one of them temporarily brought Obama's speech to a halt yesterday when he began heckling the president from the audience. Outside the hall, king of the wingnuts Alan Keyes was arrested for the second time on school property in as many weeks, along with Operation Rescue's Randall Terry and scores of other anti-choicers.