Globe Trot: White House plans LGBT hiring requirement for aid groups

LGBT: C-Fam reports the White House plans to move forward with a policy change requiring humanitarian organizations to accept LGBT applicants in order to continue receiving government funds. This could apply to the largest Christian aid organizations—groups like World Vision, World Relief, and Samaritan’s Purse—who receive funds through USAID to administer food and other relief all over the world.

WORLD’s latest edition explores the benefits nonprofits could lose if the U.S. Supreme Court rules next month in favor of making gay marriage a constitutional right. There’s a lot such groups need to do now—starting with precise mission statements and hiring policies—to be ready.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter is expected to win reelection today, despite fresh questions about his role in a widening corruption scandal. Blatter, 79, has been president of the world soccer organization since 1998. He wasn’t named in formal U.S. or Swiss investigations.

SYRIA: New photos show the level of destruction to Assyrian Christian towns along the Khabur River after ISIS took over in late February. An alliance of Kurdish and Assyrian militias routed ISIS from the area but the destruction and presence of landmines means thousands of Christians aren’t likely to return soon.

ISIS continues to hold 228 Christian hostages taken from the Khabur River villages in February. It freed two elderly women on Monday.

CUBA: The United States today is formally removing Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terror.

SAMOA: Seventh-Day Adventists face a particular dilemma after Samoa moved itself to the other side of the International Date Line—what day is actually their Sabbath? Samoa switched time zones to align itself with trade partners Australia and New Zealand in 2011, putting it 24 hours ahead of American Samoa, just 30 miles away.

G.K.:It’s G.K. Chesterton’s birthday, and here’s a long (and worthwhile) quote that starts out about Islam and the important differences between worship of a monotheist Allah versus a Trinitarian God.

The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The HEART of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea “it is not well for man to be alone.” The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

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