EDGE Los Angeles

With the unexpected resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, some in the LGBT community expressed the hope that the Church would engage in a meaningful conversation about LGBT rights. Others aren’t as optimistic.

The two faces of religion with respect to gays could not be more opposed than the efforts by clergy in Omaha, Nebraska, to end faith-based discrimination -- and the refusal by Southern Baptists to issue a mea culpa to LGBTs.

A gay Catholic cleric who was abruptly terminated from his teaching post at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia has been hired on at the University of Pennsylvania.

The founder of the GLBT Catholic group Courage has died at age 92. Fr. John Harvey made his initial vows in 1938, and was ordained six years later. He died on Dec. 27.

A Texas church that had been in trouble with its denomination in the past for its friendly stance toward gays has broken away rather than exclude its LGBT parishioners.

Critics of the country’s largest Lutheran denomination and its more open stance toward gay clergy formed a new Lutheran church Friday at a meeting of a conservative activist group.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is moving gay pastors into its fold - it’s now the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. to allow noncelibate gays into its ranks - even as the most visible dissidents strike out on their own.

A Catholic UK activist is pushing to religious leaders to "cut ties" with any religious groups that do not actively oppose GLBT equality, claiming that "It’s high time the Catholic bishops of England and Wales defended the culture of life by cutting their ties with pro-homosexual ’rights’ campaigning Catholics."

The highest court in the United Methodist Church will review its 2005 ruling that allowed a clergyman to bar a noncelibate gay man from joining a congregation.

A Church of England committee has decided against nominating a gay priest to become a bishop, British news reports said Thursday.