E-mail
Print
RSS
G-bookmarks
Live
Technorati4. Controversy in the Episcopal Church leads to schism. Pressures in the Episcopal Church USA reached a breaking point as more congregations and dioceses voted to leave the denomination over its actions and policy positions on homosexuality - most centrally the election of an openly homosexual bishop in 2003. Several churches had taken refuge under Anglican churches in Africa and the Southern Cone of South America, but as the year came to a close a new Anglican Church in North America had been declared. Court battles over church property continued, but conservatives won a major decision in Virginia in late December.
5. California voters approve Proposition 8. The decision of the California Supreme Court to mandate the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state set the stage for a battle to amend the state's constitution to affirm marriage exclusively as the union of a man and a woman. This measure affirmed what California voters had overwhelmingly affirmed just a few years earlier, but the battle to pass Proposition 8 was heated and close. In the end, the measure passed by a 52-48 vote, but appeals put the question back before the California Supreme Court. The vote sent a clear signal to the nation - voters support marriage as a heterosexual union. Votes in Arizona and Florida added weight to this signal. By the end of 2008, a majority of the nation's citizens lived in states that had adopted similar measures.
6. The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn marks end of an era. The death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on August 3 marked a symbolic end of the Cold War and served to remind the world of the horrors of the Soviet Union and its gulags. A Nobel laureate, Solzhenitsyn lived long enough to return to his native Russia and to die there as he had promised. He also lived long enough to see Russia return to many of its bad habits, including oligarchy. His death seemed to put a coda on the Cold War, proving that the human spirit cannot be broken by persecution, however brutal. Continue »
