NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Nearly 200 pastors, policymakers and other New Orleans-area Christians were urged to sign a declaration circulating nationally in support of traditional marriage, protection of life and freedom of religious conscience, three values said to be under threat in American culture.
Rival declarations circulated at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.
Although a draft of the declaration has circulated for months, the Islamic countries only recently raised objections to a paragraph that dealt with vulnerable groups, reacting with surprise to what they saw, officials said.
Although the government has refused to publish the draft declaration it circulated last Thursday to the other 46 states that are signed up to the European court of human rights, a leaked French text makes it clear that the UK wants more cases decided at national level and fewer embarrassing rulings from Strasbourg.
However, a draft UN Security Council declaration, which was circulated by Britain, voicing "grave concern about the situation in Qusair, and in particular the impact on civilians of the ongoing fighting", was blocked by Russia.
The Iraq declaration is to be circulated on Capitol Hill by Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Lois Capps, both California Democrats.
Photograph: FRANK VAN BEEK/POOL/EPA Updated at 10.29pm GMT 9.31pm GMT Commentators have digesting the (by now widely circulated) G7 declaration and its potential consequences.
For example, in 1848, at a convention for women's rights held in New York, activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott circulated the Declaration of the Seneca Falls Convention, demanding the acknowledgment of women as rights-bearing individuals.
Participants in the Nairobi conference, organized by the World Conference on Religion and Peace, circulated a draft declaration of principles acknowledging shortcomings.
