It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.

The head of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles says leadership in his church is open to all, including gays and lesbians.

A recent expansion of the federal hate crimes law "does not suspend the First Amendment," says New York Times staff writer David Kirkpatrick, "and there's nobody, I think, on either side of the US Senate or House of Representatives that intends to see preachers locked in jail."

Watch interviews with delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's recent national assembly, which voted to allow local congregations to hire noncelibate gay and lesbian pastors.

At its national assembly in Minneapolis, the country's largest Lutheran denomination permitted the ordination and hiring of homosexual clergy who are in “lifelong, monogamous” relationships.

"We don't talk enough about love in this society," says Laura Sessions Stepp, author of UNHOOKED. But if love is what young men and women really want, is hooking up the way to get there?

“Most of our faith traditions believe God gave us the gift of sexuality, so it has deep theological meaning for us. I don’t think we can say sexuality isn’t a religious issue. It deeply is a religious issue.”

Read more of Kim Lawton's interview in New Orleans with Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire.

Read more of the R & E interview with Bishop John Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.