Transgender rights laws have been controversial across the country, but one of the nation’s most liberal states – Massachusetts – could become the first to overturn such protections this fall.

A referendum that would repeal the 2016 state law likely will appear on the ballot in November. The law allows men and women to use the restroom or locker room that corresponds to their gender identity. In other words, men who identity as women are allowed to use the women’s restroom.

Two new polls show the vote could be close. A Suffolk University survey showed that 49 percent of voters would keep the law and 37 percent repeal it. A WBUR poll had 52 percent backing the law and 38 percent wanting to overturn it.

The fact that the law lacks overwhelming support in left-leaning Massachusetts has surprised observers. A Daily Beast columnist wrote, “In theory, an anti-transgender ballot measure shouldn’t stand a chance in a state like Massachusetts.”

“If it were somehow to pass in Massachusetts, it would be very divisive across the country,” MassINC pollster Steve Koczela told WBUR, “and you would start to see these ballot questions popping up in a lot of other places.”

A group known as Keep MA Safe is collecting signatures to put the referendum on the ballot. A “yes” vote would keep the law. Keep MA Safe is urging a “no” vote.

On its website, Keep MA…

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will end a policy that separates families at the border.

“We’re going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don’t stand for and that we don’t want,” Trump said Wednesday, when he announced that he would sign the order.

The order will end the separation of migrant families who had been split by the policy. Under the new order, the families will be detained together while they wait for court dates.

“We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Trump said. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

The executive order says the new directivewill be to “maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members.”

Trump’s reversal on the policy came after facing a firestorm of criticism about the policy.

In a tweet this week, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, thanked her father for the change.

“Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border. Congress must now act + find a lasting solution that is consistent with our shared values;the same values…

Theodore McCarrick, cardinal archbishop emeritus in Washington, D.C., has been told by the Vatican he can no longer practice his priestly ministry after claims that he sexually abused a teenager 50 years ago were found to be credible.

As attorney Patrick Noaker told Fox News on Wednesday, his unnamed client claims that he was abused twice when he was a teenage altar boy in New York, while McCarrick served there as a priest.

The alleged victim says that while he was helping McCarrick be measured for a robe for Christmas mass in 1971, the priest unzipped his pants and sexually assaulted him. A year later, he says that a similar assault took place in a bathroom.

McCarrick, who later become the Archbishop of Washington, has denied that he carried out the crimes, but says that he accepts the Vatican’s decision to remove him from ministry.

He explained in a statement that he only became aware of the allegations some months ago, after he was informed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.

“While shocked by the report, and while maintaining my innocence, I considered it essential that the charges be reported to the police,…

Professors from an evangelical seminary have taken issue with the common interpretation of Ephesians 5, arguing that it’s oftentimes misused.

Ephesians 5 is a controversial passage in modern society, especially verses 22–24: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Sandra Glahn, associate professor in Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary who teaches a gender studies course, and Darrell Bock, senior research professor of New Testament at DTS, disagree with those who interpret the passage as meaning that wives must be subservient to their husbands.

In an episode of the DTS podcast The Table published online Tuesday, Bock referred to Ephesians 5 as a “counter cultural passage that has been misused.”

“What makes that passage so famous and a bugaboo for some people is the word submission comes up. Only it’s not submission for most people. For some people the word submission [is] a bad word. It’s almost a four letter word,” explained Bock.

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Glahn went on to…