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An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

RD News Round-Up—Oct.14, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…cently took exception to the media’s portrayal of him as “Rick Warren, the Hawaiian-shirted preacher,” maintaining that it “started becoming a shtick.” In an early October interview with Christianity Today, Warren said that he hadn’t worn a Hawaiian shirt “in two years” and that he “doesn’t even own one.” Warren also said that he was tired of being labeled the new Billy Graham: “I’m very tired of it. I have said many times, there is no successor t…

Reason for Cautious Optimism in the Mauna Kea Telescope Standoff

By Jean Rosenfeld

…e the kia’i adhered to their praxis of kapu aloha, or peaceful resistance. Hawaiians who favored the TMT project staged anemic counter protests in Honolulu, but were loathe to voice their opposition for fear it would tear families (ohana) apart. Aloha and ohana are the bedrock cultural values of the Hawaiian population. After a tense nine days, during which the governor issued an emergency decree and the elders (kapuna) at the site were arrested,…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…on the tension caused when Orthodox Jewish men request same-sex seating on airlines for religious reasons generated over 3,000 reader responses. The scenario as described in the story generally unfolds something like this: the individual reaches his assigned seat and finds that the seat next to him is occupied by a woman. He shifts uncomfortably in the aisle until the flight attendant or an alert passenger recognizes what’s going on and asks the w…

What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

By Jonathan Rosenblum

…y left the airport and began marching a mile to the headquarters of Alaska Airlines. I think the photo does a great job of embodying the energy of the budding movement—clergy and workers from a diversity of backgrounds and faiths. To me, the picture reinforces a key argument of the book: this is a moral fight. For nine months leading up to the rally, organizers had been meeting people at the airport and in the community, coaxing them to take on an…

LDS Apostle Says Same-Sex Attraction Can be Overcome

By Joanna Brooks

…avas and flip-flops with white shirts, ties, and suit coats. Young married Hawaiian men pushing double strollers and toting diaper bags around Temple Square. Peruvian viejitas sharing a sack lunch in the shade of the great granite Salt Lake Temple, built more than a century ago by Anglo-American pioneers like my great-great-great grandfather. The young blonde-haired, pink-stiletto wearing 21st century daughters of the original Utah pioneers. I wan…

LGBT Mormons Ask in Historic Temple: “If they could just see us, don’t you think they would change their minds?”

By Joanna Brooks

…lesbians too; white, Asian-American, Latino, African-American, and Native Hawaiian. Many served LDS proselytizing missions, raised children, and held positions of responsibility in their local congregations before coming out of the closet. Some have stopped participating in LDS institutional life, while others have continued by walking a carefully negotiated path. Many gay Mormons in attendance had partnered with other gay Mormons. I met an olde…

‘Hardwired’ for Hetero Marriage, LDS Tension Mounts Over LGBT Rights

By Joanna Brooks

…l—historic legislation to secure civil marriage rights for gay and lesbian Hawaiians. The contrast has commentators from the New York Times to Mother Jones writing about what appear to be divergent impulses on LGBT issues in a faith that built its twentieth-century branding on tight bureaucratic management of theology and public image. So what do Mormons really believe about homosexuality? Make no mistake about it: more than any other branch of o…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…zandaranian!—candidate, and not our crypto-Muslim communist atheist Kenyan Hawaiian President Obama? But rest assured, my fellow Americans. I know Lindsey Graham is not an Iranian, not an extremist; not a Democrat in disguise. I can be trusted, not just because I have a flag pin on my lapel, which was made in China, which is where I’m shipping the jobs of three of the folks in the back to. But because my last name is Moghul, like the ski bump, or…

Religious Freedom Is No Carte Blanche: Highlights from Mississippi HB 1523 Court Ruling

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…every action has its predictable overreaction. Politicians reacted to the Hawaiian proceedings with DOMA and mini-DOMAs. Lawrence and Goodridge birthed the state constitutional amendments. And now Obergefell has led to HB 1523. The next chapter of this back-and-forth has begun. Less charitably, but also true, is the reality that every time lesbian and gay citizens moved one step closer to legal equality, voters and their representatives passed ne…