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Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

…St. Thomas Source, Edward Benfield sees losses for LGBT communities in the Virgin Islands but also some reason for hope: For many Virgin Islanders, it may come as a surprise to learn that St. Thomas was a mecca of Caribbean gay life from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s. Today, the experience of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer – known by the initials LGBTQ – in the Virgin Islands is far from the decadence of the old…

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In Sermon on Birth of the ‘Fatherland,’ Putin’s Patriarch Kirill Equates Invasion of Ukraine with Defense of Orthodox Faith

…the Russians’ prayers were likely more effective on a day dedicated to the Virgin Mary, implying that the Russian victory that day had been a direct result of the interventions of the Holy Mother. Not that the woman whom Orthodox Christians widely refer to as the Theotokos (the God-bearer)—i.e. the Virgin Mary, whose birth is the cause of the feast day—gets much attention the rest of the oration. Because she doesn’t. Instead, Patriarch Kirill rema…

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Does Religion Still Matter?

…ort and through security, I was too tired for breakfast. I slept the whole flight from RDU to Charlotte, but once I’d landed in Charlotte, with only twenty minutes to transfer to my Milwaukee flight, I was starving. Famished. Broken. But the only breakfast option I trusted was Starbucks, and every single Starbucks had a line that resembled a breakdown of civilization at the baggage claim. So I did not do that.  I stopped at a newsstand slash conve…

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Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

…erson at the desk, who sat there, right when the doors were closed and the flight took off, just as you arrived. It doesn’t really matter who exactly provides some justice. The institution probably just prefers to funnel it through one channel, namely customer service, because then they can have stricter rules, what is given, how much is given, under what circumstances, and so on. There are larger social problems than missed flights, like racist p…

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

…omen have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppression? As far as who feels marginalized in the specific context of a typical commercial flight, consider that separation of sexes is far more common in traditional religious environments. Doe…

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Why Peter Beinart is Wrong on Democrats and Anti-Mormonism

…ever gathered satisfactory qualitative evidence from Democrats who express reservations about voting for a Mormon.  As a Mormon, I’ve experienced anti-Mormonism, and I’ve experienced it from people all over the political spectrum. As we enter a campaign season in which the entire nation considers a presidential candidate deeply embedded in a widely misunderstood minority religion, the subject of anti-Mormonism deserves a far more rigorous and data…

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Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

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

…pense. 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 behind the…

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Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

…church, they’re marinating, so to speak, in the the various teachings of a number of people. I’ve covered many an event where I’ve been waiting in line to get in, and the inevitable conversation with the people around you goes something like this: they ask first where you go to church, and second which teachers you admire, and then you get into a long conversation about the relative virtues of all of them. A really good example of how all these te…

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Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

…a random sample size and therefore isn’t statistically representative. The number of individuals reporting victimization in Episcopal spaces is alarming nonetheless. However, I would argue the data is more likely to under- than to overestimate the scope of the abuse that occurs. To see why, the survey results must be interpreted in light of the Episcopal Church’s larger culture of inaction around sexual violence. See no evil, hear no evil… LGBTQ+…

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