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There’s No Business Like the Bible Business: 200 Years of the ABS

By Paul Harvey

…cts, images of a white dude who is supposed to be Jesus, and so on and on. Numbers appear through this book, sometimes with numbing frequency and volume. Thousands of Bibles in the early years of the ABS; tens of thousands some decades later; millions and millions through the course of the twentieth century. The numbers document the stunning capacity of the ABS to flood the zone with Scriptures. Through the book, the ABS accomplished exactly that…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…omething-year-old Deadhead guys hit on my teenage friends by offering them tickets to shows. Deadheads were anathema to my chosen subculture of socially conscious punks. East Bay punks were aggro and in your face about social justice, feminism, human rights; Deadheads, in our eyes, were too stoned and obsessed with their god Jerry to care. Sometimes, I’d be out in Berkeley at night, coming out of a punk show in some basement or garage, and I’d hea…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…applaud this news, a murmur through the convention hall, Blackberries and iPhones tweeting on all sides of me. “When you come out of the closet, shut the door behind you because you won’t need it anymore,” he continues. (Who’s he talking to? He’s preaching to the choir, isn’t he? As far as he knows?) “If you don’t have a deity,” he says, “you are an atheist.” I’m an English teacher and I agree this may indeed define an atheist—someone without a g…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e group did not get a private meeting with Pope Francis, but was given VIP tickets to the pope’s weekly audience in St. Peter’s square. Religion News Service reports that several bishops, including “San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – point man or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ battle against gay marriage – had written a letter to the Vatican on their behalf.” A group of LGBT Catholics from London who met up with the New Ways…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…abortion clinics, particularly Dr. Tiller’s, and were arrested in massive numbers. One local activist told me that nearly 25 anti-abortion groups had been birthed during the Summer of Mercy, some of which are still active. The protests so shaped the city that, 22 years later, both sides recall the fight vividly. Faced with what was initially meant to be a week of protests, Wichita officials requested that the clinic close, and Dr. Tiller complied…

Can Eurovision’s Rainbow Arch Undermine Ukraine’s Orthodox Value System? This and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ation protections Cambodia’s annual Gay Pride Week celebrations started on May 12. The Cambodia Daily reports that “a statement signed by 57 communities, organizations and businesses called on the government to legalize same-sex marriage and introduce laws to protect the LGBT community. Japan: Tokyo Pride drawns 6,000 Tokyo’s LGBT pride celebration on Sunday May 7 drew an estimated 6,000 people. Israel: Tel Aviv pride will have bisexual focus Orga…

Hungarian Mayor Wants to Import White Christians, Ban Muslims & LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…a marriage license to marry his partner Hu Minglian was denied by a court. Japan: Will recognition of same-sex parternships go national? At East Asia Forum, Curtin University’s Yasuo Takao examines the propsects for recognition of same-sex partnerships to expand from the local level to nationally. Scotland: Footballer joins anti-bullying campaign Retired soccer player – or footballer in local parlance – Derek Ferguson has become a spokesperson for…

Blood and Hammers: Elderly Anti-Nuclear Activists Sentenced to Jail

By Kristen Tobey

We publish this story even as nuclear protesters are marching in Japan in response to an environmental and social crisis that has no certain end. – Eds. On November 2, 2009, five Catholic activists — one nun, two priests, and two laypeople, all age sixty or above — cut through a series of chain link and barbed wire fences surrounding Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor, Washington, where roughly one-quarter of the United States’ nuclear warheads are repo…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…grants from their homes. They are pulled to the U.S. because of demand for cheap labor. One of the major pushes came in the ’90s with the passage of NAFTA, which opened the door to many agri-businesses to move farms down to Mexico, putting small farmers out of business. And while the number of undocumented border crossers is down, Brother David says, it will be virtually impossible to eliminate them as long as the opportunities for jobs exist. As…

How Not to Support Obamacare

By Peter Laarman

…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…