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Catholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter

By Marian Ronan

…e Vatican were to oppose the criminalization of homosexuality, it’s still hard to argue that the language it uses doesn’t encourage violence against LGBT people. A good example is the 1995 document Persona Humana: Declaration On Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, issued by the same Vatican office that recently condemned the US Catholic sisters’ organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Persona Humana suggests, for exampl…

Death Without Religion

By Gordon Haber

…on was the only litmus test.” But the real problems began in 1968, when a Harvard Medical School committee determined that brain death occurs when the patient suffers a “loss of personhood,” or a “permanently nonfunctioning brain.” The committee put forward four criteria that doctors should use to determine brain death: unresponsiveness, lack of movement or respiration, no reflexes, and lack of brain activity. Over forty years later, doctors still…

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…of achieving a truce.” Dimi Reider notes at +972 that by assassinating Jabari, “Barak and Netanyahu knocked one of the central pillars of the pragmatist camp within Hamas, the camp that sustained the detente with Israel and made efforts to bolster Hamas’ political credentials at the expense of its paramilitary wing.” Israel has an election coming up, which plays no small role here. Depressingly, Reider adds, “Israel’s opposition has never seemed…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…significant misconceptions about what atheism is and what it isn’t. I regularly hear from atheist students who are leading the charge for interfaith cooperation on their campuses, and their experiences echo mine. I’ve spoken on the topic of atheism and interfaith work at fourteen colleges and universities in the last two months, which gave me many opportunities to see it in action. Last month, Tufts’ Freethought Society hosted a panel on the role…

Infanticide Still Not a Growing Movement: 30 Years of Pro-Life Fudging

By Daniel Silliman

…ot be taken at face value, but more importantly neither these people nor McArdle’s article offered any data indicating an increase in support for infanticide. In fact, Gallup polls show Americans are pretty evenly divided on abortion. A report from 2012 found that this was also true for those between the ages of 18 and 34. In the last decade, there’s only been a little movement in public opinion, with pro-choice views declining by about 4 points a…

The 50 Shades of Evangelicalism

By Jonathan D. Fitzgerald

…Noah writing in the New Republic, observed how the mainstream media, and particularly the New York Times, misuse the word “Christian,” using it as a synonym for “Christian Right” or “Christian conservative.” Seventy-eight percent of the American population, he points out, identify as Christians, though far fewer fit into those sub-categories. Roughly one-third of that 78% call themselves evangelicals. And, while referring to a particular group as…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…that Francis had used similar language in a trip to the Philippines last year, warning of “the new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family.” Indonesia: Islamist activists ask Constitutional Court to criminalize homosexuality As we have been reporting, religious and political figures have been engaged in a rhetorical campaign of homophobia since early this year. Now, Ali Kotarumalos reports for Associated Press that “Indonesia’s C…

A collage of a Bible, Valdimir Putin, and the Kremlin and an outline of Russia

Putin’s ‘Year of the Family’ Declaration Blends Russian Nationalism with the Far-Right Rhetoric of the Global Pro-Family Movement

By Irina Smolevskaya

…sia’s largest ethnic minority groups, such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, and Ukrainians, this data suggests that many Russian citizens do not feel safe enough to disclose their ethnic identity in the current political climate defined by the Russification of the nation. See Robert Coalson, “Russia’s 2021 Census Results Raise Red Flags Among Experts And Ethnic-Minority Activists,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 5, 2023;…

Right Wingers Say “Gay” is Out, But Try Putting “Unnatural Vice” On a Bumper Sticker

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…me-sex intercourse,” “sodomy,” and “unnatural vice.” (Didn’t Don Johnson star in that?) The dark horse in the new name calling sweepstakes is my favorite one, though: “anti-Christian.” All those pro-gay straight Christians are really going to be shocked to learn that their support of their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters puts them at odds with — well, wait, no they won’t be shocked at all. Not any more shocked than I am that this crowd denies…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…topher Stedman, who at 25 years old is now assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard University and a surprising and influential new voice in the interfaith justice movement and American atheism. Stedman models an atheism that while uncompromising in its principles is also warm towards and respectful of religious believers—a striking shift from the hard-hitting argumentation of the New Atheist movement—and ends up humanizing atheism while he’s at it….