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Netanyahu’s (Republican) Esther Moment

By Sarah Posner

…ves as head pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, hosts his own television program that is seen twice a day on TBN. He argues that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the release of his book last January, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying organization intended, he says, to be a Chr…

Will Anti-Gay Churches Have Their Tax Exempt Status Revoked?

By Sarah Posner

…-sex weddings, particularly if the Supreme Court goes the way of a growing number of district courts (including today in Texas) and strikes down same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional? I asked Caroline Mala Corbin, a First Amendment expert at the University of Miami School of Law, who told me, “Given that churches have long been able to discriminate against women without losing their tax exempt status, it seems highly unlikely that they risk l…

Is Africa the Most Homophobic Continent?

By Darnell Moore

…mple, it was only 11 years ago that the Supreme court reversed Lawrence v. Texas, finally invalidating the criminalization of sodomy in the 14 remaining states that maintained such laws. And as of today, same-sex couples in 36 states in the US are still unable to legally marry, 29 states still do not outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 33 states have yet to formally pass anti-discrimination laws based on gender identity or expre…

Promise Keepers Launches Effort to Support Messianic Jews in Israel

By Sarah Posner

…President George W. Bush keynoted the MJBI’s annual fundraiser in Irving, Texas, generating controversy in the American Jewish community. Jonathan Bernis, a prominent Messianic Jew and president of Jewish Voice ministries, is chair of the MJBI, and serves on Promise Keepers’ board of directors. At the 2012 fundraiser for MJBI, which was keynoted by Glenn Beck, Bernis claimed “our numbers are growing and growing,” because “the Bible predicted that…

Global LGBT Recap: Homogeopolitics; Dalai Lama Says Gay is OK; Pope Says Civil Unions May Be

By Peter Montgomery

…or, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic recently visited D.C., New York, Texas and California as part of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. Activists from Latvia, Serbia, Russia, Georgia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and other countries have traveled to the U.S. over the last year. BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder also takes a global look at what he calls a new cold war over human rights, in which Russia becomes a more important ally to…

Goat Head Found in Brooklyn. Who Cares?

By Joseph Laycock

…, but The Gothamist has done this theory one better by suggesting that the number “93”—which appears on a tag on the goat’s ear—is linked to Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema. (One wonders how much time the alleged Thelemites spent finding a goat with a numerologically significant ear tag). Growing up in Texas, I once had the misfortune of getting into a conversation with a Renaissance Faire enthusiast whose hobby was blacksmithing his own…

Secular As Kids, Religious As Adults?

By Sarah Posner

…tention rates of irreligiosity are very high. In particular, University of Texas-Pan American sociologist Stephen Merino, in a 2012 paper, “Irreligious Socialization? The Adult Religious Preferences of Individuals Raised with No Religion,” found that “those with religiously unaffiliated parents as children are significantly less likely to express a religious preference as adults.” Indeed Merino, using data from the General Social Survey, found tha…

Hobby Lobby, Bill Gothard, and the Submission of Women

By Sarah Posner

…ff, Gothard has left his mark on many prominent evangelical figures, including the Duggars, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry….

The “One True Christian” of His Age?

By Susan Stinson

…y refreshing. All of my previous books had been set mostly in Colorado and Texas, but I had lived in Massachusetts for decades, and my brother, Don Stinson, a landscape painter, suggested that I write a book set in the east. So, I was looking around, and it was literally the landscape, the earth in the cemetery with its small rises and falls, graves and markers, that led me to Jonathan Edwards and other people in Northampton in that time. He’s n…

The Racial Dimension of Trusting in Police Violence

By Eric C. Miller

…ere heavily armed. Balko cites the 90s-era events in Ruby Ridge, ID; Waco, Texas; and the Clinton-ordered apprehension of Elian Gonzalez as examples of violent law-enforcement action that summoned opprobrium on the Right. In the first two cases, government agents attacked white suspects living on compounds. In the third, they invaded the home of a child Cuban refugee, famously pointing assault weapons at terrified civilians. On his radio show, aro…