Religion Dispatches
…s rhetoric. Last week, for example, sixty-six United Nations member states signed a declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide. (The United States, predictably, was the one major Western nation that refused to sign). Such pressure from the developed world lets anti-gay leaders cloak themselves in anti-imperialist righteousness, in which gay rights become a decadent Western imposition that poor countries must be protec…
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…their followers through images of Presidents using the “famous devil horn sign” in public, or images or videos of Obama and Hillary Clinton with horns appearing while they speak. Conspiracists have long believed that Hillary Clinton is a member of a Satanic cult. Republican nominee Donald Trump has publicly referred to Hillary Clinton as the devil, and GOP nominee hopeful Ben Carson alleged Clinton was a supporter of Lucifer through her mentor Sa…
Read More…a large number of religious leaders, organizations, and denominations, to sign on to a letter supporting the legislation. As I reported last year, UAFA would correct a glaring inequality in our current immigration law: there are 36,000 bi-national couples in the United States—same-sex couples in which one is a US citizen and the other faces possible deportation if a partner or spouse cannot sponsor them for citizenship—and about half of those cou…
Read More…“get Americans to agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” Those who sign up for the project are asked to take a pledge: I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it. In the toxic atmosphere of politics, this seems like a welcome change, but when you read deeper, you can practically hear both DeMoss and Davis ending each sen…
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…In this final installment of Gabe McKee’s video trinity (watch days one and two), our intrepid man-on-the-scene defines “Goreship” music, reports on the “Punk Monks” of the “Death to the World” movement, and answers the age old question about Christian death metal: Do appreciative fans do the sign of the horns? Watch the 3 minute video (apologies for erratic audio toward the end but should still be audible):…
Read More…to LGBT people, including in public restrooms, calling it “one of the most significant threats to religious liberty and privacy rights in the history of the Commonwealth.” What’s at stake, however, isn’t religious liberty but the right of one group, people who hew to conservative, “traditional” views of marriage and sexuality, to impose a form of socioreligious privilege on society at large. Cruz gave it away when he said that he had no problem wi…
Read More…for the throne of Peter…[Obama’s election] is a great step for humanity, a sign that in the United States the issue of race and the problem of discrimination have been overcome…The Church has also made impressive advances…[The election of a black pope] is certainly possible. Thanks to the wisdom of the cardinals, that could happen at the next conclave. Is Archbishop Gregory on to something? Back in 2005, during the last conclave, there was quite a…
Read More…ties remains an official social taboo in Zimbabwe. This homophobia plays a significant role in the spread of HIV. It emerges that a lot of the violations perpetrated against the LGBTI community are driven by homophobia emanating from society’s conservative cultures; strong and sometimes fundamentalist beliefs as well as influence from utterances made by political and other influential leaders. It is clear that HIV is far more threatening to the he…
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…ated his unpopular stint in San Francisco. The smart money is on him being promoted and relocated, as happened with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and other clerics who have contributed so actively to the rapid exodus of members from Catholic parishes. At some point, these sorts of executive employees become too expensive to maintain. It becomes cost effective to put a golden parachute on their mitres and wish them well. The obviously forced resign…
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…other’s Day to launch its new campaign to invite one million believers to “sign up” for full LGBT equality in our churches and society-at-large. A centerpiece of this effort is a new video with particular relevance to Mother’s Day. The video features that fateful, frightful walk down the church’s center aisle by a visiting family. How many of us can remember such a walk? This family unit, however, happens to include a young boy with two moms. Afte…
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