Religion Dispatches
…up for any but the very wealthiest—that cuts affecting working and middle-class families will be extended. As for the “job killer” rhetoric of Sen. Hatch and the rest, the president could actually have some fun poking holes in the fantastical idea that handing rich and powerful people still more money means they will dutifully make productive, job-creating investments in the domestic economy. There has never been a shred of evidence to support…
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…, alcoholics identify (anonymously notwithstanding) as alcoholics, African-Americans as African-Americans, Muslims as Muslims. We identify with Islam. Even when pressed by bad publicity and bad actions by some of us, we still identify with Islam. Either/Or Why do people still think Muslim women must choose between identity as Muslims and identity with freedoms, human rights, dignity and democracy? For the first few decades of my work on gender I r…
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…labama as one of the ten worst states in overburdening the poor and middle class. Arise is regrouping and thinking about proposing a grocery tax repeal strategy that is not revenue neutral but actually raises additional revenue from the wealthy as a way to secure the support of teachers and other government workers facing cuts. And, Forrister said, in retrospect maybe they should not have bothered spending so much time trying to secure additional…
Read More…xciting enough that it was actually counterproductive that I had taken the class so I could go free-jump. It made so much sense when she described it that way. But then, I guess she didn’t know how much I worry about things like mosquitoes and hangnails. The type-A perfectionist in me not only craves a correct performance, but also a transformative one. And yet, having gone around the block/globe so many times before this, I am not sure what I wil…
Read More…os Angeles, she recalled, would sometimes reach out to feel her head for horns. Late in her life, she and I talked about homosexuality—we talked about everything—and she recalled back in the 1950s a boy who grew up on her block in her middle-class Los Angeles suburb, a child who she always knew was different, and kindly she asked, “I wonder what has happened to him? I wonder if everything turned out okay for him?” Kindness was the core of her Morm…
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…curriculum, and Barton’s role in that.) They believe in an entirely second-class status for women (some believe women shouldn’t vote). They are virulently hostile to gays and lesbians. They believe that any social safety net should be eliminated and replaced by church programs—available only to believers. (And they succeeded in getting an exemption from the health insurance mandate for believers.) So whether the Grayson ad takes Webster “out of co…
Read More…mented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation. And just to show that bullying isn’t merely a high school problem, there’s news of a Rutgers University freshman who killed himself a…
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…me? Why am I peeking into these windowless bedrooms at middle-aged, middle-class blondes in fuzzy slippers and sweats? Why am I spending an hour of my life watching a middle-aged advertising salesman in suburban Utah standing there in the predawn hours in his sweats explaining where he keeps his clothes? And perhaps because I’m tuned in on assignment as a religion columnist I’m disappointed by the near absence of religion in the episode. Early in…
Read More…lished in my studies (well more than established: a die-hard. I aced every class and with one exception, one B+, I kept that record until I graduated). By that time I began to notice that certain issues repeat themselves in the Muslim community. Somehow, I thought if I had figured something out for myself then everybody should have figure it out too, and we would be over that. It occurs to me that experience may not be the only teacher. I mean, I…
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…t closed for high holidays but then there’d only be a half dozen of us per class. When I left home at 14, I lived with families of different faiths: Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Catholic, and atheist. Questions of ultimate concern always interested me, and as soon as I got to college I actively pursued the answers given to these from faith systems outside my own. Eventually I came to live in a Buddhist ashram and practiced according to the prec…
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