By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…politics is almost irresistible.” Indeed, he succumbs, dividing the world between good liberals and “tacky” conservatives, the distinguished and the sophomoric. When confronted by evidence that these categories are not so hard and fast as his inner social scientist would like, he falls back on a rhetoric that constructs a reasonable middle by dismissing all to its left and its right as paranoid. For Randy, the center always holds. But the center…
…des, but exploded in 2003 with the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code which, more than anything, showcases Brown’s muddled if provocative incorporation of the Gnostic worldview into the novel. Fans of The Da Vinci Code don’t need to go out and purchase Robinson’s translation, they can simply read the Gnostic texts online at the Gnosis Archive. Or, if they’re interested in other early contenders for New Testament inclusion—the Gospel of P…
…atican, and the World Evangelical Alliance have worked together to issue a code for how Christians ought to evangelize. No word on how this code effects the use of Chick Tracts. A village in the Philippines celebrates its patron saint, John the Baptist, with a Mud People Festival. Reminds me of my weekend at Bonnaroo 2004. The Pope tweeted—from an iPad, no less. It’s all part of the Vatican’s new multimedia news portal, news.va. Biblical criticism…
…prosecutions of people under anti-gay laws, a step they called “an act of betrayal on the part of those in power to sell our country to foreign practices and tendencies contrary to the will of God because of money.” Indonesia: Incidents of ‘brazen homophobia’ on rise as conservatives seek to tighten sex laws Human Rights Watch reports on efforts by lawmakers to pass new legislation making sex outside marriage punishable by up to five years in jai…
…s a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the BYU-Idaho testing center (responsible for administering academic examinations for many classes, especially large General Education courses) started interpreting and enforcing the school’s dress and grooming standards as a ban on “skinny jeans.” A flyer was posted by universit…
…law. And we do not share the kind of moral code that could exact penalties between those of the state and those of the employer or marketplace. This is a strange thing about our moment in history. The story of Oedipus reminds us that banishment and ostracism were once standard practices for protecting a community from the danger and rupture implicit in certain kinds of crimes. Early Christians who lapsed from their moral code in particularly serio…
…lamist organizations to restructure the country’s relatively secular legal code.: If the court revises the law to forbid casual sex, gay sexual relations would become illegal for the first time in Indonesian history, and straight unmarried couples could face prosecution. The Family Love Alliance, a conservative Islamist advocacy organization, petitioned the Constitutional Court to broaden existing Indonesian law, which makes adultery illegal but d…
…id this or that… The current provision of the Penal Code is a fair balance between conservative public opinion and an uncompromising international community on the protection of minorities.” Russia: Muslim ‘morality’ vigilante pushing for purge of LGBT teachers Timur Bulatov, a self-described pious Muslim is waging a campaign to out LGBT teachers and get them fired, according to BBC: He wages his “morality” campaign from St Petersburg. On vKontakt…
…lity, which is illegal on the island,” reports AFP. Sri Lanka’s 1883 penal code, a legacy of its British colonial rulers, makes sex between men punishable by 12 years in jail, although the law is rarely enforced. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said the cabinet had refused to endorse a provision in a proposed human rights plan that would have undermined the code. “There was a provision referring to the sexual orientation of individuals and we cl…
…s for gay sex under a strict new provincial sharia law. Bangladesh’s legal code prohibits “unnatural offenses,” which it says includes voluntary “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal.” The offense is punishable with life in prison. The law is rarely enforced, but LGBT groups have reported that police use the law as a pretext to bully gay or simply effeminate individuals to prevent the formation of LGBT organ…
