…donesia’s conservative Aceh province has enacted a strict Islamic criminal code, local government officials said late on Friday, criminalizing adultery, homosexuality, and public displays of affection outside of a legally recognized relationship. Aceh is the only province in the Muslim-dominated country to adhere to sharia, Islamic law, which puts it at odds with other provinces where the vast majority of the population practices a moderate form o…
…particularly irks Texas Freedom Network’s Dan Quinn. “This is not a debate between left and right,” Quinn said. “This is a debate between radicalism and the mainstream.” “What they’ve done is the same thing they did with the science experts,” Quinn added. “They’ve packed the panel with ideologues whose politics they agree with. It’s three ideologues and three mainstream academics. But they’ve moved the debate so far to the right that they make it…
…Florin HIlbay asked the Supreme Court to dismiss a challenge to the Family Code ban on same-sex couples marrying. The government’s lawyer said the petition was flawed because Jesus Nicardo M Falcis III, the gay man who filed it could not show “injury in fact” from the law and had not included Congress in his petition. Falcis also said that homosexuals, like heterosexuals, can also fulfill the essential marital obligations laid down by the Family C…
…iveness. Where is your love? I find it astounding you should claim to feel betrayed by the Anglican Communion. If anyone should feel betrayed it is LGBTI Anglicans in Africa, who have suffered a holocaust of violence and cruelty, incited by people such as you. You are like the Pharisees of the Gospels, following what you think is the letter of the law, while completely missing the fundamental message. I am happy the South African Church is now acc…
…cil and other Muslim leaders urged the government “to make gay sex and the promotion of LGBT activities illegal,” reports Associated Press. “The council’s statement said the clerics and other Muslim leaders supported the government’s rejection of foreign funding of LGBT causes and they called for bans on promoting and funding LGBT activities in Indonesia.” The government has also moved to ban Tumblr unless it blocks LGBT content, and the Indonesia…
…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…
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…
…shrouded in secrecy, came into the spotlight after Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code hit the New York Times bestseller list. The novel suggested that the women in Opus Dei are “forced to clean the men’s residence halls for no pay,” and remarked upon the broad subjugation of women in the order. And while the novel is fictional, the alleged “misconceptions” that arose in the fallout of the media attention surrounding The DaVinci Code provided much of the…
…ne. Humans should be mature enough to develop and maintain our own ethical code informed by scientific knowledge of its consequences, he argues, rather than rely on an ancient moral code inscribed in scriptural texts of human origin composed in a different era for reasons that no longer apply. Dawkins finally brings the story to where Rev. Adam Sedgwick feared that it would end 150 years ago when he read this pre-publication copy of Origin of Spec…
…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…
