Religion Dispatches
…ization for Marriage recognizes the appeal of a libertarian message. NOM’s number-one poll-tested message, repeated over and over again by its spokespeople, is this: “Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose, they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.” Of course, the religious right allies who help NOM pass anti-gay constitutional amendments don’t really believe gays and lesbians have a right to live as they choose—…
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…ted social inequality—and of unprecedented and appalling economic, racial, military, penal, environmental, and psychological violence? This is the test, I think. But in applying such a severe test, I also know how picky and how peevish I am being. When a good friend and colleague asked me to consider why I want to lay this heavy burden on the emergent leaders, I was forced to conduct a simple thought experiment. My thought experiment goes like th…
Read More…its for gay and lesbian couples. Over three out of four (78%) support open military service.” This tracks with numbers shown in the general population. But these findings are significant because of the persistent belief that Hispanics are strong supporters of “traditional family values.” It was this belief that prompted the National Organization for Marriage to target Hispanics to try and increase their opposition to marriage equality. In its docu…
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…It’s not like it’s the only book on this subject written from the left. A number of far more “radical” than books than The Crisis of Zionism have been ignored by comparison: Gershom Gorenberg’s The Accidental Empire (2007), Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People (2009), Oren Yiftaehel’s Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (2006), Baruch Kimmerling’s The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the…
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…their own organization. Eventually, the Revisionists would form their own military organization, the Irgun—led in the mid-1940s by Menachem Begin. As one of the intellectuals of the movement Netanyahu fell out of favor with the people who were to lead Israel in the first three decades of statehood. Though an accomplished historian and fluid writer, Netanyahu wasn’t able to get an academic job or government position in Israel. He moved to the U.S….
Read More…Nazi Germany uniforms, complete with iron crosses, storm trooper outfits, military boots, and even swastikas.” Republican politicians have had many opportunities to declare Fischer out of bounds, or at least put some distance between them. But they have declined to do so, for the most part, except for Romney’s rebuke at VVS. Recall what Romney said then: Poisonous language does not advance our cause. It has never softened a single heart nor chang…
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…f homes for unwed mothers. In 1988, two years after ordination, he put his military training to the test when he joined hundreds of other anti-abortion protesters to blockade three Atlanta clinics during the Democratic National Convention, resulting in the arrest of nearly 300 people. It was the moment that launched Operation Rescue as a national brand, and Weslin’s fellow arrestees read like a who’s-who of the violent anti-choice fringe, many of…
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…bleachers, and eight speakers lined up to address the crowd. The audience numbered about 30. Even Timothy Dolan at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, on the kickoff day of the Fortnight, only gathered 250 people. The nuns got that many in small towns across the country at stop after stop. The bus trip also proved that there is a deep hunger across generations for this kind of faith-based organizing. The crowd in DC was surprisingly younger…
Read More…uivocal message of divestment is inappropriate for a complicated political/military situation which does not reduce to simple oppressor/victim dichotomies. As I have written about many times, I oppose Israel’s settlement policies, and the current Israeli government’s unacceptable conditions for a return to talks with the Palestinians (namely, that they take place “with no preconditions”—i.e. setting aside the last twenty years of progress and star…
Read More…onstitution.” Based on the ‘explanatory memorandum’ document identifying a number of American Muslim organizations as allies in its author’s aspirations, prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial publicly labeled over 200 American Muslim organizations “unindicted co-conspirators,” a highly controversial move derided at the time by legal experts as contrary to Justice Department policy and in violation of the groups’ constitutional rights. Even…
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