Religion Dispatches
…alled for an increase of a hundred thousand troops, which would double the number presently there. Yet it will still be half of the numbers of Russian troops that the former Soviet Union had deployed in Afghanistan—and it lost the war, dragging much of the Soviet economy down with it. A similarly dismal prognosis is in store for America’s continuing presence in Afghanistan. Moreover, the persistence of US troops in the region will continue to prov…
Read MoreAccording to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…
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…able to mental disorder.” This week, the news swam the pond to appear in a number of US news outlets. The research, led by University College London professor Michael King, reveals a population of “spiritual but not religious” Brits that generally tracks to the US population of “Nones” identified in a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion in American Life. Some 35 percent of the more than 7,000 Brits surveyed indicated that they had “a religio…
Read More…clear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings,” he was quoted as saying. “Let’s think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation. … God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth. The design of the Creator is written in nature.” Kaoma accuses Francis of playing “hi…
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…at happens in this story!” The first book sold 8,000 copies, an impressive number for an independent press. The series was then bought up by Bantam Books and re-branded Choose Your Own Adventure in 1980. An initial marketing push gave 100,000 copies of The Cave of Time to librarians, who loved the concept and the effect it had of getting kids to actually sit down and read. Selling for $2.95 apiece, more than 50 titles were published over the next…
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…January, opening email yields at least one urgent call to action from any number of progressive groups. As a journalist who’s spent the better part of a decade reporting on the LGBT community, I’m no stranger to the motivational value of panicked predictions of impending legislative disasters. That kind of all-hands-on-deck organizing has long proven crucial to forming a unified front of resistance, and indeed worked well to build broad coalition…
Read More…e for their unwillingness to put their reassurances in writing, proposed a number of amendments. So did other legislators, such that by the time SB-1433 was scheduled to be voted on, it was groaning under the weight of amendments. But the real turnaround came when Speaker Steele proposed an amendment to an amendment that, in essence, would have given teeth to the reassurances that the Oklahoma bill would do no more than the Missouri language. Tha…
Read More…f methods and instruments such as the mass media and seminars, involving a number of celebrated figures and other possible means. The objective is to promote and solidify homosexuality. Al-Azhar, in a previous statement, reiterated that the amoral and satanic propaganda launched by these various, vicious, parties has the purpose of destroying the human moral order respected by all religions and schools, because this moral order is in line with hum…
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…h is also expected to attract the attention and involvement of significant numbers of Roman Catholics and younger evangelicals. Part of the idea is to remind individual Christians who totally embrace LGBT equality that there are millions more like them—a genuine “cloud of witnesses,” to use the biblical expression. [Full disclosure: I was significantly involved for over two years in the early development of this project; my agency was paid for its…
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…eland Security to build a wall along the Mexican border and increasing the number of border officers, the president signed an executive order that, according to the New York Times “suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.” The re…
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