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Catholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter

By Marian Ronan

…grading punishment” for same; indeed, it opposed an earlier European Union move to decriminalize homosexuality. And even if the Vatican were to oppose the criminalization of homosexuality, it’s still hard to argue that the language it uses doesn’t encourage violence against LGBT people. A good example is the 1995 document Persona Humana: Declaration On Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, issued by the same Vatican office that recently cond…

Growing Catholic Resistance to Bishops’ Crusades

By Peter Montgomery

…nt to speak on women’s issues.” In Washington State, meanwhile, “A growing number of Seattle’s Catholic parishes are saying ‘no’ to Archbishop J. Peter Sartain’s offer that churches become signature gathering points for Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington’s recently passed same-sex marriage law.” Notably, among the parishes declining to participate are St. James Cathedral, the seat of the archdiocese, and Christ Our Hope, a n…

Lessons from the Defeat of the Oklahoma Personhood Bill

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…ributed to the bill’s defeat: 1) Deep disagreement, between the personhood movement and more mainstream pro-life Oklahoma voters and legislators, on the advisability of amendments to the bill; and 2) The development of ill will between the personhood lobby and the Republican representatives. To recap: In the past few weeks, Oklahoma house Republicans have been heavily lobbied by both Oklahomans for Life and Personhood Oklahoma (a state affiliate o…

A ‘Pro-Life’ Buttigieg Ambush, Trump’s Corrupt Counsel, and More

By Daniel Schultz

…ther groups like the Susan B. Anthony List. It runs like so: demand that Democrats accommodate your disagreement on a core principal, and when they unsurprisingly demur, claim victimization, pout that this is why Dems can never win—all evidence to the contrary be damned—and use the ginned-up controversy to raise funds. Somehow, this supposed horde of pro-life Democrats, like their supposedly persuadable Republican counterparts, never does show up….

Contrary to Claims of Anti-Trans Muslims, LGBTQ+ Acceptance is Widespread in the History of Islam

By Ali Olomi

…d writes, “In Mombasa, both male and female homosexuality is relatively common among Muslims, involving perhaps one in twenty-five adults.” In the 19th century growing European dominance in the region began to align gender norms with that of Europe. Muslim modernists and reformers increasingly adopted Victorian sexual values and gender norms as signifiers of modernity. The Egyptian reformer Rifa’a al-Tahtawi wrote approvingly of the French: “Among…

Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…uality should be accepted by society. It’s also worth noting that even the Mormon Church—which staunchly condemns homosexuality—still has language that explicitly decries any unkind treatment of those who identify as gay. A number of other denominations whose official stances reject homosexuality still contain a significant proportion of members who believe it should be accepted by society. “The painful reality of our time is that, to whatever ext…

‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…rofile campaign to date was HPA for the Win in June 2010, during which HPA mobilized huge numbers of online voters from across fandoms and online communities to win a $250,000 grant from the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Then there’s the current “Deathly Hallows” campaign, which centers on the release date of a Harry Potter movie—in this case, The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on Nov. 19. The Deathly Hallows campaign will run for nine mont…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ther moves toward greater diversity in the military—as in the case of racial and LGBT quality—it will likely have significant impact on the American culture more broadly as service members move back and forth between military and civilian life….

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…f, so be it. Each of them will reap consequences, both predictable and unpredictable. None of us can control the effect our words, actions, and images have on other people, so we do the only thing we can do: we gather in communities of common understanding, around people who affirm us and make us feel normal. But perhaps with increased visibility—with nakedness, so to speak—can come increased tolerance, and eventually, an increase in compassion, w…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…ascination with alchemy and buried treasure came into full flower in early Mormonism and later in Christian Science and other New Thought movements; He uncovers an ethic of sheer egoism in the thinking and writing of leading Transcendentalists Emerson and Channing; He explores the important later phase of William Jennings Bryan‘s long career, showing how even the Great Commoner lost his social critique in a haze of sentimentalism toward the end; H…