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God is a Terrifying Monster, and Other Takeaways from the Study of Vampires in Pop Culture

…napped with my iPhone while on a trip to southern Ohio. I didn’t intend to use it for the book; I just thought it was a great picture. But as I considered cover ideas, that image of a decaying church perfectly embodied what I was trying to say in the book. Is there a book out there you wish you had written? How do you even narrow down a question like this? Fiction? Non-fiction? Historical? Contemporary? Other than naming my all-time favorite novel…

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The Heart of Texas Ain’t Hateful: An Open Letter to Lawmakers From a Texan Trans Queer Latinx

…seated sense of awareness of difference. When I was a young trans queer, I used to love visiting the Texas statehouse, with its statuesque building that I believed was filled with good people committed to making our beloved state better. I loved standing underneath the rotunda that was as round as the Texas sky is big. I enjoyed traversing the state—from Big Bend to the Panhandle—and, back then, did not know the fear that I do now when I think of…

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Ignoring the Pope on Climate Change is Not Like Using Contraception

…nd had an influential role in drafting the Council’s document on religious freedom. Murray also ran into trouble for critiquing the church’s teaching on birth control and its attempt to have that teaching written into civil law. Although he evidently personally believed in the teaching, Murray argued that in a pluralistic modern society, contraceptive use was a private, not a public, matter. Government, he wrote to Cardinal Cushing of Boston in 19…

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‘Pregnant Women’ or ‘People Who Can Get Pregnant’: How Do We Balance Recognition of Anti-Abortion Misogyny with the Erasure of Transmasculine People?

…ms to me that if we probe the reasons for this, as well as the connections between anti-abortion and anti-queer attitudes and politics, we’ll come away with a renewed sense of why there’s no conflict between pointing out the misogyny of the forced-birth movement and working to counter the erasure of transmasculine folks from discussion of abortion and other reproductive health-related concerns. Misogyny and patriarchy are, after all, at the heart…

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Catholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter

…as observed, and so might well respond that statements about homosexuality used in Persona Humana are those of psychologists and biblical writers, not its own. But no amount of indirection can obscure the Vatican’s decision to use this vilifying language and not some other, in Persona Humana as well as in the much more widely read Catechism of the Catholic Church. And have no doubt, such language has serious effects. Here in the US, the media regu…

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The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State

…politicians can appeal to spiritual leaders and gain their endorsement because the opportunities for abuse and ambition are too rampant. The same quid pro quo corruption that taints those tempted by lobbyists will await pastors when their support can yield inexhaustible American power. This is why America has passed laws to preserve the dignity and purity of the pastoral office, exchanging tax exemption (a unique phenomenon in the world) with the…

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Unbuckling the Bible Belt: “Nashville” and the Nones

…n Americana soundscape for what Nashville country actually sounds like—because the show’s version of the country industry sounds way better than the reality. In crafting a “pure” country music scene unfolding in a mythical Nashville, ABC adopts a deep and gutsy ironic stance, because in reality, the roots/alt-country community has set its face like flint against mainstream country, and a pop sound won a long time ago. Like the idealized, calcified…

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Derek Chauvin’s Defense, in Keeping with a Long Racist Tradition, Seeks to Criminalize George Floyd

…who was murdered in 2012 by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, because he was presumed to be a menace by virtue of wearing a hoodie and strolling through a gated community. As Zimmerman told a 911 dispatcher, “these assholes always get away.” Or the Black birder, Christian Cooper, in Central Park in the summer of 2020, who was falsely accused by a white woman of “threatening” her. His threat? Asking her to keep her dog on a leash. Recall i…

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Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

…eeder.” Thoreau’s point was that the capitalist’s philanthropy wasn’t much better. The hypocritical cover of philanthropic enterprises remains in use today. The travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux wrote earlier this month in the New York Times about communities across the South where factories have closed as jobs went overseas, a shift that has been broadcast as part of an effort “to uplift impoverished people” around the world. But such heroi…

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Buffalo and Uvalde Both Appear to Have Involved the AR-15, the Rifle Revered by the Christian Right

…will continue to occupy a unique place in American culture. For people who use AR-15s in horrific crimes, it perhaps symbolizes ultimate power capable of taking life. For people who criticize what they deem America’s obsession with firearms, the AR-15 symbolizes everything wrong with said obsession. For many Christians, however, the AR-15 is God’s preferred firearm, best wielded by God-fearing Christians ready to enforce God’s laws on Earth. The c…

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