Search for "airline tickets american airlines cheap phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Layton E. Williams

…, self-harm, and suicide among LGBT youth and adults. Of course, a growing number of churches and denominations today have rejected such a destructive understanding of human sexuality. Religion Dispatches recently compiled a list of the official positions on LGBT issues currently taught by various Christian denominations. According to this list, mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church claim th…

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

By Ali Olomi

…ginning. Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s Kitab al-Aghani records the lives of a number of individuals including one named Tuways who lived during the last years of Muhammad and the reigns of the early Muslim dynasties. Tuways was mukhannathun: those who were born as men, but who presented as female. They are described by al-Isfahani as wearing bangles, decorating their hands with henna, and wearing feminine clothing. One mukhannathun, Hit, was even in…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…per, Die Welt, escalated the mainstreaming of right-wing talking points. A number of researchers wrote an op-ed, in which they accused the ARD and ZDF, the independent, state-funded TV news stations (the German version of the BBC) of “indoctrinating” kids with “gender ideology” in order to sexualize and “re-educate” them. The article hits all the right-wing bullet points of a shadowy conspiracy at work: The media, driven by secretive “trans-lobbyi…

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

By Daniel Schultz

…the White House. … But Sekulow, 63, is registered as chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit Christian legal advocacy group based in an expansive Capitol Hill row house a short walk from the Senate chamber. … The Associated Press reviewed 10 years of tax returns for the ACLJ and other charities tied to Sekulow, which are released to the public under federal law. The records from 2008 to 2017, the most recent year av…

Obama’s AIPAC Speech Hardly a Change to Believe In

By Stephen Zunes

…stands on these issues with the majority of Israelis, Palestinians, Jewish Americans and Arab Americans.” Betraying the Jewish Community Through a combination of deep-seated fear from centuries of anti-Semitic repression, manipulation by the United States and other Western powers, and self-serving actions by some of their own leaders, a right-wing minority of American Jews support influential organizations such as AIPAC to advocate militaristic po…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tside the church will bring their children to Sabbath school and a growing number of openly gay students will attend Adventist academies and colleges. Like the SCC’s black members in the 1960s, gay Adventists will be able to hold their faith community legally accountable for any discriminatory responses. And, as was the case with segregation, the church will find itself once again in a losing battle against social change unless it learns from its…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…th, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women don’t think. So it is even harder to adjust to the loss of these three men whose intellectual contributions helped to shape the ways we think about and in fact live Islam today; both for women and for men. I…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…administering Believe Out Loud) predicts that the campaign will change the American landscape regarding LGBT equality. He says: Believe Out Loud signals that the effort to achieve LGBT justice within American Christianity has reached movement proportions. By reaching out to those who are still uncertain about homosexuality in the church, we expand the conversation. As individuals begin to move from fear to empathy, from ignorance to understanding,…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come to apprec…

Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…irector of the Office of Intellectual Freedom at the Chicago-headquartered American Library Association, told RD that the Project Blitz model bill “raises a lot of issues around the ability of individuals to access perfectly legal, constitutionally protected materials based on the values of one group in the community.” Contrary to Project Blitz disclaimers, in other words, this bill would allow conservative Christian values to determine what is le…