Search for "Alaska Airlines 800-299-7264 Customer Service Toll-Free Number"

Brexit Boosters: Why the Religious Right Hates the European Union

By Peter Montgomery

…ng the equality of men and women, which the Russian Orthodox Church’s news service called “a serious attempt to exert political pressure on European countries with the aim to destroy the traditional notions of marriage and family and to legalize surrogate motherhood and abortion.” Hildingsson decried those who she said seek to “use the European Union as a lever for exerting pressure on Central and Eastern Europe whose people seek to preserve the a…

The Queerness of Christian Ethics: A Conversation with Rev. Elizabeth Edman

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…the idea of separation. You are no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female. He’s trying to queer conceptions of who we are to each other—and who we are in relationship to God. Right, because Jesus is not either/or, he’s a both/and… Virtue in Greek philosophy is the idea that you can practice living an ethical life. I’ve observed the ethical path I see queer people walking. We have to be very honest with ourselves and…

Trump In Colorado: When the “Facts” Are No Longer Checkable

By Paul Harvey

…ter to all sorts of events, political and otherwise, as part of its public service and mission. And frankly, as an obscure branch campus of a state university, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Rather, the point was, of course Trump has the right to come here and speak, but we have the right to speak back. Various other political candidates–of both parties as well as minor parties–have spoken here in the past, with no such debate or strong f…

Why I Miss Scalia: SCOTUS Punts on Religious Freedom

By Patricia Miller

…not only for the thousands of employees who work for religious hospitals, service agencies, and charities, but for the very notion of “free exercise” of religion in the post-Hobby Lobby world. The challengers seemed on track to punch a large hole in the government’s power to enact all kinds of federal social, economic, and welfare programs. It’s as if in Brown v. Board of Ed the Supreme Court had recommended that Oliver Brown and the Topeka Board…

Indonesia Hears Islamist Arguments For LGBT Criminalization; Zambian Churches Oppose Condom Distribution in Prisons; Lithuanian Conservative Manifesto Calls LGBTs Enemies of Freedom; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…t stands with – the new enslavers of Lithuania, those who will destroy our freedom, or with its own Nation, aiming to remain free.” Church of England: Gay clergy plan coming out about their marriages The Times reports that a dozen Church of England clergy are preparing to go public with the fact that they have married their same-sex partners in defiance of church rules. “Half of the signatories had already declared themselves to be in a same-sex m…

Latest Diatribe on Francis and Latin Mass in the Times Launders the History — and Troubling Elements — of the ‘Tradition’

By Matthew Gabriele

…turning of the priest to face the congregation allowed lay people into the service, since they could at least see what’s going on. But the biggest claim Dougherty makes in his piece, of course, is about the spirit of the ecumenical council—that it created a “new faith.” It’s an old song within the Church. If a constant refrain within Catholicism is ecclesia semper reformanda (“the church is always being reformed”), then there’s always someone else…

The Christian Right’s Main Moral Argument Against Abortion Rights Completely Ignores This Critical Issue: It’s Time to Raise It

By Elizabeth Freese

…to insist upon abortion bans as long as they refuse to provide any social services that would support parents in their caretaking of unplanned children. In other words, he’s willing to make visible, and somehow consider compensating, the parenting labor that’s foisted upon the unwilling if abortion is illegal. This subsidy wouldn’t actually remotely justify forcing pregnancy, but it has a certain resonance with “social reproduction feminism,” whi…

As a Minister I’m Fed Up With Anti-Trans Legislation Written by Adults to Pick on Children, All in the Name of Religious Freedom

By Welton Gaddy

…ess than human have no place in our nation and its constitution. Religious freedom, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was never intended to deny any person human rights. Time and again, people who have no idea about the meaning of religious freedom try, in the name of religion, to abolish civil rights for people of color; to deny immigration rights for members of minority religions or no religion; to take money from the education system to build…

The Theology of Westboro: The “World’s Meanest Church” Is More Than Picket Signs

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…nging from I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry to The Kingsman: The Secret Service (where they are victims of hyperviolence), in plenty of political cartoons, and in some pretty smart parodies. Very often, these images depict church members as uneducated, fat, slovenly, rural “backwoods” types with Southern accents. Yet, most members of the church have at least a college degree, and many have advanced degrees. Many people in the church are athlete…

Bishops’ Attempt to Deny Communion to Biden Will Backfire Even More Spectacularly Than Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

By Mary E. Hunt

…ve, by turns criminal, and, in recent decades, the reason former Catholics number as many as current Catholics in the US. For the bishops to pronounce who among the laity is worthy to receive communion is absurd. At most, such decisions are made pastorally and in private, on a case by case, diocese by diocese basis. But these days, with the institution mired in bankruptcies because of priests’ criminal conduct, costs and market share plunging beca…