Religion Dispatches
…d me they are enraged when they pass these crosses planted on campus which use Jesus to accuse women of murdering their babies. And they are frustrated when college administrators tell them this activity is covered by academic freedom. Academic freedom leads to scholarly enquiry. So let’s examine the religious validity of fetal cemeteries. The notion that one can create a cemetery for fetuses actually highlights the fact that, the religious ritual…
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…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…
Read More…s into Senate offices. NOM is urging Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos to use his power to keep marriage from coming to the floor for a vote. Meanwhile, Archbishop Timothy Dolan is getting increasingly shrill in his efforts to stop the shift toward equality. This week, on his official blog, he wrote: “Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America—not in China or North Korea. In those countr…
Read More…tify hostility and prejudice against blacks? N: Yes. B: Was this prejudice used to “protect families”? N: Yes. B: Were the same arguments used against women (family protection)? N: Yes. The danger of using religious arguments to deny rights to a certain set of people is on full display in the trial. Anti-gay religious advocates argue that they want to “protect the family” by denying marriage equality. However, it is plain that religious opposition…
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…government uses a version of atonement theology to sanction torture and abuse: soldiers and military police are ordered to use “harsh techniques to gain information to save lives”; they “felt pressure to obtain information that could help save the lives of American soldiers.” [1] Might atonement theologies and images of the crucifixion prepare Christians to see torture as salvific? After my presentation, a woman from the audience spit in my face….
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…ess to translate the Nazi Gun Control Act of 1938 into English so he could use it for the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968, and more generally insists that the citizenry needs to be armed against government “tyranny,” which can lead to genocide. This sort of conspiracy theory is not unlike those being promoted by far right Christian groups after the Tucson shootings. When the group’s founder, Aaron Zelman, died in December, he was praised by one-time…
Read More…n said, “Hi. I’m so and so, and I’m a lesbian.” Then she paused. “Well, I used to be a lesbian,” she added, “but my partner had a sex-change operation, so now I’m not exactly sure what I am.” And that was just the beginning. Next there was a newspaper article about women Olympic athletes being eliminated from competition because tests revealed that they were genetically male, something about which they themselves hadn’t a clue. Then there was Suz…
Read More…man beings are created in God’s image and they deserve to be protected because they are a human being uniquely created by God with innate dignity and worth, and not because of how they identify sexually.” Honestly, could she even hear herself? If she and FotF truly believed that, and encouraged conservative Christian parents to actually teach that to their potential bullies in training, then there would be no need for anti-bullying legislation. Bu…
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…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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…en if others see them as outsiders, they are more worried about creating a better America. They believe they are better than what Maj. Hasan represents: Among those attending Friday prayers at the Killeen mosque was Sgt. Fahad Kamal, 26, an Army medic who wore his Airborne uniform, and later he said he was angered on several levels. “I want to believe it was the individual, and not the religion, that made him do what he did,” said Sergeant Kamal,…
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