Religion Dispatches
…efforts by proving that children raised by intact mom-and-dad families do better than kids raised by two loving moms or dads. It won’t matter that the study didn’t do that. Blamers Also a safe bet: natural disasters like Hurricane-Superstorm Sandy will continue to be chalked up to God’s anger at the advance of gay rights. So will tragedies like the mass murder of students and educators at Sandy Hook elementary school. But those blamers will sound…
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…criminalization of same-sex relations was removed from country’s the Penal Code in 1951. However, decriminalization alone has not ensured complete freedom for members of Jordan’s LGBT community. Article Six of the Jordanian Constitution protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of race, language or religion, but these protections do not extend to people of variant sexual identity. This gray area is where discrimination still manages to pl…
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…ind him. He holds in his right hand a ghostly “Q+” (according to some, the code name Trump himself uses when he posts on Q message boards) and the text reads “The World Will Soon Understand/Nothing Can Stop What is Coming,” a direct reference to “The Storm.” As I wrote back in 2020: The QAnoners’ apocalypse, unsurprisingly, is one of political partisan violence, culminating in “The Storm,” when all of the so-called “deep state leaders” will be arr…
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…fties also drive liberals insane by saying that there’s no real difference between Democrats and Republicans. In my view, this is a very sheltered, cozy, white, privileged thing to say—but if your scale of significance is not support for communities of color or fairness in the tax code, but rather alignment with cosmic forces of enlightenment, it makes some sense. Post-millennial lefties tend to be really scary, or really wacky, or both. In pop cu…
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…st cultures. Buddhism absorbed Chinese religion when it spread to China, Tibetan religion in Tibet, and so on. But mindfulness—what we think of as “meditation,” as opposed to prayer or ceremonial observance, for example—does have deep roots in the tradition. The Pali word sati, which can be translated as mindfulness, is frequently used in Buddhist scripture. (The noun comes from the verb sarati, meaning “to remember,” and alternative translations…
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…ung) men and women from France, Italy, Germany, Russian, Israel, the U.S., Japan, Argentina and India. Some, like us, were there for a short stay, but others came to study at the multiversity for a week or even several months. Still others worked at the resort, supplying volunteer labor in exchange for courses. Seekers came to Osho to satisfy their spiritual needs. Most wanted to find their best self. My need, I realized as I yelled at the registr…
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…create advanced pharmaceuticals and treatments for conditions including diabetes, hemophilia, and hepatitis. Genetic disorders can be curbed, and perhaps in the future, eradicated. At the same time, GM foods have caused considerable ethical controversy over the potential for unknown harm. Particularly in Europe, Japan, and parts of Africa, the uproar over untested, unlabeled GM foods in the food supply has been dramatic. Some of the controversy ca…
Read More…ould satisfy both religious conservatives and advocates for greater social freedoms. “Religious rights are important rights but they need to be protected in a way that balances other rights,” he said. “There is a difference between the right to believe in religion and the right to practise by discriminating against other people.” Meanwhile, LGBT activists are figuring out the movement’s next steps: Easier gender changes on birth certificates. Prev…
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…icking on the varied visages and scenarios lead to words of encouragement, free downloads of books like Your Brain on Porn and More Than Single, and free training sessions. Though their looks differ, each man appears confident and contemplative, with a sense of purpose. Many stare straight into the camera or are captured in chiseled or bearded profile. No one on the women’s site is as fleshed out. It has fewer images of actual women, and all of th…
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…uip in the classroom, a historian’s favorite hand is “the other hand.” For better or for worse, I am professionally trained as a historian. Thus, despite my respect for American-style free speech, I recognize that some states have crafted social contracts that accept greater limitations on speech than we do in the US, in order to protect other democratic values. As both classic liberal and communitarian theorists recognize, fundamental modern demo…
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