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“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

…notion that pregnancy is not an illness draws, I daresay uneasily, from a number of sources. There’s the classical notion that a thing’s nature is derived from its purpose, and the purpose of female bodies is to bear children. There’s the persistent early modern fear that women, especially privileged white women, are becoming overcivilized and unnatural, not having as many privileged white babies, relying on technology and pain relief, and not fi…

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Picasso’s Sacred Monster Eats Chicago: A Mystery Solved?

…tive interpretation. Multiply ambiguous, it is a strange concoction of any number of animal and human forms, as well as a sphinx; itself a hybrid monster. Moreover, the Chicago Picasso intimates both the Egyptian and Greek sphinxes—an amalgam of cultural styles. An ambiguous, almost inscrutable object, it is an enigmatic icon and the icon of an enigma; its very presence confronts the populace with a riddle. The riddle is not simply what the Chicag…

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Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy: Choosing Religion Over Sex

…ving those relationships may be a good and worthy goal, and I spoke with a number of ex-gay men who spoke of the gifts that pursuing their heterosexual marital relationships gave. But this is not a change in sexual orientation; it is making one particular heterosexual relationship work. Homo-Intimacy The other element in Wyler’s story, one that is common in many ex-gay change narratives, is the centrality of male intimacy in the process of orienta…

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Change v. Change at NPR

…ebate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded religious therapists. However, even if Spiegel had correctly identified the nature and participants in the debate, she still would not have gotten it quite right. To his credit, Schumacher-Matos does a better job when he reviews material given to him by Spiegel and her editor Anne Gudenkauf. Among other things, Schumacher-Matos read an article…

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To Get Through This Time We’ll Have to Shred the ‘Racial Contract’ and Choose Solidarity Over Sacrifice

…false one. With well over 100,000 deaths as of publication, more than the number of service members killed in World War I, America is living through an apocalyptic moment. But it’s also an apocalypse in the literal sense of an unveiling or disclosure—an unmasking. The coronavirus has unmasked how our lives are marked by a profound mutual dependence that challenges our self-understanding and political ideologies. It has unmasked a federal governme…

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Protesters in Washington DC, the day before the January 6 insurrection, wrapped in American flags blow shofars.

Netanyahu’s Genocidal Religious Rhetoric isn’t Just an Appeal to the Israeli Right — He Has Another Constituency in Mind

…w, while 55% of Americans as a whole have a favorable view of Israel, that number jumps to 80% among White evangelicals. And further, among evangelicals who support Israel, up to 50% have suggested End Times prophecies are part of their motivation. There are surely some whose uncritical support of Israel is motivated by End Times prophecies, though there’s significant disagreement on that point. What I would argue instead is that Christian Zionist…

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Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

…aw. Religious exemptions from abortion bans offer relief to only a limited number of individuals and can never be a comprehensive legal solution to the country’s reproductive health crisis. Nor should the right to control one’s body depend on proof of one’s religious commitments; reproductive freedom is a right that depends on one’s humanity, not one’s religious beliefs. That said, attacking the status quo incrementally proved to be a winning stra…

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55% of Utah Mormons Believe LGBT People can “Change”

…studied and understood. Any doctrine that would be used to exclude a good number of the earth’s people from full equality before the law and God should be very carefully examined. When it comes to gay issues, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding of what life is like for gay people or about the doctrinal reasons their LDS leaders say and do the things they do. In fact, most Mormons have only the muddiest understanding about what their…

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Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

…infringes on that comfort. By the end of this study, I was shocked at the number of educated people I met who dismissed my work as a book on “freaks.” Ideally, I would like readers who dismiss this community to stop laughing, and readers who fear this community to perhaps smile. What alternative title would you give the book? So many books have been written about vampires that almost every clever title has been taken. Our Vampires, Ourselves was…

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Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

…hment from God for Satanism—the same episode that Chrissy Stroop ranked as number one on her own top 10 list, and a worthy contender, no doubt! But since Robertson liked to say outrageous things like this on a regular basis, I created a list more attuned to underlying structural aspects of his resume: less about preposterous provocations and more about his work as a cog in the everyday banality of evil in the Republican coalition. It’s interesting…

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