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Marriage equality comes to Slovenia, continues to spread in Mexico; Civil Union legislation approved in Sicily, debated in Peru; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…le to contact the prime minister’s office an urge them not to allow the disruption of the event. Peru: Civil Union bill gets debate Hundreds of Peruvians rallied on Monday night on the eve of legislative debate on a same-sex civil unions bill; activists released a video pushing for a public debate on the measure. As we have reported, American evangelical activist Mat Staver has traveled to Peru to urge lawmakers to resist calls for civil union leg…

A Response to Hussein Rashid

By Amjad Mahmood Khan

…d Ahmadi Muslims as “wajib-ul-qatl” or “worthy of death.” For example, the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shezad, a United States citizen, was recruited and trained by the Tehrik-e-Taliban — the very group that proudly claimed responsibility for the May 28th attacks on the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Lahore. In short, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community courageously seeks to defend Islam in the face of bitter persecution and hostility. Groups like the A…

Motivations of “God Hates Fags” Church’s Philosophy

By Lauri Lebo

…ly the elect mentioned in the book of Revelation will be saved. As the end times near, Westboro members are on a new quest to find the 144,000 Jews who will convert in the last days (Revelation 7:4). Amarasingam also analyzes the roots of the church’s Calvinist tradition for The Daily Beast in “Inside the Real Koran-Burning Church”: Understanding the church and its actions requires an understanding of its history and theology. Founded in 1955, Wes…

Blessed With a Dark Turn of Mind: Gillian Welch’s Spiritual Strivings

By Paul Harvey

…cate guitar work, and exact diction—the kind (as Nate Chinen writes in the New York Times) that makes poetry seem like plain speech? The languid, almost unbearable restraint of the music, particularly on this latest recording, constantly strains against the mythically dark stories of the characters’ individual lives. The understated, even mannered, songs tell hyperbolic character tales. In “Tennessee,” a girl-gone-wrong song, a gentle guitar and s…

Transgender, Scientologist, “Cult Hero”

By Jay Michaelson

…really a religion, either. There’s so much more in QAPD, but throughout it run themes of truth-telling and truth-avoidance, of ways to postpone the reality of one’s own difficult shadows, and of ways to admit and confront them. I can’t imagine the specifics of Bornstein’s dark places. Her gender evolution makes my own closet-to-light gay journey seem easy and banal, and her adventures in BDSM make my sex life look irredeemably vanilla. And I haven…

Meet the New LDS Face of Immigration Politics

By Joanna Brooks

…ch to immigration reform signed by state leaders in 2010 and hailed by the New York Times as a model—and one of its key institutional backers, the LDS Church. The LDS Church helped influence the compact design and announced its support in a formal statement issued in November 2010, citing particular concern for “love for neighbors, family cohesion, and the observance of just and enforceable laws.” Pearce represents an ethnocentric red-state Rocky…

Don’t Ignore the Role of “Christian Values” in Conservative Conspiracy

By Carmen Celestini

…al takeover of the American political system to the Illuminati to create a New World Order, and asked Christian voters to stand up to the Illuminati with their votes in support of God, American values and their understanding of the American traditional family. Writing about the culture wars of the late 1960s and of today religion scholar Stephen Prothero observed that: In the contemporary culture wars, the maw of cultural politics opened wide and…

The Curious Case of Mormons and LGBT Rights

By Alan Michael Williams

…2, the Church launched the website “Mormonsandgays.org,” which points to a new tactic for a new generation; the “closet” is now considered an ecclesiastical hindrance. Openness about gayness can seem revolutionary on its face, but queer discourse is being sifted through church protocol with an aim to fortify “love the sinner, not the sin” ideology, rather than tear it down. As an example, in the summer of 2012, Mormons marched in Pride parades in…

A Palin Pastor Primer

By Esther Kaplan

…e in Iraq, basically, is a manifestation of what’s going on in this unseen world called the spirit world.” On Palin’s election as governor: This was the result of a “prophetic call” by another pastor at the church, who prayed for her to win. “[He made] a prophetic declaration and there unfolds the kingdom of God, you know.” From 2002 on: Wasilla Bible Church, Pastor Larry Kroon When Palin ran for lieutenant governor in 2002, she switched Wasilla c…

TED-Evangelism Harkens Back to a Forgotten 19th-Century Tradition

By Michael Schulson

…c (“The TED talk is today a sentimental form,” Nathan Heller writes in The New Yorker). Wright describes this aesthetic in frankly spiritual terms. TED talks, he told me, are in keeping with “a kind of civic religion of aspiration and self-reliance and communal progress.” When I brought up this hope-and-progress energy with Vanderbilt historian Paul Stob, a scholar of intellectual culture, he described it as “a great similarity between TED talks t…