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How Should Mormons Respond to Leader’s Anti-Gay Comments?

…mons is organizing a “Stand Up to Youth Suicide March” at 6:30 p.m. at the San Francisco Civic Center. The march on Friday is in conjunction with Affirmation’s annual conference, which is being held in San Francisco this year and which will feature workshops on standing up to suicide, standing up for understanding and standing up for equality. With the prominence of LGBT suicides the past month, the march is sadly poignant and important. There’s m…

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Cuba Opens its Doors to the Catholic Church

…The significance of Wenski, Castro, and Ortega together at the Seminary of San Carlos and San Ambrosio, a symbolic trinity of Cubans’ and Cuban-Americans’ negotiations between identity, land, and religion, is not lost on me. For the Catholic Church globally, this opening is a public testimony of the survival of Catholicism in spite of increasing clergy shortages throughout other parts of Latin America. While many are heralding this as the beginnin…

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Only 5 Million “Real” Catholics in the U.S.?

…ared, “The Obama Administration has now drawn an unprecedented line in the sand.” I’ve been thinking lately about a Catholic line in the sand, but it’s not the one announced by Cardinal Dolan. For me, and, I suspect, for a lot of educated Catholics like me, the line in the sand is the “doctrinal assessment” issued in April by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella o…

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I Know Why a Rain Dance Won’t End The Drought

…t to the west moves east to encounter the Coconino Plateau (7000’) and the San Francisco Peaks (13,000’+) the hot air off the desert and the cool air of the high mountains cause thunderstorms to form. These storms move from the southwest to the northeast right toward the Hopi reservation in north-central Arizona. The weather pattern, called the ‘monsoon’ in Arizona, is predictable (monsoon actually comes from the Arabic word for season). Arizona’s…

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LDS Church Launches New Website Calling for Greater Openness and Understanding on LGBT Issues

…ublic health researchers working in cooperation with Mormon lay leaders at San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance project. But with its explicit call for improved treatment of LGBT people within Mormon communities, the mormonsandgays.com site opens new horizons of possibility. Kendall Wilcox, a gay Mormon and maker of the documentary Far Between, “I am encouraged by the fact that the Church is promoting the value of listening to and em…

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Jihadis?

…d and sclerotic autocrats out of the way. There can be no progress without freedom. And there can be no freedom if we are stuck believing in people, like Hirsi Ali and her ilk, who don’t believe in the kinds of analysis that leave room for debate, discussion, and growth. I know from personal experience how hard it is to fight the mentality that produces and sustains extremism. Case in point: I don’t think Hirsi Ali is deliberately misrepresenting…

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Act, Pray, Tweet: What the H*ll To Do About Gun Violence?

…needy, stranger, and enemy. It calls murder a sin and crime, and provides sanctions (along with requirements for fairness and witness testimony in trials), just as it gives detailed instructions on aiding the downtrodden. Indeed, the idea that humanity only pray and wait for divine action would exempt us for any moral accountability for our communities. As long as I’m not the perp, such logic would go, I can fiddle—and pray—while San Bernadino bu…

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BYU Skinny Jean Controversy: Sexism, Sizeism, or Standards?

…puses in Provo, Utah, Rexburg, Idaho, and Laie, Hawaii have long had dress codes requiring students to dress conservatively, prohibiting shorts, skin-baring cropped tops, and “form-fitting clothing.” The popularity of leggings, jeggings, and skinny jeans (even Mitt Romney has a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the B…

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An Open Letter to Rabbi Dov Linzer on Modesty and Jewish Law

…ort their position by reading closely and deeply the same Talmud and legal codes that you do. Their community embodies an extreme yet also consistent rendering of Judaism founded on the Talmud and the legal tradition it generated. It is true that their egregious behavior steps beyond any acceptable norm. But their more general interpretation of Jewish law does not. Shouldn’t recent incidents serve to show that your anti-misogynist Orthodoxy, which…

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A Moral Galaxy: War and Suffering in “Star Wars: The Old Republic”

…t waging a just war. “This game helped me understand the different ethical codes to a greater degree,” comments one. “Given that I attempted to play each class in a specific manner, I found it interesting how certain stories ‘rang’ with me, and others were discordant. It’s an interesting game, and I would almost advocate using it for educational purposes in high school.” If each player can acquire an embodied, lived experience of cultural ideals t…

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