Religion Dispatches
…n, politically speaking, for such religious Turks. The Kemalists, like our Republicans, are busy imploding. And the far-right nationalists? As you’ll see—not happening. It’s AKP or nothing. Some AKP supporters I spoke to insisted that the Kemalists, with anarchists and the help of outside powers (Russia because of Syria, Israel because of Gaza) were promoting a sustained, organized effort to besmirch Turkey. These various forces, they said, co…
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…citizens engaged in and exercised sovereignty as a collective, but also a republic under a sovereignty of law. This meant—and means, as the current administration must be reminded—separation of powers. In America, “sovereignty” was understood as multiple, layered, a matter of negotiation. Look at the star-shaped constellation on our nation’s Great Seal, signifying both America’s place in the firmament of international sovereigns and the distincti…
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…e movement—we are the conservative movement,” they attacked “establishment Republicans.” Mike Lee criticized “the top Democrat and Republican in each chamber” for having gotten too powerful and echoed the narrative Suella Braverman presented on the previous day: that the Tories lost their recent election because they “met progressives half-way”—an observation completely untethered from reality. “We’ve gotta stop assuming that you win elections and…
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…back, promising a welcoming space to celebrate and honor LGBT athletes and promote human rights internationally. World Congress of Families: More on summit in Republic of Georgia Eurasianet publishes a story about May’s World Congress of Families summit in Tbilisi, Georgia. The article by Nino Gogua, Nikoloz Bezhanishvil, and Giorgi Lomsadze notes that the event’s anti-LGBT messages were in sync with the anti-Western theme of the conference. The W…
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…leader of Tibetan Buddhism to the Grand Dastoor of the Persian Zoroastrian Republic, as well as representatives from the World Council of Churches. There are even rumors that “anti”-Pope Pius XV of the American Catholic Church may arrive later this week from Rio de Janeiro, fueling speculation of a rapprochement after decades of schism. The U.S. Ecumenical Church has remained cautious, issuing platitudes about how the discovery magnifies our under…
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…—facilitated his rise during the 1920s and 1930s. A badly polarized Weimar Republic found itself totally defenseless in the face of stormtrooper-incited chaos and crime. Of course our official founders—those rich white men in wigs—chose to euphemize and sanitize what they knew full well would ultimately threaten the stability of their perfect machine: the unspeakable violence they authorized within the system of chattel slavery they wrote right in…
Read More…ent receive far too little attention). Lekus notes that recent progress in promoting LGBT human rights in Cuba “reflect a marked shift from the early history of sexuality & gender in revolutionary Cuba,” citing state persecution, including labor camps and expulsion. It remains to be seen which historical precedents will inform Cuba’s overall democratic transition and the inclusion (or lack thereof) of LGBT Cubans in that expansion of democratic ci…
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…agine Foreign Minister Zarif similarly providing an account of the Islamic republic. Imagine this debate continuing, fueled by endless cups of tea, long into the night, as Kerry discusses, say, John Locke and James Madison and the American founding, and Zarif discourses on Mulla Sadra and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, as they argue about the nature of the human being, the purpose of the political community, the origin…
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…ed, for some, sacred terrain beyond the contaminating imprint of the white republic; whether in a storefront, freestanding building, or the surreptitious brush arbors of many yesterdays. However, in the racial imagination of America nothing operates outside of the deleterious insistence of whiteness—no place is a safe zone. As the history of lynching—the obscured legacy and culture of racist vigilantism—has taught us, black people live without san…
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…igious life, then I am the Queen of England, the President of the People’s Republic of China, and the lost ruler of Zamunda rolled all into one. While angry reactions to remade classic films are understandable, the notion that Sister Act ever should be taken as anything more serious than Hollywood entertainment is downright ludicrous. It also cannot go unchallenged, not only for the sake of sanity, but also out of respect to the long and fiercely-…
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