Religion Dispatches
…discriminatory provision now to be enshrined in the state’s constitution. Look at how relieved the women look. They’ve saved civilization! What do you do when you’ve rescued North Carolina from the gays? Make your victory party like a wedding reception [see image left]: About 250 amendment supporters crowded a ballroom at the Hilton North Raleigh for the celebration that was part standard-issue campaign victory party and part wedding reception. T…
Read More…ger for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.” Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at Fox News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with the Fox News Channel. Roger Ailes said: “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the…
Read More…r arguments in whatever science (or pseudoscience) they can. And when they look for an authority figure to back their claims, again and again they look for a scientist. It’s probably more accurate to say that people distrust certain scientific findings. They consider these findings to be bad or corrupted examples of actual science, which they like. In other words, while we may argue over what good science actually looks like, we all want the scien…
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…e other day next to Karl Rove and I didn’t even realize who it was until I looked up and recognized him. I said to him, “Excuse me, Mr. Rove, but your spears are constantly in my side.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Basically these anti-gay shafts that you’re throwing are killing us.” “I’m not anti-gay,” he said. “Oh, you and the Tea Party are not anti-gay?” I said. He said, “I’ve been trying to get them to drop that issue but since they w…
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…s, seemed off in the new media world. The Arab Spring has changed how we look at Arabs and Muslims. Social media subverts power structures, whether those are of the hard power or soft power variety. In this context, no ground is steady. The same revolution that put Mohammed Morsi in charge of Egypt now seems to be destroying the Muslim Brotherhood’s decades of work—in under a year. That isn’t to say that accessibility automatically births democr…
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…s very possible that many people who buy into the programs, which are much cheaper than insurance, think they’re getting essentially the same guarantees when they very much are not. Others, however, likely go in clear-eyed; and for all parties, the exclusive availability of the coverage to “good Christians” is surely a draw. They don’t expect to come down with the kinds of health conditions that only “godless” people supposedly get. There’s often…
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…ematic of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, sexual activities of some of their best and brightest notwithstanding. Along came Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who held a different view. Incredibly, he felt that in the 1975 letter, “an overly benign interpretation was given to the homosexual condition itself, some going so far as to call it neutral, or even good.” He took pains to clarify in a deeply unpopular 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church…
Read More…mple is Tad R. Callister’s recent talk about sexual morality. Or you could look at pretty much anything Boyd K. Packer has said during his tenure as a general authority. (Raise your hand: how many of you know someone for whom the last straw, the thing that finally got them to stop going to church, was Packer’s October 2010 Conference talk about how homosexuality is not an “inborn tendency”—changed in the reprint of the talk to “temptation”—but an…
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…, sometimes at a real personal cost. We have a pretty good track record of looking to the margins and seeing who is not included. That ethical path is tied directly to our queer identities, very much informed by this idea of queered binaries. It’s not a surprise to me that this ethical path bears a resemblance to the ethical path that Jesus asked his followers to walk. I see an opportunity for queer people to help Christians perceive the queerness…
Read More…d” economically, but “Islamic law.” He actually starts out commenting that looking for one cause of “Muslim world” decline is problematic and you cannot look at the religion as the sole cause. However, he then assigns blame to the sole cause of shari’ah. His blinders are on to such an extent that he is arguing against the estate tax that makes sure property is not concentrated in the hands of a self-perpetuating elite. Shari’ah has now become a tr…
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