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PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…made headlines recently after its local presbyteries voted to, as the New York Times put it, approve same-sex marriage. This new definition will go into effect in June. Given the tensions this issue has caused, both within the PCUSA and among many other denominations, it shouldn’t be very surprising that the phrasing in the PCUSA’s Book of Order was changed from “between a man and a woman” to “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.”…

Infanticide Still Not a Growing Movement: 30 Years of Pro-Life Fudging

By Daniel Silliman

…h” abortion. As Snopes rather gently phrased it, McArdle’s report “lacks a number of key credibility markers.” Or any, really. Of course, one evidence-free bit of “news” is not in itself notable in this media landscape. But this isn’t the first time this rumor has been reported as fact and acceptable uncritically. Earlier this year there were a rush of such reports by conservative commentators such as the American Conservative‘s Rod Dreher, Nation…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…. “This is the age of sin against God the Creator”. That will help us. The New York Times Mike McPhate noted in a story on the pope’s remarks that Francis had used similar language in a trip to the Philippines last year, warning of “the new ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family.” Indonesia: Islamist activists ask Constitutional Court to criminalize homosexuality As we have been reporting, religious and political figures have be…

The Religious Right and the Tea Party on “Education Choice”

By Julie Ingersoll

…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…

Good News: Religious Outreach Works On Vaccine Hesitancy. Bad News: We Need It.

By Daniel Schultz

…vaccine is the protection, for them and for everyone around them. The good news here is that significant numbers of the hesitant and resistant respond to faith-based approaches. And although PRRI estimates that about 13% of all Americans are “generally agreeable to QAnon theories,” those same people respond the best to those approaches. The study names six such techniques: A religious leader encouraging vaccine acceptance A religious leader gettin…

As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon

By Katherine Kelaidis

…e war against Serbia over Kosovo.” And two weeks ago, International Family News, a right-wing website run by National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown, ran a piece entitled “Spread the word, resist the ideological colonization” praising Serbia’s violent rejection of EuroPride and framing the Serbian people as heroically standing against the West and its dangerous, sinful worldview. A new Russia, if you will, but made sympathetic to…

Catholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter

By Marian Ronan

…yrocketing. As Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports in the May 28th issue of the New Yorker, more than two-thirds of African countries criminalize consensual acts between persons of the same sex. Even in South Africa, the first country in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, anti-LGBT violence is a major problem, with “corrective rape” and murder of lesbians on the upsurge. At the same time that anti-gay…

Death Without Religion

By Gordon Haber

…ble assertion to make in such a tendentious book. Perhaps there is a small number of Americans losing their lives at the hands of hasty harvesters; even a very small number would be too high. But I had a hard time summoning any outrage. In the end I learned much more from Kagan—ironically because his aims are in a way more modest. He wants to convince you of his physicalist stance; however, he doesn’t want to tell you how to reconcile with death….

American Jewish Leaders Get Gaza Wrong

By Sarah Posner

…was close to negotiating a cease-fire with Hamas. The Israeli government knew it, but assassinated its leader Ahmed Jabari anyway: Baskin told Haaretz on Thursday that senior officials in Israel knew about his contacts with Hamas and Egyptian intelligence aimed at formulating the permanent truce, but nevertheless approved the assassination. “I think that they have made a strategic mistake,” Baskin said, an error “which will cost the lives of quit…

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement?

By Chris Stedman

…or such conversations, but the ideal forum for it. I can fondly recall any number of incidents where I argued theology and philosophy with a religious colleague while doing interfaith work; and how, later, they told me that they actually took my perspective seriously because we had built a trusting relationship. It made all the difference that I treated them as intellectual equals—as people with respectable goals rather than just mindless adherent…