Religion Dispatches
…eant I had no family schedule. I lived in a dormitory and besides going to class and a small part time job, I was a free bird. In Ramadan a free bird, flies high on the rituals of the month. I stood for 20 units or tarawih every night that I was fasting. Like the first time reading through the Qu’ran in Arabic on my own this was exhilarating. Somewhere around 12 or 14 units, I lost track of everything outside of the recitation and the ritual perfo…
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…me? Why am I peeking into these windowless bedrooms at middle-aged, middle-class blondes in fuzzy slippers and sweats? Why am I spending an hour of my life watching a middle-aged advertising salesman in suburban Utah standing there in the predawn hours in his sweats explaining where he keeps his clothes? And perhaps because I’m tuned in on assignment as a religion columnist I’m disappointed by the near absence of religion in the episode. Early in…
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…nts, and that “a lot of people who had problems felt like they were second-class,” including Bullock, who said that he suffered from depression while working at the AFA. Employees were fearful of speaking out, according to Bullock. “We were puppies in the corner who learned to keep out mouths shut.” Inside the One News Now Newsroom The AFA’s radio and news division, in particular, said Martin, had become a place where authority could not be questi…
Read More…mented for years. “He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes said. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him. Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said, saying most of those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation. And just to show that bullying isn’t merely a high school problem, there’s news of a Rutgers University freshman who killed himself a…
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…curriculum, and Barton’s role in that.) They believe in an entirely second-class status for women (some believe women shouldn’t vote). They are virulently hostile to gays and lesbians. They believe that any social safety net should be eliminated and replaced by church programs—available only to believers. (And they succeeded in getting an exemption from the health insurance mandate for believers.) So whether the Grayson ad takes Webster “out of co…
Read More…os Angeles, she recalled, would sometimes reach out to feel her head for horns. Late in her life, she and I talked about homosexuality—we talked about everything—and she recalled back in the 1950s a boy who grew up on her block in her middle-class Los Angeles suburb, a child who she always knew was different, and kindly she asked, “I wonder what has happened to him? I wonder if everything turned out okay for him?” Kindness was the core of her Morm…
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…t week when I was traveling in Israel and the West Bank with my journalism class. Caprica wasn’t aired where I was; neither could I download it. But its themes were present in the “othering,” religious extremism, ethnic tension, violence, and gender performances that constitute everyday life in the region. Fact is an adrenaline rush, but fiction has better sets and costumes. If you want to know about the real deal, my post is here and the students…
Read More…xciting enough that it was actually counterproductive that I had taken the class so I could go free-jump. It made so much sense when she described it that way. But then, I guess she didn’t know how much I worry about things like mosquitoes and hangnails. The type-A perfectionist in me not only craves a correct performance, but also a transformative one. And yet, having gone around the block/globe so many times before this, I am not sure what I wil…
Read More…who last year took a stand and refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class. Will believes that until gays and lesbians receive the same rights and recognition as heterosexuals in this country, the phrase “liberty and justice for all” is just a farce and he refuses to be a part of it. Phillips was speaking at the Big Commit Sunday in Washington DC, a counter-rally to the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage’s wrap up of its “Summer for…
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…ossible (pun intended) to destroy books as a way of entirely eradicating a class of information, as Diocletian and many other emperors wanted to do. This is impossible to do because books are no longer physical objects but also electronic ones. It is also impossible to do because even electronic destruction may not be effective. At best, no matter how widespread a computer virus (a contemporary version of book burning), there is no guarantee that…
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