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Orlando Massacre and ISIS: The Illusion of Power

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…ISIS needs the illusion of power. There is no doubt that this is what the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks were meant to achieve. ISIS has also encouraged individuals to conduct their own acts of jihad against disbelievers. Such acts would give the appearance of a global terrorist operation, even though the central ISIS command did little to plan or conduct them. Is this what happened in Orlando? Thus far, there is no evidence that Omar Matee…

Talking Salsa with Douglas Hofstadter, Enigmatic Author of Gödel, Escher, Bach

By Eliot Raynor

…two hours. Hofstadter took up salsa five years ago while on sabbatical in Paris, a pursuit he explains in terms of simple admiration. Having envied those who could appear so cool and composed on the dance floor, while also totally virtuosic and precise in their movements, he decided to learn. This fascination with salsa feels continuous with his work in cognitive science. Hofstadter’s persistence is legendary; he’s preoccupied with discovering th…

A Brief History of Olympic Flames

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…the hip (in the ancient and the modern Olympics, alike), eruptions of the Parisian and Californian sort we’ve seen over the past few days are bound to recur. One thinks of the African-American protests in 1968 (and we tend to forget the hundreds of nonviolent protestors killed by government forces just weeks before the Mexico City Games began). We think of boycotts in Moscow in 1980, and Los Angeles in 1984, and the debates roiling as we speak. T…

‘No Room’ for Gays in Country that Worships God [Kenya] | Churches Fight to Keep Sexuality Out of Sex Ed [S. Korea] | Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Peter Stephens, his partner of 32 years, (photo right) on the tarmac of a Paris airport for the arrival of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, when a protocol officer told the ambassador that the prime minister should not be greeted by Mr. Stephens. Ambassador Brady was ordered to have his partner “wait in the car.” To his credit, Ambassador Brady refused to follow that order. Peter remained by his side as the Prime Minister and his delegation…

Answering the Top 5 Questions About ISIS

By Haroon Moghul

…take seriously the idea they are extremists. In addition to killing large numbers of people, trying very hard to commit genocide, burning prisoners alive, and beheading innocent civilians, ISIS also uses rape as a tool of conquest, and slavery as a mechanism of control. All of this behavior is fundamentally in contradiction to core Islamic values and principles. In my longest piece on the topic, I discuss ISIS theology from the perspective of Isl…

Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

By Peter Montgomery

…of blue blazers or silk scarves) does not feel strange. In Germany, by comparison, the main Christian chuches (Lutheran and Catholic) have a privileged position. Although their membership is dwindling, as recently released figures confirm, they still haul in taxes from tens of millions of citizens under a system overseen by the state. Within most German federal states, the churches have an entrenched position as advisers on education and, sometim…

When Blasphemy Was a Riot (But Didn’t Cause One)

By Sophie Gherardi

…he Untouchables), which came out almost a year ago and sold twenty million tickets in France (and nearly as many abroad). Intouchables is a funny and moving comedy, but as politically correct a story as you’ll find: a black young man bordering on delinquency is hired by a tetraplegic wealthy man to be his assistant-nurse-chauffeur. They have a ball together doing crazy—and sometimes nasty—things, and save each other from an apparently inexorable f…

Australians Vote Overwhelmingly For Marriage Equality; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…the right to be married or adopt a child. The Catholic Church praised the ruling as “wise.” China: Report exposes use of drugs, electroshock as part of ‘conversion therapy’ BBC reports on a Human Rights Watch study of forced “conversion therapy” involving drugs and electroshock treatment. France: Paris moves to create LGBT movement archive The Paris city council is planning to open an archive to “preserve documentation of the LGBT movement in Fra…

Confront Death by Avoiding Fritos: The Gluten Lie, Fad Diets, & Foodie Faith

By Michael Schulson

…and anxiety reminds me of the main character in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris who romanticizes 1920s Paris, until he actually travels there and discovers that Parisians of the ‘20s are fantasizing about the 1890s …and so on. We look to other times and other cultures for supposedly healthier, more authentic ways of eating. There’s this idea, and it makes a lot of intuitive sense, that if we’re suffering, and we don’t have solutions to our own pr…

RIP: Bishop Otis Charles and Rev. Robert Nugent

By Peter Montgomery

…School in Cambridge, Massachusettss. Egelko reports that Charles came out in 1993 shortly after announcing his retirement, divorced his wife of 42 years, and moved to San Francisco. He ran a gay ministry there and at age 76 he met Felipe Sanchez-Paris, who he later married. Sanchez-Paris died in July. Charles is survived by five children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled at 2 p.m. Jan. 11 at St. Gr…