Q.: Should we be at all surprised that David Brooks’ latest column is a steaming pile of platitudes? A.: No. Brooks is a master of the thunderingly obvious. We should be grateful for this, as it seems to be the only thing that prevents him from veering off into the territory of the demonstrably wrong. Q.: Should we be surprised then that Brooks passes on somebody else’s platitudes as if they were prophetic oracles? A.: No. Brooks is also a master…
…hat support LGBT equality: “I hear some people who received dirty money to promote homosexuality in our Christian country are currently seeking to be re-elected. I hear one of them is seeking for a higher office. Elect only those that promote good Christians values because voting people tainted with such dirty money may bring a curse on our country,” Archbishop Ntagali said. Matthew Davies at the Episcopal News Service writes that Michael Curry, p…
…the passage of anti-gay legislation across Africa and notably in Nigeria, Uganda and Gambia. United Kingdom: Christian B&B owner runs for office; gay men seek pardons like Turing A B&B owner in the news last year for taking their claimed right as Christians to deny unmarried couples from sharing a room will be running for office. At the time he said: “We are taking the case to Strasbourg on grounds of religious freedom. The question we are asking…
…gion may be the only guiding principle, the only social, moral, even legal code to abide by. Somalia, for example, has been a “failed state” since 1991; this is a place where the presence of the state and accompanying service provision is virtually nonexistent. Griswold shows how the story of the rise of al-Shabaab—an Islamist militia currently wreaking havoc with horrific efficacy across Somalia and now outside its borders (the group claimed resp…
…l codes. Tunisia’s anti-sodomy laws are derived from the 1913 French Penal Code, while section 347 of the penal code in Christian Cameroon is a French colonial law. Similarly, the Ottoman adoption of French codes would ban the köçek. Across the Muslim world, many of the laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ people are direct relics of colonial law. It would take generations to gradually align the region with European colonial sexual values through a shift in…
…gal equality: The government continues to retain Section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes sex between men. The law is sandwiched between codes that ban sex with corpses (Section 377) and sex with animals (Section 377B) in the Penal Code, indication of official attitudes towards homosexuality in the wealthy city-state. Convictions under 377A allow for two-year prison terms. In a bid to placate both liberals and conservatives, the governme…
…hat provide AIDS-related services, which Health Minister Ummy Mwalimu said promoted homosexuality. Gay sex between men is severely punished in Tanzania. Those convicted could receive anything from 30 years to life imprisonment. However, there is no such ban on lesbian sex. Until recently the gay community in Tanzania had not be subjected to levels of discrimination seen in other African countries, such as neighboring Uganda. Politicians had largel…
…, the “replacement” is part of a larger plan by a shadowy Jewish or Jewish-coded “global elite” trying to rule the world.) The origins of this myth in France have to be seen against the backdrop of French colonial history, especially the fear of white slave owners of slave uprisings when it comes to the construction of the social in- and out-group. The “Great Replacement” became more widely known after Jean Raspail published his novel Le Camp des…
By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston
…But the center is an assertion, not a fact; an etiquette, not a place. Its code, its theology, is most fully embodied in Americanized Arminianism—a Protestant tradition of good works and propriety, “distinguished liberals” and polite realpolitik. “Arminian moralism,” notes historian Charles Sellers in his study of Finney’s age, The Market Revolution, “sanctioned competitive individualism and the market’s rewards of wealth and status.” It did not e…
Last week, Professor Alberto Carpinteri of Turin Polytechnic claimed that the image of a man’s face on the Shroud of Turin, that piece of cloth believed to be the burial shroud of Christ, was caused by nuclear emissions from an earthquake that hit Jerusalem in the year 33 AD. The story made worldwide headlines. Wait, I hear you asking, wasn’t that Shroud thing proved to be a fake long ago? Well, yes. Whatever else it is, the Shroud is one of the…
