Religion Dispatches
…hite, but the majority of those polled were women at 53 percent. While the numbers may seem surprising, in light of conservatives’ historically strong support for states’ rights on this issue perhaps they shouldn’t be. Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates like Texas Congressman Ron Paul and former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer are already talking about leaving marriage to the states. Paul said the bottom line is that government shou…
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…ine that LGBT people do not need protection from discrimination or equal marriage rights. But make no mistake, conversion therapy advocates cannot be separated from their supposed religious motivation, and the harm [they] inflict on LGBT people because of a belief that we are somehow inferior is a heinous moral wrong they must one day grapple with.” …
Read More…crisis after another, communicating little confidence that they know what they are doing or understand where this new tidal wave of cash will actually go. So, flow the money will, anywhere between 600 and 800 billion dollars worth… but where will it go?…
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…lso are its enemies as an institution. From this fear, certainly for conservative Catholics, flows a consistently urgent desire to control this flux that is absent from nearly every other (non-Abrahamic) religion in the world. For this reason, the conservative Catholic ontology insists that the authority of the Church and the power of the state to enforce this authority on its population are the preconditions for morality and virtue. The recent in…
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…if this bill included the avoidance of individual discomfort, not just to Florida’s teachers but to Florida’s athletic coaches? Florida, like most Southern states, is obsessed with football. But what kind of football teams would Florida schools produce if players could argue that they were being discriminated against if they were made to feel uncomfortable? When I was younger, I had dreams of playing soccer at the highest levels. I participated i…
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…ges as a rationale for extending the bloodshed in Gaza. The statements of Ovadia Yosef, whose recent passing was met with flattering memorials both in Israel and the US, are legendary. The former Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of many Middle Eastern Jews, said, among other things, that Palestinians “should perish from the world” and that “it is forbidden to be merciful to them”; of non-Jews in general, he declared that “Goyim were born…
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…dulous “reporting” of the whole affair in the corporate media. Only a tiny number of outlier critics—like Simon Johnson—are given any air time at all. Everybody else, from NPR to Fox News, goes right along with the cute “stress test” metaphor, forgetting that the so-called patient being “tested” is actually an 800-pound gorilla that needs to be put into a cage if not shot dead outright. Johnson pointed out this morning that today’s news non-event…
Read More…ally at stake in the furor of criticism? What trends do they signal? Conservative schools that fight interreligious education isolate themselves behind higher and higher walls, rather like the walls U.S. embassies have to build to protect themselves from increasingly hostile populations. At stake, they say, is the unity of truth and the preservation of the historic Christian faith (the two notions often being identified). To choose dialogue is to…
Read More…ink that the work of the AFA will fade away when Wildmon, one of the conservative evangelicals’ old guard, passes from the scene, think again. The Wildmons, like the Falwells and the Robertsons, are movement families, with movement sons in prominent positions. While Wildmon may be old school, the American Family Association, founded in 1977 as the National Federation for Decency, has taken great pains to operate in the twenty-first century in savv…
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…olitical and economic force, but rather through the ideological, where the values of the elite become normalized as values that everyone can accept, even if they do so passively. Statements from Trump’s camp about deporting undocumented immigrants, banning Muslims or putting us on a registry, increasing stop-and-frisk programs across the country, and others, aren’t being highlighted as wrong, as unconstitutional, as racist. Instead, we hear the no…
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