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We’re Not Just “Heterosexual with Issues”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…fellow human being and wishing him well. I deeply disagree with Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney, but I wish none of them ill and I do hope that their own true happiness will lead them to realize the humanity of those they so often vilify with such relish. A girl can dream. The hypocrisy of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” theology that the religious right insists it lives out in its battle to quash equal rights for LGBT people co…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…ide is dissembling too much and people can sense it. People can sense the truth. Truth really does have some kind of ontological, existential superiority over lies and this is written in the Bible, in the Old Testament in particular. In the end, the ways of truth always triumph over the ways of wickedness, guile and lies. And with each day that passes, the ways of truth are more and more triumphant even though we are still behind bars and are like…

Both the Joy and the Uproar Over the Pope’s Blessings for LGBTQ Catholics are Small Potatoes Compared to this Age-Old Church Problem

By Mary E. Hunt

…holic queer groups, including the progressive New Ways Ministry and DignityUSA, declared this a new moment, a step, however small, in the right direction. No one claimed it was a major shift in theology or practice. Some male ordained priests have been blessing same-sex couples (as well as divorced and remarried people) under the table for decades. Now they can do so without looking over their shoulders. In other words, they are now in sync with t…

As Transition Looms, Jewish Studies is Mired in Controversy

By Shaul Magid

…individuals and collectivized populations. Rather than studying how people live Jewish lives, the emphasis is on the numbers of bodies that “count” as Jewish. More disturbing still are the legacies of scientific racism evident in the language of “intermarriage,” “in-marriage,” and “out-marriage. I think there are two steps in the embodiment they describe: one, inherent distinctiveness (the Jew is the Jewish body) and, second, superiority born from…

Ask a Muslim: No, Dear Reader, Sex-Obsession Isn’t Confined to Muslim Nations

By Haroon Moghul

…o I look fat in this?” honestly—and sometimes it’s because we fear for our lives. If I lived in Soviet Russia, would I be honest about my political opinions? Would it be immoral not to? You could spend all day with that one. Fifth, verses of the Qur’an do not create obligation or prohibition even if the verses themselves claim to. They are read only and ever in context with the wider Islamic tradition, and create arguments. These arguments can be…

Noise in the Hood: Raising the Volume and Losing Our Bodies

By Peter Laarman

…ility, and the nature of human being itself. Keizer argues that wishing to live in a less noisy world is a way of saying that you want your body back and that you also want others to enjoy bodily contentment. Too much noise—and too much noisy oppression—results in part from the pretense that persons can live as disembodied beings. Keizer is exquisitely sensitive to the ways in which the history of noise expresses class relations and class consciou…

Ask the Dust: Tolerant Heathens

By The Editors

…r anthropological point of view. And it is possible that they may chose to live their lives at Jehovah’s Witnesses. You don’t want to miss out on them because you can’t reconcile their theology with your own. You, however, can always position yourself as the aunt they will turn to later in life if they chart a different course. Keep the door open and they may knock on it when they try their first cigarette, sing their first Christmas carol, kiss t…

Debate Over Mother Earth’s ‘Rights’ Stirs Fears of Pagan Socialism

By Bron Taylor

…rth,” produced under the auspices of the United Nations by its Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Or, if pressed for time, peruse the “Summary of a Declaration on the rights of Mother Earth,” language below proposed by Evo Morales on the occasion of the first International Day for Mother Earth on April 22, 2009. Most people who care about their planet and its inhabitants will discover that this indigenous and socialist leader from Bolivia makes…

Racism and Anti-Semitism Are Not Intrusions of a Dark Past Into Our Present

By Joyce Dalsheim and Gregory Starrett

…the past lives through us as our taken-for-granted social and political structures relentlessly renew themselves in our everyday lives. How should we respond to the horrors of our own day and age, when quiet neighbors might suddenly reveal themselves to be hate-filled strangers with assault weapons, forcing their way into our houses of worship? “Arm yourselves!” some people say. Make sure there is a guard at the door of your synagogue, your churc…

Robbing Peter to Give Charity to Paul: The Dirty Secret Behind American ‘Giving’

By Peter Laarman

…ger to the ways of the wealthy) nailed this vanity factor in the explosive Times op-ed he published way back in 2013: As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering”—feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of char…