Religion Dispatches
…ering up a sanitized version of him, which led to shock->calls for his head->predictable complaints of persecution of Christians. If A&E had showed us the real Phil Robertson on the air, events would have played out much differently. On the other hand, citizens who oppose LGBT rights do have to comply with any laws protecting those rights. Being a member of a group holding minority political views, whether based on religion or not, doesn’t give yo…
Read More…torical construction. The construction of a national sense is a matter of “common feeling and an organized claim”. Historically, this claim is first organized by the state. It is only after the state and its claims to territorial sovereignty are established that nationalism arises to unify culturally what had been gathered inside state borders. National claims tend to construct historical myths of origin stretching back into antiquity, but Carlton…
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…o history and practical, material concerns. Bevin lives in a laissez-faire free-market world; the ministers speaking out against his plan know that West Louisville is not an economic blank slate, that entrepreneurial spirit is not enough to break out of patterns of poverty in that area. Reverend Cosby voices a critical Christianity, a Christianity always aware of the historical sins to which it lent a name and a justification. It is through this r…
Read More…such as hospitals, schools, and Catholic dioceses, rather than private, for-profit companies. Judge John L. Kane rejected the government’s argument that a private company cannot make a religious freedom claim. In weighing the requirements for a preliminary injunction, the court found that “the threatened harm to Plaintiffs, impingement of their right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, and the concommittant public interest in that right sr…
Read More…isn’t covered because their boss thinks it’s tantamount to murder–dignity didn’t enter into the equation. We’re focused on the bakers and the caterers, in part because the religious right has made such a spectacle of them, with hyperbolic pronouncements about the end of religious freedom and free speech. It’s easy to forget that in most states, as well as under federal law, LGBT people are left unprotected in public accommodations, housing, and em…
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…t and at times studied erosion of feminist achievements in mandatory, state-sanctioned equality. I’m talking about the basics here, the principal First and Second Wave achievements: political equality, symbolized by a woman’s right to vote and to hold political office; and economic equality, symbolized by the ideal, if not the reality, of equal pay for equal work. But when the sexual equality of men and women is at issue—not sexual sameness, let’s…
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…ay. But if I put it at 2016, I might be hanging myself. * * * Also on The Cubit: Donald Trump has turned Islam into the new communism…
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…re Chief Kelvin Cochran, initially reported as stemming from Cochran’s anti-gay comments in his book, Who Told You That You Were Naked? In the book, Cochran wrote, “Uncleanness – whatever is opposite of purity; including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, all other forms of sexual perversion,” and “Naked men refuse to give in, so they pursue sexual fulfillment through multiple partners, with the opposite sex, the same sex, a…
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…others were savvy enough to camouflage that fact. Even with all of this research, the book itself remained elusive. I remember that I sat down at Thanksgiving 2012 and considered seriously the possibility of abandoning the project altogether. After a bit more dithering, I simply started writing; an entire draft emerged about six weeks later. Writing is how I think. What’s the most important take-home message for readers? This is the first biograp…
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…Dinosaurs by Robert Nash. It’s a children’s book and provides careful step-by-step instructions on how to properly take care of your pet dinosaur. It’s quite amusing to read, but still gives the reader a terrific background on the many types of dinosaurs. One of the horrible things we’re seeing happen today is that some fundamentalists—Ben Stein in his movie Expelled, for instance—are teaching our children to fear and hate science. I think of all…
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