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Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…fied as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was quickly dismissed, the implication was clear: anyone could be infected. The epidemic had exposed social and cultural fault lines that made coverage more than just a medical story. Its initial outbreak in the homosexual…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

…ican religious history, including There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero, Harding taught at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colo. for more than 20 years. Nelson Bunker Hunt A Texas billionaire remembered mostly for his business exploits, Nelson Bunker Hunt bankrolled the religious right. He underwrote many Campus Crusade’s projects, including the 1967 “Berkley Blitz,”the $6 mil…

Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…he [imagined] danger through aggression and power.” As Beinart argues, the number of American Jews who act out of fantasied oppression is declining. But their political strength remains much greater than their numbers. Yet curiously Lerner, the professional psychologist, downplays this and the other psychological wellsprings of support for militant Zionism. Instead he focuses time and again on compassion for the very real historical sufferings of…

Violent, Genocidal Anti-Palestinian Rhetoric Moving to US?

By David Sheen

…adventures of the Israeli government, regardless of the Palestinian death toll. But they have at least paid lip-service to the sanctity of human life and expressed regret for the souls lost on both sides. As Israel’s latest assault on Gaza enters its fourth week, however, we are witnessing a significant rhetorical departure. Yet as reprehensible as remarks from American Jewish leaders have been, the dehumanizing discourse among political and reli…

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ramadan

By Haroon Moghul

…Muslims, stretching from the time of the Prophet to the end of the world, united by disagreeing over when Ramadan starts or how many taraweeh to pray and then we think that because we can’t agree on a date (get it, date? Ha! [I’d say ‘I kill me,’ but we’re already in brackets and imagine how that could be misinterpreted!]), we’re all going to hell, and that explains why we can’t get anything done, as opposed to, say, not trying to get anything do…

World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…fficials tell media to play down Taiwan marriage ruling According to Radio Free Asia, “China’s state propaganda machine has warned the country’s media not to ‘make a big deal’ of” Taiwan’s marriage equality ruling. The government of Hong Kong has appealed a ruling by the city’s high court that the city must provide spousal benefits to civil servants who married same-sex partners abroad. Alfred Chan, the South China morning post reported that the c…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…of learning is being strictly regulated. In reality, there is no religious freedom in Tibet.” It may seem strange to an outsider that the regulation of monastic institutions—for example, the control of the number of monks in monasteries—should be such an important issue for Tibetans. Let me try and explain why monks and nuns risk years of imprisonment, and indeed their own lives, to protest this and other governmental policies aimed at controlling…

In ‘God Hates Fags’ Case, Free Speech Trumps Free Exercise

By Julie Ingersoll

…his religion (as well as his privacy rights). The Phelps case relied on a free speech claim instead of freedom of religion, and they won. So as the Supreme Court sees the right to freely practice one’s religion as “constitutionally irrelevant,” religion has been reduced in popular rhetoric to the right of the dominant religion to be free of any challenges to its dominance: wishing someone “happy holidays” in thought to violate the religious freed…