Search for "cheap airline tickets for military members phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Diane Winston

…faith experienced by religious folks whose neighbors, friends, and family members were stricken with a disease that initially seemed a divine scourge. Did reassessing their theological position on AIDS enable some Christians to accept GLBT people as equals and to eventually see them as worthy of ordination and entitled to the sanction of marriage? Did reporting on these believers’ struggles around AIDS predispose other news consumers to rethink t…

Clergy May Soon Find Taxes Soaring As Result of an Under-the-Radar Ruling

By Patrick Hornbeck

…and nuns, Christian and otherwise, live in monasteries and convents; and a number of historic Protestant churches, especially those best endowed financially, provide parsonages. But over time, an increasing number of clergy have made their own living arrangements. Churches found parsonages prohibitively expensive; congregants preferred to see their donations go toward services rather than clergy housing; and new religious ventures, especially the…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…

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

By The Editors

…all those who, free themselves, speak out in our support. There are a vast number, I know. I know that a huge number of Orthodox people are standing up for us. They are praying for us outside the courtroom, for the members of Pussy Riot who are incarcerated. We’ve seen the little booklets Orthodox people are handing out with prayers for those in prison. This shows that there isn’t a unified social group of Orthodox believers as the prosecution is…

Kirk Cameron Joins the Anti-Mormon Chorus
(Sort Of)

By Julie Ingersoll

While a number of conservative Christian leaders raise questions about Glenn Beck’s Mormonism, Worldview Matters’ host Brannon Howse continued his attack in a conversation with Kirk Cameron about why Cameron did not participate in Glenn Beck’s Divine Destiny. Howse marveled at the “thick irony” wherein Cameron (the actor who played Buck, the converted journalist warning about the “demonic spirituality of a one world religion” in the Left Behind m…

Australian Church Nixes Straight Couple’s Wedding Over Their Marriage Equality Support; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…federal officials sought to identify homosexuals in the public service and military who were seen as untrustworthy and at risk of blackmail by foreign powers. Those targeted were subject to interrogation, harassment and dismissal. Many quit rather than submit themselves, friends and family to such harassment. In 1989, Michelle Douglas was discharged from the military for being, as the regulation put it, “not advantageously employable due to homose…

Christian Terrorism Comes to Milwaukee

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…hat allows for ethnic diversity. Either way, it was clear that he was on a military mission to save white Christendom. His imagined war was more personal than just cultural grievances, however. The great struggle gave him a role. He became a warrior, something that he was not able to achieve in his failed military career. This is a common pattern among activists involved in religious terrorism. The cosmic war of great religious struggle provides a…

Well, the Harris-Trump Debate Happened — Now Enjoy Your Freedom and Choose Wisely

By Mary Rambaran-Olm

…pending exorbitant amounts of money to build and maintain the most “lethal military in the world,” as Harris wants, if it’s just for show? Certainly, no one dares attack the most lethal military in the world, which is actually a deterrence, right? But what cost is too high when the US already spends upwards of $916 billion on its military? Trump on the other hand will make peace somehow just by talking with leaders (possibly because, according to…

Will bin Laden’s Killing End the Jihadi Trend?

By Christopher Anzalone

…least for the time being. Chief among these are the continued US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan and the extensive US military campaign in Pakistan that is believed to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Pakistani civilians in air strikes. Even within the original al Qaeda bin Laden has probably not played a central operational role for many years, though he remained an influential voice and symbol. The organization has cultivate…

U.S. Envoy Minimizes Mounting Evidence of Mass Graves in Sudan

By Frederick Clarkson

…ctivists, Sudanese diaspora, and genocide scholars, for “limited” American military intervention “to destroy carefully selected military assets of the government of Sudan.” In so doing, the coalition invoked the UN doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” which is an outgrowth of world reflection on the lack of international response to the genocide in Rwanda during the 1990s. Now considered an established international “norm” (as distinct from a “…