Religion Dispatches
…yrics of the “Punk Prayer.” That resulted, some weeks later, in a panicked phone call from an administrator asking if I had taught Pussy Riot lyrics. The incident blew over, but the ban on LGBT “propaganda” was passed at around the same time. And I would be lying if I said I haven’t become at least somewhat more careful with what I say in the classroom since. Self-censorship is, I think, the way most LGBT Russians and their allies deal with the le…
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…t would lead to legalization of same-sex marriage. Deputy Justice Minister Diego Jimenez, who is a backer of the bill, said it would not alter the country’s marriage laws. Australia: American activists engage over marriage referendum American anti-marriage-equality activist Jennifer Roback Morse was in Australia to strategize with opponents of same-sex marriage in advance of a national referendum on the topic. India: Openly gay Apple CEO meets wit…
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…n effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging the exemption in the spring. The large number of Catholic nonprofits currently using the accommodation and potentially seeking a broader exemption means that potentially thousands of women could lose contraceptive covera…
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…700 to $800 million in lost tax revenue annually, according to one nonpartisan analysis. Crabb’s conclusion that this exemption violates the Establishment Clause is legally not farfetched. While there’s room to debate whether providing a tax exemption is identical to subsidizing religion directly, it’s hard to avoid reaching the conclusion that an exemption available only to clergy favors religious employees over secular ones. But like “under God”…
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…arge part of the Great Plains, restored wildlife and built a system of over 800 state and county parks. They electrified an entire region of the country, bringing what had been America’s “Third World” up to 20th century standards. They created works of art, gave concerts, set up theaters throughout the country, ran nursery schools, served over 1.2 billion school lunches to needy children, gave immunizations, taught illiterate adults to read and wr…
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…als 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 their own opinions? What about gays? Did the crisis affect their feelings about “straight” institutions such as religion and marriage, inadvertently fueling a desire to normalize? If so, did coverage of supportive congregations and loving families make a…
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…ang Dipertua Agong is Malaysia’s monarch and responsible for defending the sanctity of Islam. He said the screening of such a movie would also be an insult to the Yang Dipertua Agong, who is the head of religion defending the sanctity of Islam in the country. ‘What is their intention, in promoting the movie and wanting to show it,’ Nordin told the Malaysian Insight. ‘It is as if there is an agenda to make homosexuality something acceptable. ‘We ur…
Read MoreWhile 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…
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…ght Patriot movement where such prayers are standard features. It should be obvious how such prayers could be really lethal in their toxicity. They impart upon both the speaker and the hearer a kind of religious benediction and sanction for murdering and/or harming other people. Moreover, it not only sanctions such acts, it almost impels them—a serious devotee will take such a task upon himself as a spiritual duty. Which is a deeply disturbing pro…
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…open to anyone “regardless of their…profession,” but I somehow doubt that sanitation workers outnumber investment bankers in SoulCycle studios (one of which is across the street from the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Tribeca). Classes with popular instructors sell out in minutes, and patrons can pay upwards of $70 per class in order to get priority booking. “Ultimately, this is what brand religion is all about: stoking emotion with a combination…
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