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The Creepy Surveillance of Elf on a Shelf

By Kelly J. Baker

…t for any reason. Second, the elf cannot interact with children during the day because its role is to observe and listen. The creators, however, encourage children to talk to their elves—especially to share secrets. The elf can learn more about the children, the more they share. Telling the elf secrets seems to secure a space on the nice list. These elves are ubiquitous. They can be purchased from bookstores, Target, and online retailers. Tutus ca…

Trump’s Lawsuit Amounts to ‘a Tweet With a Filing Fee,’ But That’s Not the Whole Strategy

By Andrew L. Seidel

…sident subverting the will of the people. Once the polls close on Election Day, nothing can change the outcome. Except litigation. It’s tempting to think that Trump only wants to freeze the numbers at a time when it might be favorable to him. That’s part of his rationale, but he’s also trying to gum up the system. The plan is to start litigating these cases now, but figure out the best arguments as the cases progress in the precincts where they mi…

Forty Years Ago, the Worst Mass Murder of LGBT People in the U.S.

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ed by a disgruntled patron who had been tossed from the bar earlier in the day, left 32 people dead—including a pastor for the Metropolitan Community Church that had been meeting in the bar Sunday mornings. As Diane Anderson-Mishnall explains, in a great article for the Advocate, the MCC was only at the bar because their former building had been set on fire three times. The article includes a heartbreaking picture of pastor Bill Larson—his charred…

Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…r allies over the past several years, such as the entire 2017 annual Pride Week scheduled events, parades and a fashion show in previous Pride Weeks, and a human rights education workshop in 2012. In January 2014, President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which criminalized the undefined “promotion” of homosexuality and led to arrests, evictions, firings, and hate crimes against LGBT people. In August 2014, Uganda’s Con…

Do iPads Cause Religious Experiences?

By Andrew Aghapour

…basal ganglia, and other brain regions have been proposed to accomplish a number of specific functions. Imagine, for example, working intently on some task until you notice that your stomach is rumbling and that the daylight has shifted. You think back to when you last ate, gauge how long you’ve been working, and give yourself five minutes to finish up before having a light snack, so as not to ruin your dinner. An MRI scan of this thought proces…

There’s Something Rotten in Ireland

By Haroon Moghul

…se traced back to the time of Jesus himself. The Palestinian weekend is Friday and Sunday. In addition to being the world’s most annoying and dissatisfying weekend schedule (there should be an award for that, or maybe financial compensation), the days reflect the primary religious affiliations of Palestinians—Muslim (Friday) and Christian (Sunday). Why would Christian Palestinians want to “lynch” Jesus? Or perhaps the embassy’s unknown provocateu…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…ecently being “Jewish” was a liability and anti-semitism was palpable, the number of non-Jews today who identify as Jewish seems historically distinctive. We could, perhaps, point to the so-called “fearers of heaven,” an undocumented community of Hellenes in late antiquity who lived in large Jewish population centers, apparently lived partially as Jews, and had some status in the Jewish community. But today’s non-Jewish Jews aren’t identifying as…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…religious identity politics, which usually manifest themselves most in the days and weeks ahead of local, state, or national elections. Perhaps more problematically for progressives who critique the normative role of religion in societies, religious politics in India isn’t necessarily a left-right proposition. Hindu nationalist parties often mimic the socialist rhetoric of India’s left-of-center political establishment, while in states such as Kar…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…ining a prohibition on public funding of abortions justifies support for today’s Republican Party. But bishops should be wary of such a judgment. Today’s Republican Party is not an appropriate or reliable vehicle for the advancement of Catholic teaching in the medium and long run because of the simple but profound fact that no American political party ever is such a vehicle or ever will be. But the association with Trump leaves a particularly dark…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…ion in “Google searches for churches,” yet more evidence of the increasing number of “nones,” or that “searches related to the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, church and prayer are all highly concentrated in the Bible Belt. They rise on Sunday everywhere.” Other patterns are more jarring: “Relative to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in th…