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Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy: Choosing Religion Over Sex

By Lynne Gerber

…ay therapist, the heterosexual male friend from church he called “at least weekly, sometimes several times a week, baring [his] soul,” the intensive male community he found in the New Warriors training and various support groups. “The irony,” he writes, is by the end of therapy, “I felt more bonded and connected to men and manhood than I had all of my life.” It is tempting here to resort to salacious clichés about what must be going on behind the…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…of heat but little light with a segment on conversion therapy on Monday. Today, NPR’s ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, analyzed Monday’s story in light of the negative reaction from listeners. Briefly, Alix Spiegel interviewed Rich Wyler, founder of Journey into Manhood, and Peterson Toscano, a man who went spent 17 years in an unsuccessful effort to change his orientation. Schumacher-Matos correctly points out that much of the negative reactio…

Catholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage

By Marian Ronan

…either in one “ovotestis” or with one ovary and one testis). An increasing number of public and commercial health insurance companies now include defined benefits for sex reassignment surgery, and the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers, have declared the denial of such benefits discriminatory. And intersex conditions are likely to increase, since some of them, at leas…

Christian Epistle on Islamophobia

By Haroon Moghul

…politics that has shaped many of us makes what we say very irrelevant to today’s issues. I think a good part of the church is in denial as to how this country has really changed. I never heard of this Dearborn Awakening event that happened until I read your piece today, but I want to offer an apology for this speaker that lied and confused people. I offer this as a Christian and student of the Word that is called by God to obey and not simply know…

“One of Us”: Rick Santorum and the Politics of (Very Big) Family

By Kathryn Joyce

…claimed, “We win if we just keep having children, ’cause we’re going to outnumber them!”—a staple argument of the Quiverfull movement. Weeks earlier, Santorum had transformed this rhetoric into policy proposal at a South Carolina Fuddruckers appearance with the Duggars, where he argued that low birth rates and a declining American population (also longstanding concerns among the Quiverfull movement) should be fought by tripling the child tax deduc…

Obstacles for Secularists

By Sarah Posner

…ates: You can watch the entire discussion, which was prompted by this past weekend’s Reason Rally, here. Waldman wrote more about atheism in the United States in a column at TAP, and I wrote one on the prospects for a secularist political movement for the Guardian. Waldman observes: But it won’t be easy for secular Americans to become better organized as a political force, even as they increase in number. The major impediment to that kind of orga…

The Threat to Democracy Runs Deep, But Mathematics Could Address the Abominable State of Representation and Voting

By Ismar Volić

…nt republic of Yugoslavia, a country whose socialist-era days were clearly numbered. Three ethnic parties, representing Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, swept the election and formed the new seven-member presidency. The dream of Bosnia as a multicultural, multiethnic model of tolerance and coexistence for the rest of Yugoslavia—and Europe—had started to unravel. On June 25, 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. A bri…

Supreme Court Rules Religion is Special… This Time

By Katherine Stewart

…he one thing that they got right in this case. The U.S. has on the books a number of valuable laws against discrimination in the workplace, and all organizations (businesses, nonprofits, schools, governments) are expected to abide by these laws. Except religions, or so it now seems. According to the Tabor ruling, religious groups get a pass on the law when it comes to employees who are considered “ministerial.” The right to the free exercise of re…

Speaking with Palestinian-American Republican Who Confronted GOP at Debate

By Haroon Moghul

…could have a bigger tent if it stopped playing to such a narrow base. One day, sooner or later, I’m sure they’ll see the benefit in that. For now, both Romney and Gingrich, and the Republican establishment, would do well to note that there is an increasing number of Arab and Muslim Americans. They are not one and the same. But, they are politically active, eager to vote, and often donate time and money to candidates and campaigns. They are import…

Turn On The News: This Isn’t a Split, It’s a Tiny Sliver of Conservatives Walking Out the Door — Introducing A New Media Criticism Column

By Daniel Schultz

…f understanding, speaking in ways that give good and fair arguments to the best of one’s ability and listening in ways that likewise seek to understand as much as possible. Journalists can rightly assume that their audience will participate in the listening part of that work. Nobody needs a willfully obtuse reader. But in trying to understand their sources, journalists often forget the first part of the equation. Which is to say, in a civil societ…