Religion Dispatches
…’re participating with,” Ms. McNeil said. In other words, there is no recognized religious objection to serving with LGBT members. Just as white soldiers had to learn to get along with black soldiers following military desegregation, heterosexuals are going to have to learn to get along with gay men and women in the military, who, they shouldn’t need to be reminded, are already serving alongside them….
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…ion by joining other denominations or leaving Christianity altogether. The number of priests and nuns was at an all-time low even before the recent sexual scandals, and the number of self-identified Catholics world-wide keeps declining. Many of those who remain in the Church ignore standard doctrines and believe what they want. How many Catholics disobey Church rules? About as many as the angels dancing on a pinhead. Believers know that Jesus prom…
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…” ISIS: Executions of gay men continue; cited by UK’s Cameron in debate on military action Bassem Mroue reports for Associated Press on the ongoing targeting and killing of gay men by Islamic State militants. Mroue interviewed a Syrian man who has fled to Turkey: Life for gays in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, was always hidden, Halaby said. When the secular-led peaceful protests erupted against President Bashar Assad in 2011, he said he quickly jo…
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…ex of potential motivations. Although the shooter called a local emergency number during the attack to pledge his allegiance to ISIS, news reports have suggested that there is to date no evidence of any connection to the group. ISIS officials have encouraged supporters to launch attacks in their home countries during Ramadan. National Public Radio reported on Saturday morning that the shooter’s behavior before the killings did not fit typical evid…
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…ives that, disappointingly, grow less and less helpful as they increase in number and length. When I spoke to Bhikkhu Bodhi about the fracas in an interview last fall, he cautioned against interpreting his statements as a blanket endorsement of military solutions: I think what has to take priority now, since the formation of the United Nations, are the conditions for just warfare that are laid down within their charter. One is that a nation is jus…
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…growing blight on its readiness to fight North Korea’s 1.2 million-strong military. But in the past week, evidence has emerged to support the allegations by gay soldiers that investigators flouted the army’s own regulations on how to treat gay service members by preying upon the soldiers’ fear of shame and abuse if they are outed in the military. Analysts and veterans said bullying, hazing and sexual violence were chronic problems. Zimbabwe: Huma…
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…me—on the other side of the street. The Islamists had popular support; the military had guns—and the tacit support of Western democracies. When I returned home to the US, I was stunned to learn that inasmuch as Americans had heard of what was going on in Algeria, they heartily endorsed the military coup that prevented the Islamists from coming to power. It wasn’t that their commitment to democracy was shallow, but rather that they couldn’t even im…
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…or sell for under two dollars). And unlike the internet, the space of the iPhone feels not just private, but personal. Yes, the iPhone might be my means of connection with the world—it is, after all, a phone—but it is also my own little password-locked garden that I carry with me wherever I go. Moreover, I can remake the landscape with a few flicks of my fingers whenever I choose. As a result, the territory necessarily mixes the sacred and the pro…
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…r pledge cards and enlist volunteers to canvass potential voters and staff phone banks. He said that the positive responses to his phone pitch for Prop 47 were an unexpected surprise. “It’s been amazing to see how many people were supporting this,” Hakim said. “There are more people that think about justice than I realized!” The momentum for collaborative Muslim faith-based activism around Prop 47 began to build earlier this year, when Jawaid and…
Read More…ch of Christian denominations working with us now.” Discussions during the phone bank covered the Golden Rule, whether the Leviticus view of homosexuality as an abomination also extended to eating shrimp, and how civil marriage licenses are distinct from religious weddings. Most of the calls lasted mere seconds, with people not home or not interested. After an hour working the phones, Scott Holley, 33, cheerfully noted that he had become “unfazed…
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