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Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…

What Fidel Castro’s Death Means for LGBT Rights in Cuba and More, in This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…rison for allegedly kissing each other. Uganda: First queer film festival planned in December Organizers announced that “the first queer film festival to be held in Uganda,” the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, will be held December 9-11. Its stated objective: It is a well known fact that Uganda is one of the worst places for queer people and our primary goal is to increase awareness and tolerance of sexual identity issues through increa…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…eavenly Father sent him to Uganda instead of his favorite place on Earth—Orlando! The recurring musical outbursts about Orlando, Florida, were for me the funniest parts of the show. There are indeed striking similarities between Temple Square and Disney World: the fantasy-castle architecture; the immaculate, artificial neatness; the perky helpfulness of “cast members”/missionaries; the imagineering and the edutainment in service of a well-groomed…

Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

By Haroon Moghul

…ence do for us? The number of nuclear bombs used by the West outweighs the number used by the entire planet. Muslims did not invent nuclear weapons, nor have they used them. (Let’s pray that stands.) When Saddam Hussein was our ally, he unleashed chemical weapons on Kurds at Halabja, the only confirmed instance of a Muslim regime using chemical weapons. Even considering the possibility of Assad’s use of chemical weapons in his brutal war against h…

Give Me That Old-Time Ex-Gay Snake Oil

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…top thinking about us in bed! Remind me again, who’s the perv here? If the number of partners one has, the amount of time one spends in clubs, and what kind of sexual abuse one has suffered in their lifetime makes a person gay, then I suppose I ought to turn in my lesbian card. I can count the number of sexual partners I have had in 49 years on two hands and have some fingers left over. Not because there weren’t offers, but because, as a general r…

Report from Paris During COP21: Let Us Not Commit Global Suicide

By Donna Schaper

…first climate treaty to emerge from this process. It was passed at COP3 in December 1997 at Kyoto, Japan and came into force in February 2005 when a sufficient number of developed countries signed the agreement; the United States did not, hampering negotiations for the next decade. A successor agreement, involving all countries and with stronger provisions, is long overdue. A growing number of governments, NGOs and climate activists are committed…

Ten Commandments of the Antichrist: The Georgia Guidestones

By Joseph Laycock

…s nature of symbols. To build something so extraordinary with so little explanation created a vacuum of meaning. Much like the Guidestones’ inspiration, Stonehenge, this caused new meanings to be invented. The Guidestones are essentially a spiritual and political Rorschach test onto which any number of ideas can be imposed. Pagans and New Agers created new myths and rituals, imbuing the stones with sacred reverence. For others, the monument is not…

Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?

By Eric Reitan

…d. And in response to the controversy and the barrage of outraged parental phone calls, many school systems decided it was safest not to air the speech at all. Others required that alternative activities be arranged for children whose parents refused to permit their kids to be subjected to an encouraging presidential pep talk. The evening after the talk, the local news station I was watching aired a report on the event, complete with footage of a…

Are Atheists Taking 1st Amendment Suits Too Far?

By Gordon Haber

While sanctimonious conservatives and godless liberals alike await the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Hobby Lobby case, two more suits with serious church and state implications are quietly making their way through the system. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is a group of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics” with a Scientology-esque fondness for litigation. Recently the FFRF has gone after the so-called “parsonage exemption,” which allow…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

…[expect] that because it’s a part of the culture here, it’s a part of the landscape,” he said. “That’s probably one of the reasons it has not been addressed publicly by the school administration or the school board in the past, because it was so widely accepted. No one exercised the right to protest. “Now that it has happened, we all know what the laws are, so we have to make sure we’re doing what’s right,” he said. As always, it’s important to n…