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“I Want My Country Back!”: The Demography of Discontent

Throughout August and September, we have seen pictures of angry protesters in town meetings and, most recently, in the streets of Washington. As judged by their pictures, they are predominately older, white, male, born-again Christians. Their signs point to a mix of frustrations: what could happen to the health care they have, the future of the free market, big government and its spending, bailing out the banks and auto industry, death panels, so…

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Martin Luther King in the Era of Occupy

…use he took the rap for you and me on the cross.” Similarly, at the end of Clark Johnson’s HBO film Boycott (2001) on the Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s, King returns from the dead to twenty-first century America. Still wearing a suit and tie, he speaks with young black men in the city. King is somehow able to reach the disciples of rapper Tupac Shakur. Years later, conservative talk show host Glenn Beck paid tribute to King’s “color blindne…

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Give Me That Old-Time Ex-Gay Snake Oil

…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…

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Some Thoughts on Richard Dawkins’ Terrible Tweet

…cation, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourg…

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

…s I watched talented African American actors hamming up “African-ness” for cheap laughs. It brought to mind the long, shameful history of Americans—black and white—performing blackness (often in blackface) on stage for white audiences. The Book of Mormon wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of The Lion King and its African stereotypes by substituting more authentic stereotypes. It wants to be transgressive and conventional, blasphemous…

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

…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…

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Covering Religion in The New Year: The Atheist Bus And More

…the atheist bus adverts, said: ‘You wait for ages for an atheist bus, then 800 come along at once. I hope they will brighten people’s days and make them smile on their way to work.’” So will it be a year of smiles for the faithless—or, perhaps, the faithful? A lot depends on the economy. Religion didn’t fare particularly well during the Great Depression. Despite the seeming need for alternative realities, church attendance didn’t swell in the 193…

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A Resurgence of “Ex-Gay Therapy” Under Trump/Pence? ABC News Report Offers a Platform to Hate Group Rep. Peter Sprigg

…orts,” is indeed “long-discredited.” But then they offer what amounts to an 800-word platform to the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. The short piece serves as a teaser for Friday’s episode of 20/20, the result of a year-long investigation into several ex-gay “camps” located in the American South. The 20/20 segment features interviews with at least two young people sent to the camps—as well as self-described pastors and administrators of th…

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As Florida Attempts to Make it Illegal, an Argument for the Sacred Work of White Discomfort

…cently as 2008, white Christians comprised 54% of the population, but that number is 44% today. More immediately, this legislation lifts language directly from former President Trump’s executive order targeting CRT, which banned the use of so-called “divisive concepts” and introduced the white “discomfort” criteria. Biden repealed this executive order on his first day in office. The Florida bill, like the other bills, is part of a coordinated Fran…

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Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

Colorado’s fetal personhood ballot initiative petition failed to get enough valid signatures, and so the measure will not appear on the ballot, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced this morning. According to the Denver Post, some of the signatures were deemed invalid, so the petition was found to have only 85,800 valid signatures—305 signatures short of the required 86,105. Jennifer Mason, speaking for Personhood Colorado, said tha…

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