Religion Dispatches
…portant. When he goes to Uganda, he’s not known as Scott Lively, but as an American evangelical. When Warren goes to Kenya, he’s not Warren, but an American evangelical. As long as they have a church title and stand for conservative politics, they have influence. The Africans don’t always have the resources to follow their statements so they say: this man of God says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Confer…
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…rily a story of how religion has interacted with some of the big events of American history. American religious expression—its music and art, its stories of internal spiritual quests, its embodiment, its wild profusion of utopian groups, its history of ritual practices—will have to be found elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God knows, while Glenn Beck rants in Twitter-like aphorisms condensing David Barton’s execrable version o…
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…ny in the deep resonances between Hochman’s and Weyrich’s statements about American conservatism. In a recent guest essay at the New York Times, Hochman argues that contemporary American conservatism has left the Christian Right—which was inspired by Goldwater and built by Weyrich, along with Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and many others—behind in favor of a more secular, expansive, and dynamic movement that’s protecting a “beleaguered American way o…
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…e “big three” advocacy organizations—the Freedom from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State—and commented on the increasing diversification of the secular movement, as a result of which “the movement has seen a more intersectional approach.” To be sure, movement atheism has long been dominated by cisgender white men, and much work remains to be done both in terms of diversifying leaders…
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…posite. They claim that “historical and critical theory have much to offer American Jewish sociology and American Jewish Studies.” The question is: what tools will be deployed to best navigate that engagement, making explicit what’s at stake and bringing a critical eye to the normative claims embedded in our habits and language? *** One of the questions that has consistently plagued Jewish Studies in the academy is where it belongs. Two possibilit…
Read More…d the “homosexual agenda.” Orozco is criticized for receiving support from international human rights groups; he is portrayed as the “traitorous pawns” of “meddling colonizers.” But American Religious Right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute have been supporting Belize Action, the group opposing Orozco’s lawsuit. A 2013 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center documented the role…
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…ee status to avoid being exported to Uzbekistan. Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International spokesperson, said: Ali Feruz is openly gay, a human rights activist and a correspondent for the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper. This is a near-lethal combination for someone who is about to be handed over to Uzbekistan, where ‘sodomy’ is a crime and torture is endemic. And Human Rights Watch tells the tragic story of “Lilly,” a transgender woman from Uzb…
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…owly writ that most of their initiatives and arguments don’t hold up under international law.” WCF, however, is gradually chipping away at international laws designed to protect human rights, posing a direct threat to LGBTQ people, women’s reproductive freedom, single parents, mixed families, and other family structures that do not fit into the parameters of WCF’s “natural family.” At best, those who are deemed “unnatural” by WCF standards could b…
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…India is inconsistent with the obligations that the Indian state has under international human rights law to prevent violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Manvendra Singh, a 40-year-old gay man described as “India’s first openly gay prince,” is urging the decriminalization of homosexuality. Israel: Gay couple part of military ad campaign A social media campaign by the Air Force celebrating the families of care…
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…oup. Russia would still be (relatively speaking) a respected member of the international community offering an alternative, genuinely pro-family model for social policy. There would likely be at least a half-dozen nations which would have adopted the anti-propaganda law for themselves (with many more considering it) and there would be a healthy international debate raging on pro-family vs LGBT visions for the future. I believe the tide would proba…
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