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HitchBot Meets His Maker: What a Robot’s Murder Tells Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ago, the Canadian-built hitchBOT left Marblehead, Massachusetts. The goal: San Francisco. It was supposed to be an On the Road-meets-Wall-E jaunt, and a testament to the goodwill of human beings. Instead, over the weekend, somebody in Philadelphia destroyed hitchBOT. Game over. The timing for hitchBOT’s destruction felt oddly appropriate. Late last week, the New York Times published a startling article about Xiaoice, a Microsoft chatbot that’s gai…

It Gets Better: Gay Mormons Hold Conference in DC

By Joanna Brooks

…headlines last year after having been called to a leadership position in a San Francisco LDS congregation. They’ll gather as local Mormon conservative activists in Maryland also organize this weekend—acting individually and without involvement from LDS Church headquarters—gathering signatures in support of a ballot initiative to overturn a recently-passed marriage equality law. But for this group of pioneering LGBT Mormons a key focus rather than…

American Bishops Pushed Rome on Nun Crackdown

By Sarah Posner

…s elected Pope. He quickly appointed the then Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco to his old post as CDF prefect. Significantly, the soon-to-be Cardinal Levada was also chairman of the doctrinal committee of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). According to sources in Rome and Washington, his successor at the conference’s doctrinal office – the then Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut – was the man who formally petition…

New Resource for LDS Families with Gay Children Links Acceptance and Health

By Joanna Brooks

Last week, the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University released new materials designed to provide LDS families with a clear picture of the connections between family acceptance or rejection of gay young people and the kinds of health outcomes and life chances those young people will experience. The booklet has been designated as a “Best Practice” resource for suicide prevention—the only one of its kind for LDS people—by the Su…

Obama Administration Gives Free Pass for Faith-Based Groups to Discriminate

By Sarah Posner

…n in employment decisions by grantees.” After the 2011 hearing, Scott told San Francisco Chronicle reporter Bob Egelko that Holder was “obviously ‘embarrassed to try to explain the policy’” and that Obama could repeal the OLC memo via executive order but had made no effort to. The responses to Scott’s question finally reveal the straightforward answer CARD has long sought. Although it was unclear at the time exactly how the Obama administration wa…

Supreme Court Will Hear Challenges to Anti-Equality Laws

By Elizabeth Drescher

…r couples, attempting to bypass challenges before the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco sponsored by marriage equality advocates. No announcement has been made on whether the court will review the case. Meanwhile, four years after a bare-knuckle battle to pass the California anti-marriage equality Proposition 8, and in the shadow of a presidential campaign in which a Mormon candidate and his conservative Catholic running mate echoed the same sort…

American Buddhism: Beyond the Search for Inner Peace

By Joshua Eaton

…ree weeks in California, where I gave lectures both in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. In these lectures I spoke about our responsibility, as Buddhists, to respond to the towering ethical challenges posed by U.S. militarism, economic injustice, and global warming. Several times, after my lectures, people in the audience came up to me and told me how refreshing it was to hear a Buddhist teacher speak on these topics. This, they said, wa…

Faith and Football: What the Gospel Church Can Learn from the NFL

By Douglas Harrison

…it hadn’t occurred just days after the disjointedly homophobic comments by San Francisco 49ers’ cornerback Chris Culliver about “the gay guys” in the NFL. His full remarks are here, but in short, Culliver let it be known that “I don’t do the gay guys, man,” and besides, there are no gay 49ers, according to Culliver, and they should leave if there are any, anyway. It’s a sign of the age of cultural enlightenment that seems to be dawning in the NFL…

Evangelical Star Rob Bell Comes Out For Marriage Equality

By Nicole Greenfield

…egachurch he founded in 1999. Speaking yesterday at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, he officially came out in support of marriage equality. “I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs—I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are,” Bell continued. This declaration is the latest step in Bell’s “search for a more forgiving faith,” a process Kelefa Sanneh detailed in The New Yorker last Nove…

Michelle Shocked Show Shut Down After Anti-Gay Rant

By Kathryn Joyce

…homophobe. Ask God what He thinks,” she said, before shutting off her microphone to complain, “There is always someone who wants to catch me.” Shocked, who somewhat famously came to Jesus through a black evangelical church she began attending for its gospel choir, spoke in 2008 to the Dallas Voice, a gay paper, about reconciling her image among fans as “an honorary lesbian” with the anti-gay sermons she heard at her new church. He said he preach…