Religion Dispatches
…towards less orthodox members of their congregations. I dream tonight of a signal from Salt Lake City, or an even higher place, will empower a different kind of action, a standing down on all sides, a putting away of defensiveness and fearfulness, a putting to rest of Mormonism’s nineteenth-century ghosts and twentieth-century control issues. A signal to the men tasked with the burden of convening an excommunication court this Sunday in Virginia,…
Read More…sing you to sin, cut it off.” But he affirmed his insistence that “gender distinctions matter to God.” • Also this week, a person who declares on his YouTube account, “I vote for the Bible,” posted a video – since removed – of himself urinating on a “Vote No” sign. • That followed the posting of a video by a teenager shooting at a vote no sign he says someone put up near his house and concluding, “that’s how we deal with it around here.” Equality…
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…, which for Jews has evoked exclusion and persecution, and renders it as a sign of inclusion: we are all in the Holocaust. Just as the cross incorporates believers into the body of Christ and into the community of the church, Sendak wants his sign of the cross to incorporate all readers into the body of Holocaust experience. This goes beyond a “fantasy of witnessing,” an uncanny desire to “feel the horror” of the Holocaust for ourselves. It is a f…
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…licting information about whether Schmierer, the board member in question, signed this letter at the time it was sent (reproductions of the letter on numerous websites, including Throckmorton’s, do not include his signature, while the letter currently on the Exodus site does). In March 2010, a year after the initial conference, the organization issued a formal public statement opposing the criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda. In contrast to…
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…the wake of the criticism to the point where many Komen executives have resigned—people took to Twitter and Facebook and it happened in just a few days. Another example is Sandra Fluke and the so-called religious freedom battle, which was an anti-contraception battle, and what happened to Rush Limbaugh. He is significantly diminished in both his sponsors and his radio outreach. That was completely a creature of social media—and again driven by wo…
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…re that has no sexual organs and no complex digestive system as our bright sign of the future, while we simultaneously hold it captive to our whims and mercies. And yet I also have a strange sense that Kobuta might be the sort of starry-eyed scientist who won’t allow this to happen. Of course, I can’t know this. I don’t even know Kobuta. But I am moved by his sense of humility. Science’s Little Miracles As hungry as Kobuta is for knowledge about j…
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…ir histories with power and truth. The woman tapped her “40 Days for Life” sign against her leg as she read. “You could almost see the wheels turning in her head,” remembered Kromenaker. Arriving at the final prayer, the woman put down her sign and left. “Reasonable Christian people, when reading these prayers, understand that these are honest prayers for women,” noted Reverend Rebecca Turner, who wrote the prayers that RRWC had posted in…
Read More…s worldwide had mounted a campaign urging President Yoweri Museveni not to sign the law; they were joined by U.S. officials. Among those urging Museveni not to sign the law was retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who had spoken personally with Museveni. Said Tutu: “We must be entirely clear about this: the history of people is littered with attempts to legislate against love or marriage across class, caste, and race. But ther…
Read More…nd neighborhoods. The turnaround was so astounding that one year, the best sign at Atlanta’s gay pride read: “We can rehab marriage and sell it back to you at twice the price.” Seems that sign was a bit prescient. As more and more states accept same-sex marriage, researchers are showing that gays and lesbians have much to teach their straight counterparts about the institution they have been bogarting for the last few centuries. As Liz Mundy recal…
Read More…or killed. The chief actually did very good work but homosexuality was not promoted. People would whisper and ignore, the issue now is promotion as if it’s good, that we can’t accept.” Museveni echoed this claim in his letter but added that Uganda should stop those who “lure” young people into homosexual acts: “We should legislate harshly against these people with money, from within and without, who take advantage of the desperation of our youth t…
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