Religion Dispatches
…smatic persons will never be discovered embezzling money, enjoying kinky sex, or (The Da Vinci Code notwithstanding) fathering surprise children. It’s not necessary to label something a “cult” to understand the potential peril involved in looking to a living guru. However honest and virtuous that guru might be, she—like the rest of us—is susceptible to tripping and falling right up until the day she dies. What makes some folks willing and able to…
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…they’re clearly the most feared subcategory. When atheists support same-sex marriage, for example, it’s not because they don’t believe in marriage, it’s because they believe in love and commitment. When they insist on removing creationism from public school curricula, it’s because they believe in the power of science and reason to improve the human condition. And if one should really need proof that atheists are as moral as any other group, they…
Read More…e ban is not on being gay but on the “practice”—just as there’s a ban on sex between unmarried straight students. In Higa’s 22 years at Westmont, she said, the school has not expelled anyone for being gay. A straight, unmarried couple left, she said, after they refused to live apart: “They understood what they had agreed to and they dropped out.” Alum Melissa Durkee said it’s hard to know what the school might consider “practice.” “Is ‘homosexual…
Read More…al? These denominations may be, sadly, on the decline, but they’re hardly extinct. Getting back to our sheep, as the French say, I’m sure there’s no shortage of analogous secular prizes on the South African dial, but the fact that this even exists (i.e., is a viable motivation to a large enough chunk of a radio station’s listeners) seems to me an indication of how much more diverse in some notable respects South Africa is compared to other Western…
Read More…ty as a “learned behavior” imported from the West, and claimed that “homosexuality exposes those that practice it to health and mental issues.” Sex education is one of the things that anti-LGBT groups battle because of fears that it promotes such things as homosexuality and promiscuity. Conference organizers in Nairobi have already indicated that Phyllis Kandie, cabinet secretary for Kenya’s Ministry of East African Community, Labour and Social Pr…
Read More…ious world has failed in providing a Jewish-halachic response to the complexity involved in the existence of a state.” “Thank God that we don’t have a majority in the government,” he said. “I fear the day when we have 61 Knesset members. For example, I don’t know how the airport could be closed on Shabbat in the modern world. Thank God that no one is asking me such questions.” United Kingdom: Street Preacher on Trial for ‘Belligerent’ Comments Pre…
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…d I realize I don’t care. • Riding the volume knob, I split the difference between waking my parents and coaxing all the ecstasy I can from the TV’s tin-can speaker. I don’t know how to take this I don’t see why he moves me He’s a man He’s just a man Should I bring him down Should I scream and shout Should I speak of love Let my feelings out? I never thought I’d come to this What’s it all about? —Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, “I Don’t Know How…
Read More…e made in the committee hearing on the bill last week. “If you look at the code, these codes are dealing with illegal acts. Now, abortion is a legal act. So this has got nothing to do with abortion.” Here is the bill in its entirety: FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA: Section 1. Th…
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…nmental Protection Agency’s informing us last week that man-made carbon dioxide—a gas that humans exhale and plants need to live, a gas that represents less than 0.1 percent of the atmosphere—is a dangerous pollutant threatening to overheat the world. (While the newsroom at the Philadelphia Inquirer has been gutted, Santorum gets paid $1,750 per column to foist such misinformation on a poorly informed public.) In all fairness, Santorum makes one g…
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…ago where months before I spent a good deal of time trying to understand. Explaining is not defending except for those who prefer a life of uninformed hate.” He also disagreed with Smith that he “had written a pro-Obama book that would draw evangelicals away from McCain.” And he pleads with the right-wing Christian readership that has pre-judged his book to remember that “being a Christian and a conservative is not tantamount to having a brain byp…
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