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It’s Official: White Evangelical Support for Romney Not Dampened by Mormon Factor

By Joanna Brooks

…als said they “strongly favored” Romney, and about 30% said they had “some reservations”—proportions just about equivalent to those reported for Romney voters overall. In the voting booth, partisanship trumped sectarianism. As we knew it would. But according to the Pew enthusiasm for Romney overall lagged behind the enthusiasm of Obama voters, seventy percent of whom said they “strongly favored” the president. Perhaps Romney’s team is to be credit…

Conservative Bishops Headed For Synod Victory?; Indonesian Sharia Official Says Gay Caning Law Meant To ‘Safeguard Human Dignity’; Slovenian Court OK’s Referendum on Marriage Equality Law; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…FP. The regulation was passed in 2014 amid outrage from rights groups, but officials took a year to educate the public about the new law before it came into effect. “The law is to safeguard human dignity. It is to protect Aceh’s Muslims from committing immoral acts,” Abbas said on Thursday, adding it would come into effect the following day. Indonesian human rights activist Ismail Hasani has called for the law to be abolished, saying it is “cruel,…

Conservative Anglican Bishops Threaten To Split Communion; Malawi Opposition Leader Says Gays Should Be Killed; Anti-Marriage Effort Makes European Union Question Initiative Process; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ch will ask for forgiveness, but only God knows the time.” European Union: Officials Unhappy With Conservative Initiative Effort on Marriage European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker “wants to review a scheme that lets the public suggest new laws after campaigners called for gay marriage to be explicitly unrecognized in EU law,” writes Matthew Holehouse for the Telegraph. His officials are alarmed that a petitions system designed to make t…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…rtable talking to my male superiors than to me. I’m talking about members, officials and even ex-officials who remain in that Scientology mindset. I don’t know whether or not that’s a sexist thing. I never really saw it that way, but they were definitely much more interested in talking to my male superiors. They’d call Rolling Stone directly when I was writing the magazine article and rather than speak to me, they’d communicate with my editors, al…

Novak Djokovic, Extraordinary Tennis Player, Ordinary Orthodox Anti-Vaxxer

By Katherine Kelaidis

…al movement against Covid-19 vaccinations after his battle with Australian officials ahead of the Australian Open. The all-time great was successfully deported this week after Australia’s immigration minister canceled his visa in the public interest. French officials are now saying that unless he reverses course and gets vaccinated between now and May he will be similarly banned from the French Open. For his part, Djokovic has publicly expressed d…

Gen X, Gadgets, and God

By Elizabeth Drescher

…e throughout his life. And, he was really digging all the apps on his new iPhone. So, eventually, he created an app that would provide “Biblical guidance to your everyday ups and downs.” With it, users select from a scrolling list of “blessings” (friendship, new home) or “burdens” (anger, money), shake the phone, and get a Bible verse to guide reflection in the course of daily life. What is cool about apps like the Holy Roller is not, however, jus…

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

By Jared Farmer

…ggerated statistic that counts all baptisms and births, but not the actual number of churchgoers), representatives of the religion—and representations of it—have managed to become fixtures in popular culture. I don’t have a complete explanation for this, but I would point first to the post-9/11 zeitgeist. In the last decade, there was a national and global debate about the place of religion in politics. Many looked to the American past to better u…

Dutch Treat: Betsy DeVos and the Christian Schools Movement

By Peter Laarman

…ars, we’ve doubled the number of private school choice programs to 50, the number of private school choice states to 25, plus Washington, D.C., and doubled the number of students currently benefiting from private school choice to 400,000. All told, together, we’ve helped more than a million kids in private school choice programs, and we’re just getting started. “Just getting started”: we should not underestimate how seriously this should be taken….

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…

RD News Round-Up—Oct.14, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…as been most visible on the Internet. On neo-Nazi and white supremacist websites and blogs, hundreds of comments have been posted “promot[ing] centuries-old stereotypes and conspiracy theories alleging Jewish control of the economy, banking and the government,” YNetNews recently reported. The ADL noted that a number of posts “have gone so far as to resurrect Nazi-era propaganda with threads such as ‘The Jewish Problem’ or comments such as, ‘The Fi…