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Will Istanbul Ever Be a Part of the European Union?

By Haroon Moghul

…ts size, prestige and power in a vast area of the planet—you have to go to Moscow in the north, probably Dubai in the south, central Europe in the west and probably India in the east to get this kind of economic power. It doesn’t deserve to be second fiddle to anyone, and with Turkey’s rise, I can see it playing a global role, in the near future, commensurate with its historic one. At the moment I’m overlooking the last stop on the European rail n…

African Religious leaders complain about Obama advocacy for LGBT rights; Ultra-Orthodox Man Stabs Jerusalem Pride Parade Marchers, Again; Struggles over sexuality in Islam, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican Churches; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…eva, Switzerland. Monday night, in [Ulyanovsk] this city 560 miles west of Moscow, the faithful gathered and started to boo the metropolitan Bishop Anastasius before he could even begin his sermon. Newly appointed at the city’s church, Anastasius has been haunted by a scandal since 2013, in which he allegedly harassed homosexuals at the Kazan Theological Seminary. As Anastasius approached the entrance, 50 people who were waiting for him began to s…

The Double Life of the War Criminal

By Laurie Patton

…the mountains. The website claims that he achieved a psychiatry degree at Moscow State University, and then travelled around India and Japan, ultimately settling in China to study Chinese herbs. “In the mid-1990s,” reports the site, “Dr. Dabic” returned to mother Serbia for good.” The website concludes by asserting that he has since “emerged as one of the prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy and macrobiotic diet in th…

The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…cript, which I quote in its entirety: My favorite joke: Takes place at the Moscow Writer’s Club. All the literati have been there for decades. The room is musty with their odor. Enter the ephebe, pale, tender, clutching a manuscript, trembling. He walks to the oldest, wisest, most venerable writer in the room and hands him the manuscript. The room hushes. The old writer glances at the pages. He reads one, reads another. For hours he turns the page…

Franklin Graham Blames Democrats for Escalating Tensions with Russia

By Chrissy Stroop

…n Graham warmed to the post-Soviet state and its leadership, buying the Putinist line that since Russia survived Communism, Russians can help Westerners resist the “new totalitarianism” of “political correctness” and secularism. On the other hand, at a time when Moscow continues to violate the rights of Protestants and other religious minorities, it seems that for Graham, host of a recent World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, some pers…

A Brief History of Olympic Flames

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…es just weeks before the Mexico City Games began). We think of boycotts in Moscow in 1980, and Los Angeles in 1984, and the debates roiling as we speak. The simple fact is that religious rituals, events, and religious symbols are powerful magnets for intense political protest, and even for physical violence. They always have been, and probably always will be. The famous 2nd-century Roman travel writer, Pausanias, reported that the desiccated corps…

What’s So Scary About the Inclusion of ‘God’ in the Russian Constitution?

By Katherine Kelaidis

…nguage service of the German newspaper Deutsche Welle, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a man considered by most to be an ally of Putin, called for “God” to be mentioned in the new preamble. On the surface, this isn’t a particularly alarming request. While Ukraine is, to date, alone among post-Soviet states in including a reference to God in its constitution, many more liberal states absolutely do, including…

Challenge to ‘un-Africanness’ of homosexuality; LGBT Catholics in Africa face church cooperation with persecution; lesbian cartoon project debuts in bangladesh under shadow of violence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ylum applications from Russian LGBT’s on the basis that larger cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg were still safe. The Foreign Affairs report no longer explicitly state that these cities are safer and the Service must therefore now be more restrained, according to Dijkhoff. Sweden: Long waiting list for LGBT retirement home Thomson Reuters Foundation reports that there’s a long waiting list for Regnbagen (rainbow house), the country’s first LGB…

Kirill’s Sermon May Be Bad Preaching and Even Worse Theology — But it’s a Top-Notch Rejection of Liberal Democracy

By Daniel Schultz

…n on forgiveness this past Sunday at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. It was a doozy, to use the vernacular. Many will rightly zero in on Kirill’s suggestion that the conflict in Ukraine was sparked by gay pride parades, as though he were a younger, bearded version of Pat Robertson. But the patriarch’s message was actually worse than that, deeply embedded with corruption, cowardice, and an enthusiastic embrace of Russia’s Orthodox int…

Olympics 2008: Ignoring History

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…t”: that was the ritual key in Seoul. The Koreans boldly choreographed any number of events that lent themselves to Orientalizing stereotypes, but then, as I say, doubled back on themselves to show how very fluent they were in western forms of ritual representation as well. These Opening ceremonies have been clearly invoked many times since — in Barcelona, in Atlanta, and even in Sydney, where gestures to indigenous ritual form took center stage….