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House GOP Hires Lawyer to Prevent Federal Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…his litigation which will consume 18 months or longer. As we noted, the constitutionality of this statute will be determined by the Courts, regardless of whether the House chooses to intervene.” If the Senate doesn’t approve the reallocation, and Pres. Obama rejects it, Boehner might not get the money he’s looking for—so much of Boehner’s moves to placate the anti-marriage equality crowd remain up in the air. The first case Boehner wants his new a…

Religion Profs Critique PBS’ God Documentary, Call it Simplistic

By Matthew Avery Sutton

…is certainly something Americans in the age of Glenn Beck and the Texas history standards controversy could benefit from. While scholars are quick to criticize the limitations of the documentary genre, I am not sure that producing a series like this is, at its root, really that much different from what we do in our work. I, for example, begin each of my lectures with a PowerPoint slide that lists the three main themes I will cover that day. When…

Romney Goes to Bat Against Reid in Nevada

By Joanna Brooks

…treat mild-mannered Mormon politicians well: be they Reids, or Romneys. Just last week, Jan Shipps, a longtime scholar and canny observer of Mormon experience, wagered that Angle would beat Romney if he were on the ticket. I think she’s right. What’s happening in Nevada is the ugly down side of a speculation-and-spending fueled boom cycle, with many voters looking for a politician who will mirror their own feelings of fear and resentment. How ugl…

Note for Today

By Amina Wadud

…bly integrated into everyday wear; and honestly speaking the dresses are just sack style, and I honestly do not imagine when or where to use them. Maybe I’ll have a lifestyle change and dress in white more often? Exercise and Diet Well, I’ve hit the awful plateau, 15 pounds down but gone in the first three weeks. I wish I had managed more than the once a day daily walk, too. This is not just vanity, nor even that pre-diabetes diagnosis, but I real…

Hajj Journal: Tawaf: How I Fell in Love…

By Amina Wadud

…ms soon enough to shower and rush out again, to make our umrah, without first resting. I was too excited to sleep for long, so I actually went out an hour earlier and began to scope the lay of the land. But I dared not approach the mosque too closely. Ever since that fajr debacle, I could not resist the pull the Ka’abah was having over me. We made our way to the mosque, leaving our hotel about a half hour before the time for zhuhr; it’s only a 3-5…

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

…that even as Palin professes to fantasize about going “back to Wasilla and stop feeding the media beast,” she derives both fortune and fame from that “beast,” which includes the fawning downstream media. The appeal derives, in part at least, from her effectiveness at claiming the mantle of victimhood and assuring the adoring crowds that they, too, are victims. And the ultimate advantage of being a victim lies in the fact that, because of the outpo…

Crowdsourced Catholicism: New iPhone App Lets Users Forgive Sins

By Vincent Gonzalez

…ing his evidence. Another was thrown out of a strip club for saying “God must hate strippers” to a dancer who confided that she had a disabled son. Here and there, Penance hurts. Between the cheap jokes and bourgeois self-loathing are murmurs worth hearing, if only as microfiction. Likewise, the app’s agnosticism facilitates a lucid tableau of spontaneous popular theology. Of the 24 confessions, only one references God as an active third party, tw…

Four Reasons Why Egypt’s Revolution Is Islamic

By Zaid Hassan

…pressors, by images from Afghanistan and Iraq, by constant betrayals, to mistrust the US and the West. These masses are now demanding and gaining the political space to express themselves. They will hardly speak kindly of US and Western policy of the past fifty years. Yet they have a choice before them. The choice is to either pursue their interests through rival realpolitik ideological positions or to pursue justice through the evolution of int…

Possible Heir to Dalai Lama Cleared of Corruption Charges

By Tsering Namgyal

…ese, and he has a huge following amongst the Han Chinese diaspora. Journalists or stenographers? For Tibetans in India, this incident reveals the dilemma faced by Tibetans, subjects without citizenship, and it also shows how Tibetan refugees in India can get caught in the crossfire of a curious politics between the central government (led by the Nationalist Congress Party) and the state (under the Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP). Earlier, even af…

Springtime for Ross Douthat?

By Daniel Schultz

…Cute. I wonder if a Times columnist might not want to consider the use of statistics in his work, like this one: 99% of all American women who have had sex have used some form of birth control, 98% of Catholic women. Are they of the Devil? Would Douthat like Pope Francis to cast them out like Satan? Why on earth does Douthat have a platform? Believe it or not, I’m leaving some stuff out here. And we still haven’t gotten to the worst part about th…