Religion Dispatches
…chool boards “to create and foster an environment” in public schools that “promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” In addition to state-approved textbooks, teachers “may use supplemental textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze,…
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…sia “has historically been a unique beacon of tolerance for LGBT people in Southeast Asia.” But that is changing: But that tolerance has proven fragile in the face of government-fueled animus. Anti-LGBT incidents across Indonesia have significantly increased since January 2016—in synch with broader rising intolerance of religious minorities. Last year’s LGBT crisis started with vitriolic anti-LGBT rhetoric from officials and politicians and includ…
Read More…dismay turned to laughter when I saw immediately below Winters’ screed the code of conduct for comments on National Catholic Reporter. His post is a primer on violating NCR’s own rules for respectful conversation. Maybe someone at NCR can give him a much-needed tutorial. NCR Comment code: Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Use appropriate language. Avoid vulgarities and slurs. Keep to the point. Deliberat…
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…s a pair) has produced new attention in LDS communities to how those dress code boundaries are enforced and who bears the brunt of the enforcement. Beginning in November, the BYU-Idaho testing center (responsible for administering academic examinations for many classes, especially large General Education courses) started interpreting and enforcing the school’s dress and grooming standards as a ban on “skinny jeans.” A flyer was posted by universit…
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…actions are beyond the reach of law. And we do not share the kind of moral code that could exact penalties between those of the state and those of the employer or marketplace. This is a strange thing about our moment in history. The story of Oedipus reminds us that banishment and ostracism were once standard practices for protecting a community from the danger and rupture implicit in certain kinds of crimes. Early Christians who lapsed from their…
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…But the center is an assertion, not a fact; an etiquette, not a place. Its code, its theology, is most fully embodied in Americanized Arminianism—a Protestant tradition of good works and propriety, “distinguished liberals” and polite realpolitik. “Arminian moralism,” notes historian Charles Sellers in his study of Finney’s age, The Market Revolution, “sanctioned competitive individualism and the market’s rewards of wealth and status.” It did not e…
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…elated rubric already includes the Jewish Ten Commandments and Justinian’s Code of Laws as influences on contemporary political systems, the work groups removed the assertion of “Judeo-Christian” origins for democracy. However, the board rejected the change. The board rejected a similar change involving another Christian Americanist tenet, the claim that trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, and equality before the law “originated from the…
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…adets to profile Black and Latino communities, they did use thinly veiled, coded language to do just that. In a tactical class at one academy, for example, instructors suggested that although cadets might not need to frisk a mother crossing the street with her kids, they should frisk a man wearing all red in the Southeastern part of the city (where most of the city’s Black and Latino population lived). Instructors often encouraged cadets to profil…
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…ubt that homosexuality is seen as a crime. Article 427 of the Afghan penal code refers only to “pederasty” – a sexual act between males, one of them understood to be a youth or a boy. The act is punishable with “long imprisonment”. However Dr Niaz Shah of Hull University in the UK, an expert in Afghan and Islamic law, says that the penal code reflects the underlying Islamic principle that homosexuality is banned. “Islamic law allows only one form…
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…munity but was concerned with the increasing number of television programs promoting or starring members of the LGBT community, such as the popular transgender actor and comedian Dorce Gamalama. Erlinda said the commission was concerned that many young boys were starting to cross dress or adopt feminine characteristics because they had been “brainwashed” by these television programs. “The KPAI has stated clearly we reject any LGBT campaigns or pro…
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