Religion Dispatches
…yday life. So extreme is this sense of alarm and danger that a significant number of Republicans now believe that the president is a secret Muslim, and sits in the Oval Office to enable the realization of Islamic law in the West. One must be seriously and actively disconnected from reality to presume that this could be the case, but there you have it. On a recent drive through northeastern Pennsylvania, I heard a talk radio host make exactly this…
Read More…e on Marriage,” reads an entry in this weekend’s bulletin at St Anthony of Padua Parish Clovelly. “A change in the marriage law has consequences for freedom of religion, including the ability of individuals to live out their faith in everyday life, for Priests to preach and Catholic schools to teach about marriage, and for faith-based charities to continue to take a pro-marriage stance.” Others — including the Holy Family Parish Maroubra and Waver…
Read More…not get any worse than being gay in Syria today,” Halim, a human rights campaigner, tells me in a packed bar in downtown Beirut. “It’s a place where you don’t know your enemy. Seeing people you have had casual sex with being taken in on the street, and wondering if they will take you down with them. Lovers turning on lovers. “Also, this isn’t just an Isis story,” he continues. “If you are gay, you have many enemies intent on your persecution: the…
Read More
…-all and that we should be using it in all elections. This would encourage participation and increase political diversity. Using popular vote in primaries and presidential elections would give each person a voice and prevent small bases from dictating the outcomes. Congressional and state districts should be larger and should elect multiple candidates (again with RCV). This would engender representation commensurate with more people’s preferences…
Read More
…ges in the region. Right-wing scholar-activist Martin Kramer, a favorite AIPAC conference panelist, regularly dismisses linkage is a “myth.” The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman has called it a “fantasy” that “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.” The concern is understandable—but if the American people understood the negative impact that some Israeli behavior has had on US interests in the region, they might begin to take a closer look a…
Read More
…Bill Maher to Newt Gingrich. We need only look to the 2012 presidential campaign, especially on the Republican side, to see how terrible this conversation became. To this end: Because Muslims are assumed to be an “other,” they are exempted from Americanness. How can someone who supposedly stands for not-us also be us? During the Ground Zero mosque debacle, much of this kind of thinking was revealed. I’ll pick just one example: Newt Gingrich, who s…
Read More
…Do these numbers tell us anything useful? For one thing, a big economic impact number might jibe with the goals of the elder Grim’s Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. But more generally, as the Grims see it, their study’s intended message seems to be something along the lines of Hey, religion does good things! “A lot of the messages [about religion] that come through focus—rightly—on some of the problems related to religion, such as clerg…
Read More
…m the mysterious, often hidden, mechanisms propelling us through time and space. Judging by the media excitement over the latest poll illustrating continued growth in the number of people who answer “none” when asked with what religion they are affiliated, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life seems to have pulled a similar trick for those interested in how religion is changing in America. “‘Nones’ On the Rise,” released on October 9 by Pew in…
Read More…in Istanbul used tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons against Pride Parade participants on June 28. The Istanbul LGBTI Pride Week Committee, a group that organized the series of events during the 23rd Pride Week, said the 13rd Istanbul LGBTi Pride Parade, which was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. on June 28 at Taksim Square, had “suddenly been banned by the Istanbul Governor’s Office using the month of Ramadan as the reason without any announc…
Read More
…ud is a myth. But the data doesn’t deter Snead or his copanelist Hans von Spakovsky from parroting mainstream anti-franchisement myths. To Von Spakovsky, inaccurate voter rolls are an opportunity for fraud. Snead claims the myth of voter suppression is a method the Left uses to “avoid conversations about how to reform and improve the election system.” Conversations on the Left about voter suppression are actually making people reluctant to vote, a…
Read More