Religion Dispatches
…details, and it is always difficult for an outside observer to detect the coded messages of an in-group. (Think of the McCain campaign’s disturbing “The One” attack ad, which basically called Obama the Antichrist—but on a frequency that only evangelicals reared on apocalyptic conspiracy theories could pick up.) Chellew-Hodge quotes the following catechism from an evangelical organization: 1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, au…
Read More
…in the religious anti-gay movement, is that LGBT equality spells a lack of freedom for religious people, an effort to “repress and marginalize” them. Yet her own most unseemly moment — and there were many — was NOM’s distribution of a sheet of paper about Catholics for Equality, “In Their Own Words,” intended to smear the group as an anti-Catholic tool of evil liberals. Its most telling portions: two mentions of associations of groups that work wi…
Read More…ynamic Sarah Posner wrote about here. I’ve often noted that Romney doesn’t code traditional “tough-guy” masculine, which I believe is attributable to Mormon culture. 5. Religiosity subsumes ethics. Despite last-minute revelations of marital infidelity that could have impacted religiously-identified voters, Gingrich soared. That too is a curious South Carolina outcome that begs for clarification. I’ll be talking about “God and Politics” Tuesday at…
Read More
…turns twenty next year, and evangelicals (for whom “young adult” is often code for “single”) have been known to seek out Bible studies with “cute” guys and girls. But in a time of declining demographics, and an upswing in online dating, the popularity of such parishes appears almost as an act of defiance. According to the Pew Research Center, the Catholic share of the population has been dropping steadily and getting older. To make matters worse,…
Read More…ay messages when spoken by anti-gay people, even if it is spoken in pretty code. Michael Jones over at Change.org celebrated Osteen’s appearance at the inauguration: “But give both Osteen and Parker some credit. Today was a day for the history books for LGBT politicians, and also a day where a socially conservative evangelical leader and a progressive lesbian mayor found some common ground in celebrating a victory.” This was written before Iloff’s…
Read More
…sedly under siege, roughly a third have to do with LGBT people. “Religious freedom” has become a code-word for those looking to stymie LGBT equality. Any “threat” to marriage always seems to come from those hoping to access the institution, but never from heterosexuals (despite escalating rates of divorce, domestic violence, and infidelity in such unions). Defending “bathroom privacy” is a thinly veiled (and well-documented) scare-tactic used to d…
Read More
…tion” uttered out loud any longer. What one does hear, however, amounts to code for the same thing. Thus, R.J. Rushdoony’s still-influential ideas about forging a godly nation—a nation organized according to biblical law—take it pretty much for granted that godly social organization has whites on top. Rushdoony, who lived into the current century, condemned interracial marriage as “unequal yoking.” Un-dead David Barton, another hugely influential…
Read More
…should be dismissed became they impinge upon the Plowshares 7’s religious freedom. This claim rested on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a 1993 law that requires the federal government not to “substantially burden” someone’s practice of religion unless a “compelling government interest” is involved and the rule the government is enforcing is the “least restrictive means” of achieving its goal. The judge in the Plowshares trial denied…
Read More…ana will be on Utah ballots in November). I’m no expert on Utah’s criminal code, but I have a strong suspicion that it might have something to say about Kirby’s actions. In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne argues that in patriarchal cultures, “a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people… her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty. ” It seems obvious to me that…
Read More
…for the possibility of material support of terrorism charges under 18 U.S. Code § 2339B. Or, more justly, the concept of FTOs (and SDGTs) is dismantled especially in light of the recent evaluation by the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, a DHS-funded fusion center, that their influence is “diminished.” It’s naiveté to believe that de jure law will translate into de facto equity; however, the current inequities also must not stand. White national…
Read More