Search for "cheap airline tickets from orlando to charlotte nc phone number 1-800-299-7264"

“We (some of) the People” Florida Governor Rick Scott and the Tea Party

By Julie Ingersoll

…bridges and buildings; an idyllic center of insulated white privilege. The Orlando Sentinel describes it thus: Even the history here has a make-believe comfortable feel. A historical marker outside a grand old porticoed building identifies it as the former Grand Hotel, dating its history to 1855. But an employee of the real estate office there whispers, “Don’t believe everything you read. This was a vacant field seven years ago.” The retirees tool…

More Bleak Times For Indonesian LGBTs; South Africa Bans Extremist Anti-Gay US Pastor; Mexican Marriage Struggle Heats Up; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…in the Christian Post. Hungary: Perpetrators of right-wing, anti-gay violence sentenced to prison Fifteen members of a far-right group “The Arrows of the Hungarians” were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 13 years for acts of terrorism committed in 2007-2009 that included “Molotov-cocktail attacks against two gay venues a few days before the 2008 Budapest Pride March,” reports Háttér Society. Some additional historical…

Katy Perry’s Evangelical Hangover

By David Mihalyfy

…g from Dostoevsky to the hypocrisy of other ministers, he would end up balancing distance from any church with affirmation of his essential belief in love, punctuating it all with condemnations of Christian complicity in the organized brutality of segregation and slavery. Seen within this pattern of personal development, Katy Perry’s religious meanderings are slightly different from the typical faddish dillydallyings of many denizens of Southern C…

Conservatives Panic as Gay Marriage Looms

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s, some conservatives have seen the writing on the wall and are ready to concede California to the devil rather than take the chance of a SCOTUS decision in favor of same-sex marriage. Mother Jones reports that David Barton, a religious right activist who served as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1998 to 2006, in an appearance on American Family Radio told his conservative comrades to let the gays win this one: Well, I’m telling y…

Oh Say, Can You See?: 9/11 Flag Displays and the Flag’s Symbolic Power

By Spencer Dew

…size flags (in the Village Green of Winnetka, Illinois this year, for instance, 2,977 flag of 8’ by 12” inch each will be planted, an increase from the 4” by 6” flags used in previous years), some municipalities employ full-size flags, resulting in a spectacular scene. Oak Brook, Illinois, another Chicago suburb, is erecting a “Healing Field” of evenly spaced flags, covering two and a half acres. One immediate goal with such an arrangement (as wit…

Florida School Prayer Bill Stalls in Committee

By Lauri Lebo

…iplin, D-Orlando, would allow the delivery of an “inspirational message,” including prayer, at “noncompulsory” middle and high school events. Student government would have to decide on giving such a message, which could only be delivered by students. School personnel would not be allowed to participate or influence the message. “There is no participation from the school board, the principal, the coaches or anybody else,” Siplin said. But the Ameri…

Republican Presidential Candidate Courts Televangelists. So What Else Is New? (Updated with video)

By Sarah Posner

…dred-fold return!) they have long been coveted politically for their influence over their audiences and their history as loyal foot soldiers in the culture wars. Don’t read too much into Politico’s assertion that the televangelists would be “less turned off by his brash style and history of socially liberal positions,” or by the suggestion that Trump, by this meeting, has somehow stepped outside the typical Republican boundaries for courting the e…

Christian Schools Invoke Religious Liberty to Reopen Despite Warnings of Health Experts

By Chrissy Stroop

…and secondary schools to universities, seeing in it a clear false equivalence, since “adult students can be expected to follow social distancing guidelines better than children, and the state is less responsible for the safety of adults than minors.” Gill sees no case for the schools’ claims of unequal treatment under the law. “These schools’ falsely making this issue an attack on their religious freedom is a tactic taken straight out of the Chri…

Beneath the ‘Wacky’ Paula White Video is a Dark and Deeply Undemocratic World Propping Up the President

By Frederick Clarkson

…ions to underwrite high-flying lifestyles. The investigation of White was inconclusive because getting to the bottom of her finances turned out to be as difficult as getting Donald Trump’s tax returns. But the glitzy rise that featured a mansion and a private jet may be epitomized, as journalist Sarah Posner reports in Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, by how she and her husband, fellow evangelist Randy White wer…

Biggest, Best & Worst LGBT Religion Stories of 2016 and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ments on religious law. Surgery is allowed if “a man finds in himself tendencies similar to a woman’s, or a woman finds tendencies [like that] of men,” he explained, but added that until the whole reassignment process is complete, “they [must] not act as the opposite sex does and has to, since this is haram [forbidden].” Russia: Putin Christmas speech reportedly attacks West for abandoning Christian roots President Vladimir Putin devoted a portion…