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World Congress of Families Draws Anti-LGBT Activists to Budapest; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…fficials tell media to play down Taiwan marriage ruling According to Radio Free Asia, “China’s state propaganda machine has warned the country’s media not to ‘make a big deal’ of” Taiwan’s marriage equality ruling. The government of Hong Kong has appealed a ruling by the city’s high court that the city must provide spousal benefits to civil servants who married same-sex partners abroad. Alfred Chan, the South China morning post reported that the c…

Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

By José Cabezón

…of learning is being strictly regulated. In reality, there is no religious freedom in Tibet.” It may seem strange to an outsider that the regulation of monastic institutions—for example, the control of the number of monks in monasteries—should be such an important issue for Tibetans. Let me try and explain why monks and nuns risk years of imprisonment, and indeed their own lives, to protest this and other governmental policies aimed at controlling…

In ‘God Hates Fags’ Case, Free Speech Trumps Free Exercise

By Julie Ingersoll

…his religion (as well as his privacy rights). The Phelps case relied on a free speech claim instead of freedom of religion, and they won. So as the Supreme Court sees the right to freely practice one’s religion as “constitutionally irrelevant,” religion has been reduced in popular rhetoric to the right of the dominant religion to be free of any challenges to its dominance: wishing someone “happy holidays” in thought to violate the religious freed…

Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

By Lisa Miller

…ed all the baser human impulses and desires. After death, the soul was set free to ascend to God and attain wisdom. This vision may work better in a world defined by science and rationality, but it fails to trigger passion and imagination in the same way that a physical vision would. Third, who’s up there and what do we do? Our most commonly held notion of heaven is that when we die, we’ll see our beloved parents, grandparents, spouses, friends. O…

The Faith that Faith Produced

By Haroon Moghul

…concerned with His relevance to them than any metaphysics. We can only be free if we remove the shackles of faith, these self-ruining feelings of incompleteness, prudery and debasement, and accept the inevitability of our random lives. I don’t mean to be flippant. This is how it seemed to me, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t knock me off my feet. Why spend my existence fighting myself, when I was doing a pretty crap job of it anyway, suffer a…

What Makes a Human Bomb Tick?

By Gordon Haber

…y is that it is not limited to religiopolitical violence. Lankford cites a number of American suicide terrorists that exhibited “classic suicidal traits.” Like Joseph Stack, a divorced software engineer with tax problems. In 2010, Stack crashed his single-engine plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS manager; “There isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken [with me],” Stack wrote in the…

Why the Disappeared Malaysian Airliner Brings Out the Paranormal

By Joseph Laycock

…help find the missing airliner by using the power of remote viewing, a form of ESP….

The Sex Scandal Following Whole Foods’ Guru

By Michael Schulson

…ned with authentic caring.” Examples include Whole Foods Market, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and, somewhat mysteriously, Amazon.com, which is known for using underpaid temp-style labor in its warehouses and allegedly mistreating employees at its home offices. You don’t have to be a Marxist to question whether these institutions are “fulfilling every major value of the great spiritual traditions.” At the very least, that sentiment might seem ali…

Make Aeronautic Jobs, Not Jihad

By Haroon Moghul

…tions ravenous for rights, dignity, and prosperity. In short, thank the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, for a big order signed on the occasion of President Obama’s visit (230 planes at $21.7 billion!). And thank one of the world’s fastest-growing airlines, Emirates from Dubai, for the other (50 jets at $18 billion). So here’s to cooperation of the civilizations. Here’s to throwing facts in the face of faux analysis. While Victoria Jackso…

With the Pope at Ground Zero

By Anthea Butler

…ester NY, who lost his daughter Jean, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11. Mr. Roger said he hoped the pope would say prayers for the place, for the people, and for his daughter Jean. Praying at a unlighted candle next to the prie-dieu Pope Benedict XVI used on his visit, the Pope offered those prayers silently while looking at the south pool of the memorial. The 9/11 site has become not just a memorial or a museum—it is a pilg…