Deals 1 800-299-7264 Cheap Flights from Shanghai to San Francisco – United Airlines | Search Results | Religion Dispatches

Clashing human rights visions for LGBTs at United Nations; More Mixed Messages from the Vatican as Family Synod Begins; Timeline of Worsening Homophobia by Turkey’s AKP Party; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to “save the international community from gays.” He said it will be led by 10-12 people in European politics. The group’s wildly inappropriate name will be “Volunteers for Freedom.” Milonov recently tried to ban Wikipedia and Facebook from Russia, saying that they violated the country’s ban on gay “propaganda.” United Nations: Clashing visions on human rights for LGBT people On September 29, 12 United Nations agencies issued a joint call to actio…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: Missing Voices

By Daniel Ramirez

…returned migrant widow, Naomi, and her foreign-born (also widowed) daughter-in-law, Ruth. Naomi’s widowhood was made bearable through Ruth’s labor and second marriage. Like Elvira Arellano, the intrepid Ruth inserted herself into the messianic genealogy of her host nation. What a contrast to the modern Malthusian premises of zero-sum economics that tilt the lopsided analyses of the exclusionist think tanks, the muckraking reportage of cable news,…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…e answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?…This is not the way we should be doing it in America. As he spoke, I sat on my sofa with tears streaming down my face. When I was seven I did firmly believe that if I wanted to, I could be President of the United States. And I am certain that thousands of seven-year-old Muslim-American children acros…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: “They Came at Night, Trying to Kill Us!”

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…hem restlessly roaming the streets. Our research team was headed to an open-air religious service led by Susan, a charismatic Kenyan pastor who has made it her mission to “minister to the lowest of the low.” Surrounded by the local dump and the cemetery, she managed to move her congregation with songs and a sermon that stressed redemption and renewal in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. At least for that afternoon, this congregation becam…

Why Bill Maher Gets a “C” in My Introduction to Religion Class…

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…t next to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and other sort-of-atheists. (I’m talking the nerdy academic’s version of “fantasy football” here.) And I give them the assignment I always give to my eighteen-year-old students: come up with your own definition of religion, see if you can put it in a sentence, and then give some paragraphs of support to back it up. The assignment has no singular answer, of course; I’m looking for their a…

Fear of a Catholic Ghetto

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…rn, receive large amounts of public funding. Catholic hospitals are so well-integrated, in fact, that they’ve merged with non-Catholic health care systems… to the point that it can take some sorting out to distinguish a Catholic hospital from a secular one. On the face of it, the fact that we’re even having this conversation—about a religious prohibition which only a tiny percentage of adults in the U.S. adhere to—should be a sign that Catholic he…

The Contested Religious Powers of Baseball on Display in Cuba

By Sean O'Neil

…ry that supposedly fosters a very different way of life? Chris Archer, a 28-year-old pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, and most voluble spokesman for this round of baseball diplomacy, was optimistic: Hopefully, the Rays are showing the people of Cuba, the government of Cuba, what can be, for lack of a better term, afforded to them if they do open their doors and start being a little more open-minded about their policies. The idea of baseball as a po…

Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…mas’ rocket fire into Israel, but equally Israel’s “punishing a million-and-a-half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.” It also refused to support the Congressional resolution condemning the Goldstone Report that sharply criticized Israel’s actions in the Gaza war last winter. More broadly, J Street argues that being pro-Israel requires being pro-Palestinian too. Nothing in this position is terribly new, even ins…

70th National Prayer Breakfast Made ‘Cosmetic’ Changes, But Biden Delivered the Same Old Tone-Deaf ‘Unity’ Message

By Chrissy Stroop

…opening to a speech that could only be made by an immensely privileged, out-of-touch individual. Biden went on to hit many notes that are alienating to secular Americans and much of the Democratic base, sacralizing American political life and calling for “unity” and “comity” with those who want to deprive the marginalized of their rights. Gushing over the NPB itself, Biden stated that he was “honored to continue the tradition started by President…

Marriage Vote ‘Transforms’ Not-So-Catholic Ireland; Activist to Malaysian PM – ‘Love Is Not Terrorism’; LGBTs Find Growing Acceptance in Colombia, Not At World Meeting of Families; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Ireland became the first to pass the measure in a referendum and with a two-to-one winning margin. “The change has been electric for young gay people,” said Siona Cahill, a gay rights campaigner who works as an equality officer at Maynooth University. “For the first time it has become something that isn’t pushed under the covers,” she said. A spokesman for a national gay youth organization, BelongTo, “saw a doubling of attendance in its Dublin wor…