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‘Rising Global Tide’ Of Anti-Gay Crackdowns; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Nigeria is more difficult than for those living in the south, with at least 114 gay men and women having been arrested since January this year. “What we’ve seen are people arming themselves with these laws and arresting people indiscriminately,” LGBT and women’s rights activist Dorothy Aken`Ova says. “Any time the Hisbah (religious police) catch wind of any gathering they’ll bust up the party and arrest and torture them.” In August, she says, a 17…

“Giving Godhead”: A Bloody Vision of Religion’s Deepest Influence

By Spencer Dew

…armed against. War in the name of faith is a recurring theme, as with cell-phone videos of beheadings. Krieger reads such rage within a dichotomy of “fundamentalist repression” and its opposite, freedom. Alhough she prefers the phrase “over-pervy libertinism” as, for her, the dichotomy is spread wide, with ISIS on one end and the antinomian carnival of de Sade’s vacation home at the other. That’s a freedom worth fighting for, she implies, but it i…

Australian Church Leaders See Marriage Vote as Battle for Soul of Australia: Global LGBT Recap 10/30

By Peter Montgomery

…life expectancy of trans women in Uruguay is 35, about half of the life expectancy for people in general. She has introduced legislation to strengthen legal protections for transgender people and set up a fund to compensate trans people persecuted during the military dictatorship that ruled from 1973 to 1985. Taiwan: Government will try to send marriage equality bill to legislature Premier Lai Ching-te said that the Executive Yuan will try to sen…

Why Are We Drawn to Horror?

By Mathias Clasen

…use stories of all time. Or one of Robert McCammon’s horror novels from the 1980s, maybe The Wolf’s Hour or Mystery Walk. I’m currently reading my way through his oeuvre. McCammon’s horror writing is brilliant—evocative and touching and sometimes deeply disturbing, sometimes utterly awe-inspiring. I would’ve loved to have included an interpretive chapter on one of his novels. Maybe in another book. Image from promotional materials for The Cabin in…

Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors On The March; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…sformation” of the Catholic Church that is under way, “a decisive shift in numbers towards the Global South—to Asia, Africa and Latin America.” A century ago, he says, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics were in Europe, but by the middle of this century that number will fall “to perhaps a sixth.” Geography is not destiny, but it is only natural that prelates from one part of the world will tend to speak for the traditions with which they are most…

The Glorious, Ethnically-Challenged, Sisterhood of Spy

By Haroon Moghul

…years, Cooper’s been the insecure and dowdy second fiddle, working as the phone operator for suave CIA superagent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), guiding him past every danger even as he is oblivious to her obvious affections. You and I know there’s no way roles aren’t eventually going to be reversed. Because the world is changing, and because we watched the trailer. (It popped up before 50 Shades of Grey, aka “Shari’ah in the Bedroom.”) When Fine is ki…

Maybe The Question Is: Should Shabbat Be The New Yoga?

By Michael Schulson

…lace each March, complete with cute little bags where you can put your cellphone and stop looking at it for awhile. There’s a clear Jewish inspiration (unplugging day goes from Friday evening to Saturday evening, just like Shabbat), but there’s no overtly religious content, and the organization is explicit about wanting to reach people of all backgrounds. When I spoke with Reboot communications manager Tanya Schevitz earlier this year, she said th…

Does the Science Show that Spirituality Will Benefit Your Child?

By Michael Schulson

…rting in the late ‘90s. The best study to come out was Kenneth Kendler’s in 1997, and then again in 1999. They simply asked people to self-report, which turned out to be extremely valid when you’re talking about self-experienced spirituality. One thing we found was that a sense of living in a sacred world, or simply saying spirituality is important to me, is always highly correlated with that personal relationship. It’s the portal through which op…

Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…athematics exam. Others were less likely to let a classmate use their cell phone. “Some philosophical analyses may conclude that a fatalistic determinism is compatible with highly ethical behavior,” the psychologist Jesse Bering comments in an article on these studies, “but the present results suggest that many laypersons do not yet appreciate that possibility.” Theologians have proposed that science still allows faith in a “God of the gaps,” who…

Pro- and Anti-Muslim Sentiment in Gainesville

By Julie Ingersoll

…ity is promoting a series of events that began on September 8. On September 11, the Gainesville Muslim Initiative will sponsor a free meal and a blood drive in the center of town and then an evening program featuring a variety of religious and community leaders. Muslim leaders are asking their followers to ignore what they are calling the “Dove Outreach not-a-church” and its “not-a-pastor,” whether he goes forward with his plan to burn Qur’ans or…