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The Real Story Behind Rick Perry’s Secret Meetings with Pastors

…rty wishlist (a merger Robison endorsed last year while helping Ralph Reed promote the launch of his Faith and Freedom Coalition). In a nutshell: America should be ruled by God, not government, with no abortion, gay marriage, or jurisprudence Robison disagrees with; the market should be kept “free, healthy, and under the influence of people who understand that importance of personal responsibility,” as “out of control spending” and “intrusive regu…

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Breivik’s Emasculation Paranoia Fueled Vision for Patriarchal “Reforms”

…areers for women; and reforming the media such that 1950s gender norms are promoted and “sex and the city lifestyles” are discouraged. He claims the only other alternative to these “reforms,” which he acknowledges are restrictions on women’s rights, is “the creation of a network of surrogacy facilities in low cost countries and basically ‘outsource breeding,’” with the state as foster parent because “career obsessed” women would not prioritize car…

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Touch Me, Man, I’m Healed, I’m Straight

…” taking advantage of the “trust and dependency of clients,” and deceptive promotion of products. At Wyler’s Arizona retreat, I was introduced to that healing touch therapy: I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leaning back against his shoulder. The guide sat behind me, his arms wrapped around my chest. This hold was called “The Motorcycle.” Five men surrounded the two of us, their hands resting gently on my ar…

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Bachmann’s Law School Mentor Asserts Biblical Roots of American Political System

…cannot do within the guidelines of the IRS rules. He cited the part of the code that prohibits influencing legislation and labeled it “legalese,” before a lengthy parsing of what counts as legislation and then what counts as influencing— none of which substantially departed from everyday understanding of those terms. The talk sounded much like the “word study” sermon style found in many fundamentalist churches. He was careful to clarify that wheth…

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What Makes Mormons Weird?

…omney’s now-well-documented social stiffness and penchant for ill-timed, inappropriate jokes, you could call him “awkward,” “stiff,” “robotic,” “wooden,” or “uncomfortable.” All of that would be perfectly fine. But “weird” (a word that has its roots in the Old English “wyrd” for “fate” or destiny”) has always carried a tinge of the occult or otherworldly. And that’s why we all heaved a sigh of relief when David Axelrod came on television to threat…

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Gay Chutzpah: An LGBT Synagogue Thrives

…fy the participants in the ethnography hidden behind invented names. I was approached by congregants I had little communication with before, who suddenly discovered I was a “serious” guy. It seems some had been suspicious about the presence of an anthropologist among them, and I kept on a modest profile trying to avoid much attention. There were also a few who discovered earlier my ethnography about the Israelis in Queens (the “Yordim”) which was…

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Spiritual But Not Religious? Come Talk to Me

…l’s frustration with people who might use “spiritual but not religious” as code for “I don’t really think about religion at all because it’s boring or difficult or irrelevant to my pursuit of self-interest.” One statistician of religion suggests that America is well on its way to becoming a nation of “310 million people with 310 million religions,” each tailor-made to suit themselves. As someone who has made a career out of the life of the mind, a…

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Queer Repentance: On Not Surrendering to a Text, to Guilt, or to Habit

…when applied to homosexuality, unhealthy. For our community, “change” is a code word for repression, distortion, and fear. So LGBT people must either abandon repentance or queer it. If we are not to reject it, we must make it our own, make it more complex, set aside its oversimplifications. The good news is that this is a gift to everybody else. Total surrender to heteronomous ethics is unhealthy, period. It may be prescribed by some, but it is al…

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Rome vs. the Sisters

…s dedicated to serving the needs of the sick and the poor, the new Vatican Code of Canon Law cloistered them all, imposing rigid rules that undercut their ministries. As the century moved on, however, relations between the Vatican and the sisters seemed to improve. In its effort to respond to the horrors of the twentieth century, the Vatican ordered the sisters to become better educated, to update their rules and habits, and to begin meeting toget…

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Is Mitt’s Mormonism Responsible for South Carolina Loss?

…um, which is conducting state-by-state analysis of primary results in what appears to be an effort to get a statistical grip on the religious vote. Pew Forum data from last weekend’s contest in South Carolina shows that evangelical Christians did play a major role in the Gingrich victory. Of the two-thirds of Republican voters who self-described as “born-again” or “evangelical,” 44% voted for Gingrich, 22% for Romney, and 21% for Santorum. This is…

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