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The US Religious Right and the LGBT Crisis In Uganda

By Sarah Posner

…year: When he goes to Uganda, he’s not known as Scott Lively, but as an American evangelical… The Africans don’t always have the resources to follow their statements so they say: this man of God says this is going on in the world. Or Scott Lively goes to the Uganda Anti-gay Conference, and the media says that an American evangelical says there’s a gay agenda… In four hours, he teaches them about the gay agenda [that’s seeking] to take over the wor…

Tea Party 2.0, Ready For Post-Election Launch

By Julie Ingersoll

…hey distributed “6 million voter guides, 8 million mail pieces, 15 million phone calls, 500,000 doors knocked on by volunteers, and radio advertising covering 56 congressional districts and 22 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races,” they are now (apparently as I write this) surveying voters to learn “who went to the polls and why.” Instructive for those of us who follow the influence of the religious right on the tea party movement (arguing that it’…

If You Were Faced With Him

By Amina Wadud

…picked up quickly and loaded the dishwasher, I said yes. Then I checked my phone. Like many people, I keep it on silent unless I’m expecting a call, so I missed a called from my youngest daughter. Instead she left a text message. It read: “your hajj packgat came” (sic) I burst out crying. So much so that my other daughter came forward and said, “What’s wrong?!” I couldn’t speak. I just showed her the text message and cried and hugged her. To her c…

Obama to Cave on Bush Tax Cuts: Letter to the Washingtonians, Chapter 1

By Daniel Schultz

…ould soon be at war. Traffic stopped, there were no planes in the sky, the phone didn’t ring. I supported the war to come, with only the reservation of who held the keys of command. Still, the enemies of the good must be punished, must be denied the safety of even a parched rocky hillside in a poor land. In 2002 and 2003, the grim infection of another war became more and more certain. I did not support this war. It was wrong, and I said so from my…

Dear Scientists: Please Stop Bashing Free Will!

By John Horgan

…surgery can make the patient’s arm pop up like an eager student’s by electrically stimulating the motor cortex. The patient often insists that she meant to move the arm and even invents a reason why: She was waving to that nurse walking by the door! Neurologists call these erroneous, post-hoc explanations confabulations. Some scientists argue that whenever we explain our acts as the outcome of our conscious choice, we are engaging in a kind of co…

Facebook: Internet Highway to Hell

By Anthea Butler

…become the latest “sinful” activity. Perhaps Rev. Miller should get on the phone to Sarah Palin, and counsel her about her kids’ activity on Facebook. Bristol Palin found time from her “Dancing with the stars” practice to get on Facebook with her sister Willow to ride on a friend who had the chutzpah to say “Sarah Palin’s Alaska is failing so hard right now.” Willow’s response was to call the poster a gay slur, and Bristol jumping in the fray to r…

Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an Atheist

By Lauri Lebo

…ou need to know to keep on reading? I’d cheerfully watch that man read the phone book. So, when my buddy Rev. El Mundo sent me the link to the comedian’s message, I eagerly clicked on it. I was surprised when I saw this wasn’t a clip of his latest hysterical stand up, but an essay he penned for the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. The topic of his essay was how he came to be an atheist. The whole piece is here. While there is humor in the pie…

Lessons Learned this Ramadan

By Amina Wadud

…round my shaykh (whom I have known for 8 or 9 years), with most of them American converts about my age and level of education, and the worship was sweeter. Go figure. Family matters. I did take a few days off from the intensified worship just to be with my family who lives farther away from me. Still, we fasted and prayed and ate together and that too was a reminder of what is good and meaningful in life. It brought me to that place of shukr: grat…

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…rnation to share a link to the most recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The Social Side of the Internet.” In a survey of 2,303 adults in November and December of 2010, researchers uncovered striking findings about the relationship between “virtual” and “real” engagement in religious, civic, charitable, social, and other groups: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. Moreover, s…

Looking For Answers at the Oscars: A Guide to This Year’s Contenders

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…etimes communication technologies facilitated that friendship (a letter, a phone call). In the new age the structure is reversed as friendships are built upon those very communication technologies. We are now databases, plugged into a network. Face-to-face friendships have become interface friendships. A more ethereal ethernet was evoked in Inception. Here too people are linked to each other through a social network, and here too identities are…