Search for "cheap airline tickets newark to seattle phone number 1-800-299-7264"

South Asian Religious Leaders Challenged to Take on Stigma and Discrimination: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…o Nazis and Communists. Last week British official released figures on the number of same-sex couples who got married between March 29 – the first day marriage was legally available in England and Wales, and June 30. Of the 1,409 marriages, 56 percent were to female couples. According to Gay Star News, about 120,000 people are in civil partnerships, which they will be able to convert to marriages beginning in December. Costa Rica: Survey Shows Spl…

Death Penalty, Debated (Dedicated to the Memory of Sarah Horowitz)

By Bill Berkowitz

…TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houle. “The state carried out a ‘typical’ number of executions in a record amount of time—averaging nearly one per week over a five-month period. Yet officials’ zeal for executions was not matched by public desire for new death sentences, as evidenced by the continued steep decline in the number of new inmates arriving on death row.” TCADP also pointed to some hard-earned victories over the past year, particularly…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

The Atheist Encounter with Christianity: A Failure to Disbelieve?

By Paul Wallace

…l I could no longer live with it. Then, one day while I was talking on the phone in a dark room, just like that, I shed my belief in a literal “first couple.” Strangely, I don’t remember who I was talking to or what the conversation was about, but all at once I understood and it felt great. Yet my childhood belief had provided protection for me and had given shape to my understanding of God and even of myself, and what did I have to replace it wit…

Malawi Catholic Bishops Call For Enforcement of Sodomy Law; Ukrainian Thugs Disrupt Equality Festival Opposed by Orthodox Church; Indonesian Islamists Continue Rhetorical War on LGBTs; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…he Opera Theatre to be banned. The European Court of Human Rights has on a number of occasions found that the likelihood of counter-events does not justify restricting citizens right to peaceful assembly. The regional police also asked for the ban, although it is they who are obliged to protect all citizens exercising their right to gather. Indonesia: Anti-Gay Islamists Continue Rhetorical War On LGBTs Weeks of escalating anti-gay rhetoric in Indo…

The Pundits and the Dominionists

By Julie Ingersoll

…any other name) a Reconstructionist? And as Gerson noted in his essay, the number of people who can be labeled in this way would “fit in a phone booth.” (Actually there are significantly more than he recognizes, but I take his point.) My point, though, is that this is the wrong question. Far more interesting, I think, is to look at the influence of Christian Reconstruction; how has it impacted the style of the conservative Christianity that makes…

Condemnation, Condolences in Wake of Orlando Massacre and More

By Peter Montgomery

…ings from Arab and Muslim governments with the countries’ legal regimes, a number of which punish homosexuality with death. A hacker identifying with Anonymous flooded some ISIS-related Twitter accounts with rainbow flags, gay porn, and fake “coming out” tweets. Mexico: Church driving down support for marriage equality; activists worry about threats In the weeks since President Enrique Peña Nieto announced plans to push for a constitutional change…

The Religious Right’s Apocalyptic Visions of an Obama Presidency

By Bill Berkowitz

…ny time during the day. Gun ownership is outlawed in eight states and “the number is growing with increasing Democratic control of state legislatures and governorships.” Home schooling has been “severely restricted” thanks to the lobbying efforts of the National Education Association. Anonymous points out that although President Obama “expressed strong personal disapproval” of many of the Supreme Court decisions that have brought about these chang…