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Pope Mum on LGBTs in Uganda; Church Defends Anti-Marriage-Equality Efforts in Australia; Cyprus Passes Civil Partnerships; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…led to abstinence.” While in Uganda, Francis visited a shrine to a group of 19th-Century martyrs, Catholic and Anglican men who were brutally executed by a traditional king because, according to lore, they refused his sexual advances, though some scholars say it was because of their dedication to defending and spreading their faith. Their martyrdom was cited by Theresa Okafor at the World Congress of Families as an explanation for Uganda’s harsh A…

The Kids Are All Wrong: Texas Tosses The Enlightenment

By Burke Gerstenschlager

…aid as much when she prayed: “I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.” Dunbar was quite clear: only our citizens’ shared belief in Jesus and Divine Providence can save and preserve Texas and the nation—and the SBOE’s new social studies curriculum will teach the youth of Texas just that. Why Keep Calvin? More important than…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…and, for ours, that was an impossibly beautiful Tuesday morning. September 11 put an end to the long 1990s when, as it is nearly inconceivable to imagine today, the biggest problem in our post-Communist, unipolar world seemed to be Monica Lewinsky. I had long planned to become a corporate lawyer. Two years later, I enrolled in law school only to leave within months. There were many reasons why, but among them was this: I could no longer go down t…

Religious Right “Compassion” and Other Lies

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…Church in America, and other denominations, have come to realize that the spirit of the law in their Holy book is one of love and acceptance of everyone instead of the bullying, compassionless, soul-killing, letter of the law. Mr. Sprigg, when Jesus looked out on the crowds that followed him, that book you love more than your fellow human beings, tells us that he had compassion on them. What did he do then? Did he tell them to change? Did he bull…

“Dark” Skin No Longer a Curse in Online Book of Mormon

By Joanna Brooks

…Mormon did not feature summary chapter headings. Headings were added in the 1920s and revised in the 1980s by Bruce R. McConkie, author of Mormon Doctrine (now out of print), a compendium of Mormon theology controversial both for its explicit anti-Catholicism and its promulgation of adoctrinal racist folklore, as we covered here at RD. In 1981, the Church changed the language of 2 Nephi 30: 6 to remove the statement that Lamanites who repented wou…

Among the Problems with Trump’s Proposed Ban: Who is a Muslim?

By Michael Schulson

…sential, heritable, and inextricable. None of this is new, exactly. Between 1790 and 1952, because U.S. law barred naturalized citizenship to anyone who wasn’t white, courts often had to decide the race of citizenship seekers. In making that judgment for immigrants from the Middle East, Islam often came into play. “Religion has always served as a proxy for racial identity,” said Khaled Beydoun, a law professor at the University of Detroit Mercy wh…

Dinos and Demons and Swedes, Oh My! It May Be Cartoonish, but Evangelical Radicalism Isn’t Just a Sideshow

By Chrissy Stroop

…eading statements during his tenure of less than three years in office—over 10,000 of them, according to The Washington Post. Authoritarians have a very different relationship to the truth than the rest of us, so when Trump claims he had the largest inauguration crowd in history, or Jeffress spouts the absurd lie that Democrats worship an ancient Mesopotamian deity associated with child sacrifice, around 8 in 10 white evangelicals—using the percen…

‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical

By Tony Keddie

…eviticus and Matthew as God’s Word—and the final word—on the issue. Matthew 19:3–6, for instance, remains the biblical foundation of Franklin Graham’s strident defense of binary gender against the extension of Title IX to protect transgender people from discrimination, against the recognition of “X” as a sex classification on birth certificates, and even against Target’s gender-neutral makeover of its stores. Inciting Evangelical boycotts of the r…

After Her Remarks Pope JPII Was Never the Same — Controversial, Beloved Sr Theresa Kane’s Effect on the Catholic Church Endures

By Mary E. Hunt

…ge family with Irish immigrant parents. She entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1955, studied at Manhattanville College, and went on to a career in Mercy ministries focusing on health care. She was the CEO of a hospital well before she was 30. In the 1970s, she became president of the community as well as President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious which encompasses leaders from congregations that make up about 90% of US nuns. It was in…

Common Ground on Gays? Like Hell

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…nged life. You are not God’s child until you receive Christ as Savior (John 1:12) When you do receive Him you will be a new creature. There is no way you can point to God’s Word and say we should accept a lifestyle that God’s Word calls an abomination, as Christian behavior. All the hate crime legislation does is give reprobates legitamacy. Homosexuality is not only a sin, it is an abomination, and it is a symptom of a reprobate society. Mark Osga…