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Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

These days, when ever you say you are Muslim by choice, you get people asking about your conversion. Mostly they want to know why. This curiosity comes equally from those who are already Muslim and those who are not. I used to tell the same basic steps—although I hardly think my own individual door lights up any bulbs of excitement. Maybe because no lightbulbs went off for me either. I was a seeker. I was raised in a loving Christian environment…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…by Democrats. Take for example, the arguments made by Eric Sapp, founding partner of the Eleison Group, who the RNS article notes worked doing faith outreach on a number of Democratic campaigns in 2006 and 2008 but not in 2010. In both the RNS interview and in an article on Huffington Post, Sapp argues for a causal link between lackluster faith outreach in this election cycle and Democratic losses; his conclusion: “the results were disastrous.” T…

Change v. Change at NPR

By Warren Throckmorton

…ebate but it is between the mental health establishment and a much smaller number of traditionally minded religious therapists. However, even if Spiegel had correctly identified the nature and participants in the debate, she still would not have gotten it quite right. To his credit, Schumacher-Matos does a better job when he reviews material given to him by Spiegel and her editor Anne Gudenkauf. Among other things, Schumacher-Matos read an article…

Catholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage

By Marian Ronan

…bian.” Then she paused. “Well, I used to be a lesbian,” she added, “but my partner had a sex-change operation, so now I’m not exactly sure what I am.” And that was just the beginning. Next there was a newspaper article about women Olympic athletes being eliminated from competition because tests revealed that they were genetically male, something about which they themselves hadn’t a clue. Then there was Suzanne Kessler’s groundbreaking article in t…

Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…uling, urged Governor John Rankin to refuse to give assent to the Domestic Partnership Act. Reporting on the legislation in Bermuda, Cayman News noted, “However, on this issue Bermuda is still streets ahead of Cayman, which has no legislative protections at all for same-sex couples who want to marry or have a civil partnership.” Australia: Marriage equality take effect; continuing debate expected on religious exemptions Capping a years-long lobbyi…

“Pregnancy is Not a Disease”: Birth of an Anti-Contraception Rallying Cry

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…s gender identity, sexual orientation, abortion, drugs, relationships, and partner violence, as well as the more straightforwardly gynecological topics of contraception, menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. That was in 1973—two years after Stephen and Ina May Gaskin, plus a few hundred of their hippie friends from San Francisco, had founded The Farm, an intentional community in Tennessee. There Ina May helped to start a midwifery center, and i…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…hildren. One of the women interviewed, a Christian, pregnant by an abusive partner, described how she made her abortion decision through “[a] lot of praying, a lot of talking to God.” She concluded that God “would not want me to be in a situation for the rest of my life or [for] a child to be in a situation for the rest of its life to be tortured by somebody.” A Catholic woman with two children who terminated a medically threatening pregnancy expl…

The Brutality of Life for Syrian LGBTs; Saving the Anglican Church by Dissolving It; Backlash to Hindu Gay Wedding Ceremony in Indonesia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…aeda]. That’s not including your own extended family: they are often enemy number one.” McDougall reports that religious police use social media to entrap people, and rely on informants. Knowing who the enemy is has become increasingly difficult for gay people. From the ranks of its own religious police force, Isis is believed to have deployed undercover agents to entrap those who have been accused by others of being gay. Elmo, a doctor now workin…

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

…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…