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Confessions of a Hater

…a, Kansas, hospice after being excommunicated from the church he founded in 1955. But I remain a hater. The student who asked me this question had revealed a lot about himself the first day he wheeled into class. He was what we community college types call a “non-traditional student,” an older, grizzled, white-bearded Vietnam veteran in a wheelchair (I later learned his amputations came after a round of neglected diabetes, not enemy bombs). On tha…

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From A Belize Jungle, A Look At Creationist “Outreach” in Vancouver

…eteorite? Bomb? End of the world? We were freaked out. No television, cell phone, internet service. There was no way to find out what happened. Later that night, in the Mayan village, the men gathered outside our hut, talking about it in hushed voices. Lacking any better answers, my husband offered the theory that perhaps it was from aliens. We learned the source of the explosion the next morning. At 8:59, the space shuttle, taking a detour due to…

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Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

…s’ proposal, couples entering into civil partnerships would have to be over 18, compared to 16 for married couples, and would be banned from solemnizing their relationships in religious places of worship. According to Latvian news agency Diena.lv, Spolitis announced on Thursday that he had submitted his bill to the Latvian Parliament’s Legal Committee in the hope that it can be voted on in the Parliament before the end of the year. However opponen…

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

…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…

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James Foley Prayed, But He Was Not a Martyr

…ect of both personal and corporate prayer. When he speaks to his mother by phone from Libya, she asks if he has felt the prayers coming from his home as well. He tells her that he has felt them and reports, “Maybe it was others’ prayers strengthening me, keeping me afloat.” This is precisely the kind of hope that prayer can inspire that should become central to the understanding of it for those of us who do not engage in prayer. Though the old aph…

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Maybe The Question Is: *Should* Shabbat Be The New Yoga?

…lace each March, complete with cute little bags where you can put your cellphone and stop looking at it for awhile. There’s a clear Jewish inspiration (unplugging day goes from Friday evening to Saturday evening, just like Shabbat), but there’s no overtly religious content, and the organization is explicit about wanting to reach people of all backgrounds. When I spoke with Reboot communications manager Tanya Schevitz earlier this year, she said th…

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Gay Marriage Bill Totalitarian Says Head Bishop

…anization for Marriage (NOM) urgently called on its supporters to get more phone calls into Senate offices. NOM is urging Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos to use his power to keep marriage from coming to the floor for a vote. Meanwhile, Archbishop Timothy Dolan is getting increasingly shrill in his efforts to stop the shift toward equality. This week, on his official blog, he wrote: “Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in N…

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Becoming Forever Lonesome: How Violence Changes Us

…knew it was over. I got a phone call. It was about midnight on October 23, 1998. I thought it was my husband calling to say he would be late. It was my stepfather saying, “I have some bad news.” I thought, “My mother or my sister?” He said, “Your uncle Bart has been shot and killed.” For a brief, bright moment, all I was, was relieved. A mother of an 18-year-old girl who died in the massacre at Columbine got her news by radio. She was pulling int…

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The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

…ire American Beauty album. Steve passed away in June of this year. That was 15 years after our “Ripple” conversation, and today, there are hundreds of Dead songs on my phone and dozens of live recordings in playlists, even a nod when I see a Deadhead sticker on a car. I am a relapsed Catholic, and thanks to my friend, I am also a repentant Deadhead. Dear Jesus, let me confess: I even wear Birkenstocks. Shannon. Deadshow, Deadhead. Dominquez Hills,…

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Star Trek: Politics Anti-Matters

…onged meditations on repression. It began, actually, in the show’s original 1966 pilot, in which the character Number One (played by creator Gene Roddenberry’s wife, Majel Barrett) showed none of the emotional hysteria expected of onscreen women at the time. Deemed too racy by the network, her demeanor was given to Spock, the half-Vulcan who spent the next three years’ worth of episodes struggling to stay logical amid the raging passions of his fr…

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