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Shopping for Your Kids, Bioethically Speaking

By Arri Eisen

…he government intervene? It seems reasonable that the federal government carefully regulate the sperm, egg, and IVF industries. But do we go further and attempt to define what makes a parent? (The same way by many normally keep-government-out-of-our-lives conservatives support legislating what makes a marriage?) All this modern technology (the internet, creating life in a tube, etc.) still comes back to basic, but profoundly complex questions of w…

Romney Baffled by Own Party

By Sarah Posner

…Sargent has the whole rundown. ONN reporter Jim Heath asked Romney, “Blunt-Rubio is being debated later this week that deals with allowing employers to ban providing female contraception,” to which Romney provided the above answer. Then a Romney campaign spokesman told TPM, “Regarding the Blunt bill, the way the question was asked was confusing. Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care f…

Republican Scandals Drag Secretive ‘Family’ Into the Big Time

By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston

…threat that The Family poses won’t sink in. So—how do we interrupt business-as-usual and provide an alternative to the reigning narrative? JS: The single most valuable point made in Empire, the paradigm-shifting argument by political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, is that the days of what might be called hard empire—enforced occupation armies and viceroys and gunboats—have given way to a form of soft empire that “presents itself not as…

RDBook: The End of the World As We Know It

By Gabriel Mckee

…ories to tell means that something has survived. In a way, these aren’t end-of-the-world stories at all, because the world doesn’t really end—or rather, the world ends, but humanity carries on. These are post-apocalyptic stories, and their focus is not on destruction, but rebuilding. That hopefulness sneaks its way into most stories in the subgenre. Cormac McCarthy sneaks it into the last few paragraphs of his oppressively bleak novel The Road, bu…

Pope Francis’ Love Letter is an Opportunity Lost

By Mary E. Hunt

…‘imperfect’ or the result of ‘human weakness’. At its best, an intact same-sex family is defined out; a divorced and remarried couple of any sexual orientation is an ethical also-ran. There are some feeble efforts to make such people feel welcome in the Roman Catholic Church, but just as long as they realize they are on moral thin ice. In postmodernity, families come in all sizes and shapes. Either you acknowledge that and enter into the much tou…

Budget Showdown and Government Shutdown Not About Abortion

By Sarah Posner

…ul. Democrats said they were told by the Republicans that the votes of anti-abortion social conservatives would be needed to move any budget measure through the House. Republicans said that no final agreement on money had been struck, and that both policy and spending issues were causing the impasse. “The largest issue is still spending cuts,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said Friday morning. By contrast, Senator Harry Reid of Nevad…

The Folly of Arab-West (Elite-Elite) Dialogue

By H.A. Hellyer

…like these face two big problems: The first is that we have to properly re-orientate how we define this ‘Arab-West’ relationship—both within the West and within the Arab world. The cultural construct is this: ‘the West’ historically owes a great deal to the Arab world, which influenced it tremendously, both through Western Arab countries like Arab Spain (al-Andalus) and through continued ties through the ages. The West intervened as an imperial a…

Glenn Beck Takes on Liberation Theology

By Elijah Prewitt-Davis

…al and collective faith and salvation. He claims that liberation theology “deals exclusively with external realities” and does not address the issues of personal grace. What role does grace play in liberation theology? In that show it is ludicrous that on the one hand he is saying that there is no such thing as social justice in the gospel—that we are supposed to take care of people because we simply want to—and that everything happens by virtue o…

Wild Goose Festival’s (Mostly) Welcoming Spirit for LGBT Christians

By Kristin Rawls

…ch me.” Shocked was not challenged by organizers or staff. Some of the less-than-affirming messages came from official programming. Tony and Peggy Campolo gave their much-practiced talk, touted in the program as “a model of how to disagree agreeably,” about their differences on the matter of LGBT affirmation (she’s “for,” and he’s “against.”). Off-stage, Campolo lectured LGBT audience members who approached him that “when either side imposes its v…

Of God, But Not God: A Methodist Minister Speaks About Church’s Refusal to Open Its Doors to LGBT

By Joel Pitney

…year ago. The issue on the table at this year’s General Conference—an every-four-year event during which UMC representatives from around the world meet to discuss important issues of faith and governance—was whether or not to change the discriminatory language in the church’s official “Book of Discipline” that deems “homosexuality to be incompatible with Christian teachings.” This exclusive brand of Christianity is not the one that my mother subsc…