Religion Dispatches
…ssion” or even “tolerance” for LGBT people. They want a government that will give it carte blanche to abuse, torture and even kill LGBT people. In short, they want a government, much like the one in Germany in the 1930s (as actor Stephen Fry so eloquently elucidates), that will give them the right to finally solve “the homosexual problem.” For the children, of course….
Read More…a governor.” Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, told RD today: It sure wouldn’t surprise us to us to see Gov. Perry use pastors for a presidential run the same way he has in his Texas campaigns. After all, he didn’t spend six years building this church-based political machine to let it go to waste. The sad truth is that politicians have become almost shameless in turning churches into campaign props and using faith as a weapon t…
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…visited a comparable level of death and destruction on Algeria as affected Germany in World War II. This fact could explain why so many Algerians were so eager to get out of Algeria, if Caldwell only bothered to share it. But in the service of communicating a deep cultural unease with rapid social change, Caldwell has attempted to provide a veneer of neutral correctness (he has, in effect, internalized the multiculturalism he professes to so detes…
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…o World War II, and of the eventual victory of the Allies over the Axis of Germany and Japan. But for most Americans on December 7, 1941, none of those things were evident. I was thinking about my grandfather and his football game earlier this month, when I walked, for the first time, through the World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington. Dedicated in 2004, the Memorial is a broad plaza of fountains, pillars, and sculpted wreaths. I…
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…know from discussing the topic with former Mormons from England, Belgium, Germany, and South Africa, the rupture can be harrowing even for people who have never set foot in Utah and are one of only a handful of Latter-day Saints in their community. In The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi states, “Changing moral codes is always costly; all heretics, apostates, and dissidents know this.” Mormons who leave the church face dire consequences: damnati…
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…y enough to Krampus, Santa’s ill-tempered companion throughout Austria and Germany, who goes far beyond coal in the stocking when reminding children that he knows who’s been naughty or nice. For Krampus fans—who are becoming legion—this Yuletide boogeyman comes and goes much too quickly. And it turns out Bourdain thought so, too. What he’d hoped to air is a bit of mischief that would have elevated the No Reservations holiday special from simply ve…
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…the promise of a brighter future. Peter Gay (b. 1923), an émigré from Nazi Germany, not only championed the Enlightenment in opposition to the Nazism he had experienced firsthand, but also saw it as inspiring the American liberalism with which he had come to identify. His two-volume history, a bestseller that won the National Book Award, appeared at the apogee of 1960s liberalism. His idealization of the Enlightenment of Hume and Voltaire as the s…
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…nt and sad passions.” Candidate pledges and victimhood appeals are tactics promoted by the U.S.-based anti-LGBT, Catholic-minded National Organization for Marriage, which wants to play its hand in the French elections, too. Socialist President Francois Hollande signed marriage legislation on May 18, 2013 amid violent clashes and thousands of protesters decrying the scuttling of traditional family values as the fall of Western civilization. In the…
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… in these pages about the Catholic Church and the sex scandal unfolding in Germany, Belgium, and other European countries. At the time, I surmised that the story would end much like it has here in the U.S., with rules, regulations and recriminations—but with abuses still occurring. What I didn’t anticipate was that the story would unfold steps away from my home and office in 2011. Philadelphia’s Avenging Altar Boy The Archdiocese of Philadelphia…
Read More…final vote tally showed India breaking away from countries such as France, Germany, United Kingdom and many Latin American nations, exposing the fact that New Delhi’s loud proclamations about being an international player didn’t extend to the human rights arena. But India voted in favour of at least two amendments that restricted the scope of the watchdog, betraying what the country’s intention was. Devirupa Mitra at the Wire has more on India bac…
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