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Global LGBT Recap: Francis’s First Year; Homophobia and Development; African Activists Push Back

By Peter Montgomery

…rancis. Notably, the Vatican’s quote collection does not include what is almo*]}*st certainly the most famous line of his papacy, his “who am I to judge?” response to a question about gay priests. In a reflection on his first year, Sr. Jeanine Grammick calls those five words, “an unambiguous departure from the harsh language of his predecessors.” Pope Francis has provided unexpected exhilaration for LGBT advocates. As Mark Segal, a leading gay acti…

Greek Riots: “It’s a beautiful thing, freedom.”

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…rchia, the very place where the current troubles began. There had been a demonstration, and riot police had been called out. The crowds grew and outrage simmered; soon a chant began, a single word, repeated mantra-like for over an hour. The word was *eleutheria*, “freedom”; this word too goes back to Greek antiquity. And when I asked one of the protestors why he was there, he echoed my Cretan friend: “It’s a beautiful thing, freedom.” He spoke thi…

Murdering Sleep: Madoff and MacBeth

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…nouveau glamour of it all. But when it all came apart, Ruth Madoff posted most of the $10 million bail to get her husband home, and she has stood loyally by him even at the apparent expense of her relationship with her two sons. She has suffered a “Leona Helmsley style” demonization since then, which has reduced her to sad, incognito forays in disguise to the market or the theater (tellingly, she has a passion for the theater). She visited her hu…

Oedipus Complexity: Is it Enough to Fire Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct?

By Benjamin Dueholm

…esponses of the accused have varied widely as well. In a few cases—Moore’s most notably—unyielding denial has been the strategy. Those who admitted wrongdoing have done so with varying degrees of specificity and remorse. Garrison Keillor protested his innocence in a statement laden with passive-aggressive humor. These misdeeds can be sorted by type and graded by severity by anyone who wishes. Such cataloguing may even be used as leverage or defens…

The Last Debate, Blow by Blow

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…re: health care, energy independence, education. McCain offered one of the most memorable (and telling) lines of the evening. “Hatchet first, then the scalpel.” I don’t know what kind of surgery the bruiser’s envisioning, but this sounds like amputation on a Civil War battlefield, not like responsible fiscal policy. Score this round for Obama. Round Three: Leadership #1 Is the campaign too negative? McCain did what he so often does in a pinch; he…

Pariah or Charmed Hero: America’s Obsession with Jews and Israel

By Shaul Magid

…el came up. One might have expected a short mention of Israel as America’s most important ally in a region invested with enormous energy and resources. But something quite different happened. In a debate where the candidates agreed about almo*]}*st nothing, each fighting to distance themselves from Washington, Wall Street greed, oil companies, and corporate America, suddenly not only were they in agreement about their undying love of Israel, they were…

The Evangelical Abortion Myth: An Excerpt from ‘Bad Faith’

By Randall Balmer

…ull and secure family life.” Evangelicals in the late 1960s and throughout most of the 1970s by and large refused to see abortion as a defining issue, much less a matter that would summon them to the front lines of political activism. Abortion simply failed to gain traction among evangelicals, and some groups with historic ties to evangelicalism pushed for legalization. In 1970, for example, the United Methodist Church General Conference called on…

The Ghosts and Illusions of the Occupation

By Sarah Posner

…n’t describe a Palestinian who kills a Jew as ‘Palestinian extremist.’ For most Israelis ‘Palestinian’ is sufficiently synonymous with extremism. Indeed, many Israelis hardly notice Palestinians except to point out acts of violence.” These labels, in turn, create norms through which extraordinary abuses become routine: The terrorist label is important because it means the authorities can use extraordinary legal measures rather than due process. Bu…

The Christian Roots of the New Age: The Aquarian Gospel

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…in our understanding of the New Testament since the publication of the two most important archaeological discoveries since the Second World War—the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi Library—we will not be surprised to discover that a self-styled spiritual adept will have composed (or in his view, received) his own gospel in order to reveal his own understanding of what the true and essential message of Jesus actually was, prior to all the chur…

Race, Religion and the Colin Powell Endorsement

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ckwaves of that seismic event. What Powell said to Tom Brokaw was telling, most of all for his quiet composure and lack of animus. What was very clear, however, was that this career military man is completely dismayed by what the Republican establishment has permitted his party to become. Race-baiting and religion-baiting are of a piece in Powell’s moral universe, appropriately so, and he said very clearly and very candidly that Senator McCain has…