Religion Dispatches
…k titled The Change Manifesto which according to the Institute’s Faith and Freedom Newsletter, “reminds us” that despite talk by the “presidential candidates … about reducing taxes, lowering gas prices and reforming Social Security…. none of that will matter unless we first restore the rule of law and abide by the Constitution.” “We are on the cusp of a new era of progress, but we can’t sit back and hope our elected officials will carry us there….
Read More…hould be impeached because he is a Muslim (complete with a promo promising free guns, paid for by “a millionaire” who wants you “protected against what’s coming.”) The video in the email is by evangelist Jack van Impe, known for his premillennial rapture theology and his disconnected rambling in Bible verses. It is entitled “President Obama’s Religion in Question” and argues that he is really a Muslim. Joan, who claims in an email to be “well-educ…
Read More…view LGBT people—as purely sexual beings. Foster’s screed is simply a long promo for a new ex-gay movie coming out, and the trailer, three-minutes of nauseating footage, centers around how each of these former homosexuals lived their lives in clubs, engaging in cheap, easy, and often public sex, or were sexually abused. For all the claptrap the religious right yells about how they don’t want to think of us “that way,” the trailer for the film is p…
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…mor in the Syrian war frontlines, among other things. As a critical space, Free Arab should be commended for promoting individual rights and civil liberties in the Arab context. The site’s work is also significant because it tries to locate secularism as a vernacular practice, a lived experience in a part of the world exclusively defined by a narrow religiosity and a perpetual combative relationship with the West. The founders believe the remarkab…
Read More…is may be the first time news has broken of women being arrested under the codes’ prohibition on lesbianism in Malaysia, said Justice for Sisters’s Thilaga Sulathireh. Scotland: Clergy Leaving Church of Scotland; LGBTs Debate Leaving UK The Scotsman reports this week that two more clergy members have left the Church of Scotland in protest of the denomination’s “continuing drift” from the Bible, including the naming of gay clergy. They have applied…
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…ngressmen urging them to protect right-to-work legislation in the name of “free agency.” “That’s Not Flip-Flopping” A key principle of Mormon theology, “free agency” is foundational, with roots extending all the way back to the Mormon pre-earthly existence, which was also the scene of a momentous battle. God had centered his plan for our earthly salvation on freedom, and had to defeat the followers of Lucifer, who proposed to force us all to obey…
Read More…s. India: Materials targeting adolescents challenge gender stereotypes and promote respect The Health Secretary published materials designed to be used by adolescent peer educators on health issues. The materials aim to dispel gender stereotypes and promote relationships based on respect, reports Abantika Ghosh in The Indian Express: The legality of homosexuality may still be an open question for the judiciary and the Government is yet to change t…
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…s invoked by Catholic officials and physicians. When expanding the medical codes in 1948, Rev. Gerald Kelly, a Jesuit priest, told the Catholic Health Association that many non-Catholics would be “eager” to follow these ethical codes because they “pertain not merely to Catholic teaching but also to moral law.” The 1942 NFCPG resolution also declared that abortion and contraception were an affront, not just to the Catholic, but to the American fami…
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…in light of the preference of the choosing subject is a basic condition of freedom. King saw freedom as a moral right. Thus, King was on the side of freedom. However, freedom can be complex. King would have likely challenged the idea of subjectivity as it relates to the freedom of choice of all subjects involved, forcing us to sit with the possible tensions of our choices and one’s moral right to choose. In the end I think King would have upheld w…
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…. In most cases, the current laws on the books are the same colonial penal codes. Tunisia’s anti-sodomy laws are derived from the 1913 French Penal Code, while section 347 of the penal code in Christian Cameroon is a French colonial law. Similarly, the Ottoman adoption of French codes would ban the köçek. Across the Muslim world, many of the laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ people are direct relics of colonial law. It would take generations to gradually…
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