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‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

…married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warned that those who do would face “consequences.” From a March 1 story: In spite of the church rulin…

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Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

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More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

…rted on the New York wedding of Israeli fashion designer Idan Cohen to his partner Elad Borenstein during New York Fashion Week. “Homosexuals cannot legally marry their same-sex partners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homosexual unions are not in themselves recognized.” Vietnam: Couple marries on airplane flight A Vie…

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The Theodicy of George Carlin

…ountry has squandered its promise. I think people in America sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers.” Another time he paralleled the product with piety. “I think this species had great, great promise, with this great upper brain that we have, and I think we squandered it on God and Mammon.” Most remembrances of Carlin have lingered on his wicked wordplay and obscenity. As Slate’s Joshua David Mann remarked, “He got almost 30 years o…

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“I’d Be Stupid Not To Go Packing Now.”

…beat down of Duanna Johnson, an African American transwoman, in a Memphis booking room that was captured on a surveillance video. “I’d be stupid not to go packing now.” Williams lives in Oakland, just outside of San Francisco, and he’s going to check out the San Francisco chapter of Pink Pistols. As a national organization that encourages lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender to arm themselves to prevent hate crimes the Pink Pistols are also a s…

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New Theory for Tucson Tragedy: Blame the Atheists

…lier post on some of the spins Special Guest is promoting here. Today, the booking site is promoting Ted Shoebat, who says that being an atheist leads one to commit mass murder. “It’s actually very simple,” Shoebat was quoted in Special Guest’s promotion, “When God is not in your life, evil will seek to fill the void.” And who is Shoebat? As Sarah wrote in a post in August: …(He) is the son of “ex-terrorist” Walid Shoebat, an over-exposed figure i…

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The “Obamosque” Smears and the Money Fueling Them

Special Guests, a booking service that sends out daily press releases to reporters, producers, and radio shows, and which earlier this week described the proposed Park51 project as “Obamosque,” is today touting a Time magazine poll showing one quarter of Americans apparently believe President Obama is a Muslim. (A Pew poll out today shows that figure at 19%). Why do that many Americans believe that? Could it be the use of terms like “Obamosque?”…

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Perkins and MSNBC

…y the group Faithful America launched a campaign to pressure MSNBC to stop booking Perkins as a guest on its programs, because of his history of anti-gay bigotry. The group attempted to place an ad on MSNBC that sets out their complaint, but MSNBC rejected it: Faithful America’s petition reads: “The Family Research Council is a hate group, and journalists ought to treat it as such. MSNBC must stop inviting Family Research Council spokespeople on t…

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Palin’s Israel Trip

…r her Israel trip, as it has done for other presidential hopefuls, instead booking it through a Christian tour agency. He thinks, perhaps, that Palin is miffed that he and other RJC board members have been critical of her, but that she’s unwise to rebuff them because they could be so helpful to her. But this is characteristically Palin behavior — with or without the criticism. She is, for example, the only GOP aspirant who has never spoken at the…

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Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

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