Religion Dispatches
…d/or illegal. Except now he’s signing the pledge put forward by Personhood USA, which says . . . the opposite. Indeed, spokeswoman Jennifer Mason had said just weeks ago, “If Newt Gingrich believes that life begins at implantation, he is scientifically incorrect. . . Any human embryology textbook confirms that life begins at the moment of fertilization.” So did he inexplicably change his mind, opting for the bluntest possible definition of fetal…
Read More…hip opted not to bring the bill forward. This raised the ire of Personhood USA and Oklahomans for Life, who continued to lobby for its passage. Personhood USA responded immediately with a press release calling Speaker Steele’s actions unforgiveable. This… er… did not improve the relationship between the personhood lobby and the Republican leadership. Meanwhile, on April 24, the House voted in strong support of HR 1054, a resolution that affirmed t…
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…tain. In 2013, the same year Mr. Johar’s gay kiss hit movie screens across India, the Supreme Court reinstated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which places homosexuality, alongside bestiality, as “against the order of nature.” What the ruling in practice has come to mean is that gay sex for the most part is permitted — the authorities turn a blind eye — but is criminalized on the books, which means of course that marriage, or even any social…
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…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…
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…aring the story, she returns home, opens Google India, and tracks down the phone number for the sweet shop her grandfather mentioned. Within seconds, she has called the store on her smart phone, and Yusuf’s grandson—who answers—has likewise opened Google to research visas for a reunion too long denied. We can understand the implications of this storyline by putting it into conversation with its longer historical context. The logic of the plot—that…
Read More…ir potential, irrespective of caste, religion or gender.” In December, the Indian Supreme Court reinstated a colonial-era anti-sodomy law, recriminalizing same-sex relations. Buzzfeed’s Lester Feder writes that this week’s “third gender” ruling could make it easier for the Supreme Court to overturn December’s ruling: For the past 12 years, the Indian LGBTI rights movement had pinned its hope to a challenge to the country’s colonial-era sodomy law,…
Read More…scrimination and harassment, they also have an important symbolic place in India.” The Times of India reports, The Rajya Sabha on Friday unanimously passed a private member’s bill seeking equal rights with dignity for transgenders, who are widely scorned, ostracised and ghettoised in the country. It was historic not only because it was the first private member’s bill to be passed in the Upper House in 36 years, but also since it might turn out to…
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…the LDS Church, which renounced polygamy at the end of the 19th century, a number of independent groups have since broken from the Church over various doctrinal differences—including plural marriage. Polygamy, USA, which debuted on the National Geographic Channel earlier this month [Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT], follows the fundamentalist Mormons of Centennial Park, Arizona, population 1,500. The following commentary from Centennial Park spiritual le…
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…TV. Then, using his fame and profits from the network, he started Heritage USA. Built on more than 2,300 acres on the border of North and South Carolina, the park was nearly twenty times larger than Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando. It featured campgrounds, an RV park, a water park, a television studio, an amphitheater, a 500-room hotel, shopping centers, and restaurants. In 1986, the park welcomed six million visitors, making it the most a…
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…e lower. India and United Kingdom: 50 years after decriminalization in UK, India hangs onto colonial era law At The Times of India, Vikram Doctor notes that the United Kingdom’s parliament voted to decriminalize homosexuality in 1967, asking why India “still hangs on to this colonial legacy” fifty years later. His piece includes history about the anti-sodomy law in the U.K. and the “morass of misuse, malice and misery” that it engendered, includin…
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