Search for "cheap one way airline tickets to newark phone number 1-800-299-7264"

The ‘Evolving’ Story of Teacher Who Burned Cross into Student’s Arm

By Lauri Lebo

…ow their objection of a cross branded on their kid might be perceived that way. “We are religious people,” they said in a statement after they filed suit in June. “But we were offended when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child.” Dennis sighs on the phone when she thinks back on the past two years. “It’s changed our lives,…

As a Queer Catholic Woman I Had High Hopes Before the 2023 Catholic Synod on Synodality

By Emma Cieslik

…by anger as I read the summit’s 41-page report. This past Friday I saw New Ways Ministry’s statement, “Synod Report Greatly Disappoints, But We Must Have Hope,” while walking down a busy DC thoroughfare. In it Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ+-affirming Catholic organization, points out how, despite previous documents discussing the welcoming and inclusion of LGBTQ Catholics, there were no positive statements on LGBTQ issues—not…

Indonesia Hears Islamist Arguments For LGBT Criminalization; Zambian Churches Oppose Condom Distribution in Prisons; Lithuanian Conservative Manifesto Calls LGBTs Enemies of Freedom; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…em.” Shalal told the Blade that LGBT Iraqis don’t trust anyone because the way they are treated in the country. Religious attitudes also have an adverse impact on the way people view homosexuality, even though Shalal said the Quran does not specifically speak against the issue. “An imam would say it’s haram, they should be killed, they should be stoned, their heads should be cut off, but that’s not the truth,” said Shalal. “The same goes for Chris…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

…without at least five dollars could be defined as a vagrant. So members always carried five dollars and money for a phone call. Benjamin Zeller, author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion, has also noted that Heaven’s Gate members engaged in a lot of self-deprecating humor because they were aware that mainstream society perceived them as crazy. This research led Jones to conclude that a comedy about Heaven’s Gate might not be as inappropriat…

A Sacred Encounter with Erykah Badu’s Controversial Nude Video

By Tamura Lomax

…d for others, including the oppressor. Meaning, although Badu pleads for a way out, a way to transcend the weight of social meanings, she also desires to be desired by those who seem to oppress her. Thus, while she wants to rise above their tactics, she is also caught up in their web. Nonetheless, while the complexity of Badu’s lyrical content captivates the ear and the musical composition makes the heads of Badu fans bob rhythmically in response,…

Romney Had No Clue as to Obama Ground Game

By Joanna Brooks

…n Ohio. And eavesdropped on an Obama canvasser. I mean, I spent 45 minutes phone-banking the parking garage of a lowly San Diego field office with four children under nine years old hopped up on Doritos and doing laps around my folding chair, and even under those suboptimal circumstances I could tell right away that Obama’s data was even better than it was in 2008 and that there was hardcore focus on the 18- to 29-year-old set. And, mind you, I’m…

For Clergy Who Ministered Through the AIDS Crisis Covid is Both Eerily Familiar and Puzzlingly Different

By Lynne Gerber

…as often intertwined with sexuality, sometimes with substance abuse, and always with social shame. Clergy had to minister to all three in addition to the disease. Jones remembers it as a kind of spiritual triage where he was always trying to figure out the most pressing need to respond to in any given case. “There were times that we just didn’t know what we were dealing with until hindsight,” he said. AIDS, recalled Nixon, was “religiously stigmat…

Discovering “Little Syria”—New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…eet project is part of the same effort. “We are persistent,” he told me by phone, “because these stories have a real impact on people.” Telling stories grounded in real Arab-American history is the only way to reach understanding. And understanding is still sorely needed. One imagines what the Islamophobic activists who conjured the “Ground Zero Mosque” debacle a couple years back would do with the news of an Arab neighborhood in the shadow of the…

A Portrait of Islamophobia?

By Mariam Durrani

…gs. Sarsour was simply calling out this double standard as a marker of the ways that racist and xenophobic ideologies saturate the media cycle, and yet this was met with critique. Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple offered an almost nonsensical critique, including a snarky set of observations about Perry’s show and the argument that “[Sarsour’s] comments boil down to a critique of the New York Times over using newsworthy photographs.” In th…

Terror In South Carolina

By Sarah Posner

…ow what happened to Walter Scott is because a bystander filmed it with his phone. In making his plea, Pinckney invoked the biblical story of Doubting Thomas, the one of Jesus’s disciples who would not believe Jesus had risen from the dead until he saw him with his own eyes and touched his wounds with his own hands. “It was only when he was able to do that, he said, ‘I believe,’” Pinckney said of Thomas. Some people, said Pinckney, are like Thomas…