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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

…lves to be in a same-sex marriage,” reports Nicholas Hellen, “Doubling the number threatens the fragile truce on an issue that has divided the church since same-sex marriages were allowed in England and Wales in March 2014.” Iraq: Interview with Kurdish human rights activist Ayaz Shalal, a human rights activist from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was interviewed by the Washington Blade during a visit to the U.S. this month. Shalal said he ex…

Pope Invites his Flock to Join Facebook: Is the Digital Reformation Here?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…g with regard to religious practice in particular. Both internet and smart phone users were more likely to participate in religious or spiritual groups than were people who do not regularly use digital media. By “participate,” the researchers were referring to physical, geographically located, face-to-face engagement: attending meetings, volunteering, taking leadership roles, and donating money. In all of these categories, participation was higher…

Racial Justice Will Be Top Priority for New Prez of the United Church of Christ

By Frederick Clarkson

…nsidering new ways of “being church.” His vision is a bold one, but on the phone he quietly shrugs it off, saying it’s just a continuation of the Congregational tradition of more than 400 years. ________________ Frederick Clarkson: In Beyond Resistance you say that we are living in the dawning of a “postmodern” age of Christianity that may last for 500 years. What kind of church do you see emerging? Dorhauer: The first thing I want to say about th…

The Passion of Katniss: How the Hunger Games Confronts the Trauma of Violence

By Michael Schulson

…answer to those questions is, in my opinion, a most definite yes. Over the phone, Deaton explained that Collins captures the helplessness of its hero–and, through that sense of helplessness, the dynamics of trauma. “Trauma really is about the moment of freezing,” said Deaton. “What is traumatic is when there’s nothing that can be done.” Collins, he said, sustains a kind of trapped tension throughout the books—that feeling that you’re “never really…

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

By Lynne Gerber

…from ministry, locked down at home, and “trying to be of service over the phone and zoom” to people in his church facing another pandemic. Pieters is part of a unique cohort for whom the current pandemic is both eerily familiar and puzzlingly different. LGBT Christian clergy who ministered in queer communities in the 1980s and 90s are engaging Covid-19 using some lessons learned from AIDS ministry in the years before treatment. They’re also grapp…

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

…en fruit bowl, a few artificial flowers, half a bottle of Sprite, and some phone chargers. The two smaller images feature the cluttered interior of a walk-in closet with a bunch of clothes and a faint family portrait on the wireframe shelf, and something that will be familiar to anyone with a newborn child: a rocking seat next to a pink and yellow baby mat. With the caption “A Home Revealed,” the audience is left to make sense of these household p…

Is Pro-Life Cause Célèbre Chen Guangcheng Actually Pro-Life?

By Lindsay Beyerstein

…regime had threatened his wife. Chen then appealed directly to Congress by phone during a hearing saying that he and his family are not safe in China. On Friday, the Chinese government announced that Chen could apply to study abroad. The Pro-Life Spin Cycle Anti-abortion news and opinion websites have taken to calling Chen a “pro-life dissident,” which is fundamentally misleading. And though he’s been described as an opponent of the One Child poli…

Pennsylvania Rep. Says Contraception Mandate Is Like Pearl Harbor and 9/11

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…r thing to… do whatever Rep. Kelly thinks he’s doing. I give up. Here, have a video about Basenjis freaking out when a phone rings:…

Finding the “Good Girl Role Model”

By Kathryn Joyce

…r family, publishing their personal details online so that activists could phone and text-message “Agata” to dissuade her from her choice. They followed Agata to a second clinic when the family attempted the procedure there; charging in the media that the girl was being pressured into the abortion by Planned Parenthood and informing the police that Agata’s mother was “inciting her daughter to abortion,” leading to the illegal separation of the gir…