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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

…rnation to share a link to the most recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, “The Social Side of the Internet.” In a survey of 2,303 adults in November and December of 2010, researchers uncovered striking findings about the relationship between “virtual” and “real” engagement in religious, civic, charitable, social, and other groups: 80% of internet users participate in groups, compared with 56% of non-internet users. Moreover, s…

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

By Frederick Clarkson

…t Americans to oppose slavery. By 1785 the church had ordained the first African-American protestant minister; in 1853 ordained the first woman as clergy since New Testament times; and in 1972 ordained the first openly gay person. So it was no surprise that when marriage equality overcame the last legal hurdle in Arizona, Dorhauer found himself standing in that tradition with other progressive clergy outside the Maricopa County Courthouse holding…

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

By Michael Schulson

…ut the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have also been the first major American wars during which the country had an established, stable psychological diagnosis for combat stress. For the first time, there’s a highly-visible, medically-legible pool of veterans whose experiences of war diverge radically from anything resembling a kill-and-banter escapade. The effects of traumatic stress have been recognized for a long time–perhaps millennia–and, i…

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

By Lynne Gerber

…nds of ritual online,” she said, including different sacraments from the African-American Christian church and the indigenous spiritual communities that make up her congregation. They’ve also experimented with outdoor rituals. “[We] broadcast through our radios and through cell phones so that we could see each other. . . . We gave people little disposable communion kits and we had communion on the parking lot and blew our horns something fierce… y…

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

…a. When the police arrested the shooter, he said: “I’m a patriot and an American. I’m American. I’m a damn American.” Muslim girl power The fictional war between America and “Muslims” (including actual Muslims, those who “look like” Muslims, and those who live close to Muslims, like Iraqi Christians) is perpetuated and extended by the uncritical visuality of the news media. While I believe the war is based on fictional understandings of “Muslims,”…

Dear Lindsay Lohan, I’m Sorry

By Haroon Moghul

…uch a mean gesture. In fact I had a phone conversation with a prominent American imam last night—in Islam, we say subhanallah at such coincidences—and he mentioned in passing how offended many white American Muslims were by this very kind of gesture. On reflection, I can see why. I don’t find racial insensitivity humorous directed at me. The least I can do is not support it. And the least I can do is the least I can do. There are not many white Mu…

How Do We Break the Cycle of Religious Violence in South Asia?

By Sunita Viswanath

…us. For an example of this, we can look at how one of the largest Hindu-American organizations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA), reacted to the violence in Bangladesh and Tripura. The VHPA is aligned closely with the political ideology of Hindu nationalism, and has a proven track record of collaborating with Hindu extremist ideologues such as Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, who has publicly declared that “Islam should be eradicated from…

United Methodists Elect 1st Gay Bishop; Canadian Anglicans OK Same-Sex Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…all Lesbianism, Gayism, Bisexualism and Transgender (LGBT). Fortunately, Africa is still pretty much safer. Banking on lessons from the Western democracies, African leaders must make sure they don’t let their countries get to the point of no return by upholding the so called gay rights movements in their territories. Israel: Activists protest parade shift due to religious sensitivities, threat of violence LGBT activists in Be’er Sheva turned what…