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The Latest to Botch Mormonism: Garry Wills

By Joanna Brooks

…lot of Mormon content this campaign season but has no Mormons on its editorial staff: Hire a Mormon fact checker. There are a number of advanced graduate students in Mormon Studies—many studying at very fine secular institutions. They know Mormon history, doctrine, and culture. They know it from scholarship, and they know it from experience. Real good kids. (And some of them have kids of their own to feed.) Put one or two of them on retainer throu…

400 Churchgoing Mormons March in SLC Pride Parade

By Joanna Brooks

…n to march. Some Bridges marchers worried how the crowds would react, especially given the history of LDS Church-backed opposition to same-sex marriage. “But when we turned the first corner onto 200 South Street, the crowd just roared,” says Austin Hollinbaugh, a recent BYU graduate from Provo, Utah, who joined the Mormons Building Bridges group. “I thought to myself, ‘Why are you cheering for me? I am supposed to be here for you. People deserve t…

A Journalist in Church, Hiding in Plain Sight

By Andre Tartar

…eliefs. Sort of. I told him that I was raised Catholic, like millions of Brazilian evangelicals were before they were born again in Christ. I told him how growing up in a leafy Pittsburgh district, my churchgoing Portuguese mother (and agnostic French father) put me through Catholic grade school and a Lasallian Christian Brothers’ high school. To this day I retain an enormous respect for the religious mentors I met there, men strengthened and not…

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

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…by a foreign power. Maybe when he sat down and thought, “What’s the appropriate image to show how irate I am about the contraception coverage mandate?” the first things that popped into his mind were bodies, death, fire, and smoking twists of metal. Maybe he thinks that the only people who have ever experienced a truly grievous affront to their agency and well-being are these three groups: 1) victims of the Pearl Harbor attack; 2) victims of the 9…

High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…se the native flood stories did not say anything about “rain” as the Bible described Noah’s flood. Their floods came from the sea in giant waves. In Africa, flood myths are somewhat more scarce, because floods themselves are rare, and they can be life-giving events. The Chinese flood stories are more about control of nature… the point is not “which one of these stories is true.” The point is to connect the stories to actual facts on the ground. On…

Republicans in Favor of Reproductive Rights

By Katie Toth

…l was conducted by TNS, an independent research firm which conducts weekly phone polls, according to a Republicans for Choice press release. The poll asked, regardless of respondents’ personal feelings about abortion, whether “the woman, family, and her doctor [should] make the decision or the government [should] make the decision.” Seventy-one percent of self-identified Republicans said they “strongly” felt that the woman, her family, and her doc…

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

By Lindsay Beyerstein

…on activists, advocating for Chen could also shore up Romney’s weak credentials as a social conservative. It’s the perfect dog whistle: when Romney talks about Chen, moderates hear “human rights” while hardliners hear “pro-life dissident.” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a well-known anti-abortion crusader with a longstanding interest in China and this case in particular, has been in contact with Chen. Smith claims that U.S. officials refused to let him…

Maryland Governor says Support for Marriage Equality “Very Much Informed” by his Catholicism

By Peter Montgomery

…host is Derek McCoy, the Harry Jackson-affiliated head of the Maryland Marriage Alliance, which is leading opposition to marriage equality. Speaking to bloggers on a call organized by Marylanders for Marriage Equality, O’Malley said he was confident that the campaign would be victorious if it is able to raise $2 million to get out the word and respond to ads from anti-equality forces that are expected to increase in volume and intensity between no…

Who’s Accusing Who of Mormon-Baiting?

By Joanna Brooks

…s the nation should be prepared to receive these deceitful and dissembling phone calls.” Catholic Democrats immediately responded with a statement that the report was “unequivocally false” and that if there were in fact “Catholic-to-Catholic phonebanking questioning Mitt Romney’s faith,” “our organization had no part in them.” Catholics for Obama also pointed to a statement released last fall by a number of lay Catholic leaders decrying Pastor Ro…

The Silly Calls for Congress to Investigate Planned Parenthood

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…staff failed to report it; and indeed, her words were posted as a testimonial on a Planned Parenthood-affiliated website (only to be taken down later, when some pro-life activists drew the conclusion that someone at Planned Parenthood must have knowingly let the rape go unreported). This is supposed to be a sinister, telling, part of the growing mountain of evidence. Finally, then there are some incidents that do seem like they might be instances…