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Suicide Leads to Calls for Improved Treatment of LGBT Mormons

…erence talk shaming homosexuality. “I have a brother who said to me on the phone last Christmas, ‘Elder Packer says God does not make gays. This is your choice.’ And then he used some very hurtful language with me,” Jahn relates. “I had to hang up on him. But he feels he has been given permission to speak this way by the prophet.” “Even a simple phrase uttered by a General Authority can give Church members broad permission to look down on, discrim…

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Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

…merican millennials. First, there was an interesting article that came out last year which indicated that African-American millennials believe the black church is increasingly obsolete. This piece identified the black church as being “out of step on scientific developments” and charged that some black millennials “feel Christianity leaves no room for authenticity.” Certainly the scandal and hypocrisy-plagued version of the black church that younge…

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Walking Dead and Zombie Ethics, or “Don’t Fight the Zombies. You Can’t Win”

…becomes the key to global salvation. The disruption of this white middle class family’s life appears alongside global collapse, and I am unsure which the film wants us to care about more. Zekes are clearly a dangerous threat, and the film plays on existing fears of global pandemics, terrorism, and the breakdown of governments and infrastructure. World War Z does not attempt to humanize the monsters, nor does it register concern for the masses of…

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“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

…y still doubles as his nickname: Jolly Good Fellow. Over the course of two phone conversations, RD asked Tan—who was, in fact, quite jolly—if mindfulness is a watering-down of Buddhism, whether meditation can truly save the world, and why he specializes in teaching rich people. You’re one of the only prominent advocates of secular mindfulness who is not white. What’s that like? Not only am I one of the only non-white people, but I’m one of the ver…

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Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

…ernet technological and capacity innovation before the advent of the smart phone.   And if we want to start a serious conversation about where presidential candidates get their money and how ethical that money is, let’s do it. I have a laundry list of labor, environmental, feminist, and human rights issues with multinational corporations I’d love to start working through. But don’t give me a thin, opportunistic connect-the-Mormon-dots story and pr…

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Departure of the Queen

…anyway) had already set for the night. I will need to look for him where I last saw him, and when I last saw him: on this road toward the mosque, in the evening around tarawih time. I have my flashlight handy because once I past the community kitchen, the darkness is overwhelming. But I only need it for a short while. After that I am surrounded by holiday lights in multiple colors and configurations. They celebrate this month with these decoration…

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This Narrative of Death that is So Powerful Among Us

…zmos that I’m carrying around with me. [pointing to digital recorder, cell phone, iTouch] Walter: That’s right. I think he’s the primary voice who anticipated all of this. It seems to me he is vindicated over and over and over again, that technology is not neutral, but that it brings an ideology with it. Dan: I’m more familiar with that from Niebuhr, who resists the “technic,” he says, and is more oriented to political science and economics, and s…

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Why We Can’t Afford to “Wait And See” How Trump Dismantles LGBT Rights

…tic to oppose LGBT equality, as Salon explains. Just three years ago, on a phone call with faith leaders supporting the Tea Party movement, Price agreed that there are “consequences of activity that has been seen as outside the norm,” suggesting that increased health care costs for LGBT people are a result of some abnormal activity. (Yes, that’s code for anal sex. Or gender-affirming surgeries. Or marrying the person you love most in the world, if…

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What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

…Cake  If you have made it this far, then you can guess what comes next and last, because it is worst of all: the actual engagement with the Islamophobe. I offer you snippets from a conversation with a noted voice of the Islamophobic fringe, who I had the opportunity to engage—albeit on Twitter—some weeks ago. The topic was of course Islamophobia. After a long and meandering conversation, in which anything any reasonable person could say was twiste…

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A Sacred Encounter with Erykah Badu’s Controversial Nude Video

…, “I was thinking about going down there and whoopin’ her…but I was on the phone with the police, too…I called the police…I was very offended. There were too many kids, women, and children down there.” While I am sure that Lewis was concerned about Badu’s nudity in front of the other “women and children,” I imagine she was equally uneasy about the implications of reproducing the violence of slavocracy in a post Civil War society. In short, not onl…

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