Religion Dispatches
…phone call away. It also gives me discounts on lodging and other perks. My partner has a gold card with her name on it as well. The account number on both cards is the same. Years ago, when we signed up for the cards with the venerable roadside assistance company AAA, the woman at the counter smiled sweetly and never blinked an eye when we asked for the “family” plan. We were granted a generous discount under the family plan over buying two indivi…
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…s a surprise to the pair, who had come to City Hall on Saturday morning to participate in a gay rights demonstration, said their attorney, Jose Luis Marquez. They had received hints that a wedding might take place, but were doubtful. They had already been rejected three times, despite an order from Mexico’s Supreme Court last June. More from the Washington Blade: A local judge officiated what the San Diego Union-Tribune described as the “impromptu…
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…Thank you again. Tweeting is a great way to share the Gospel!” For my own part, having barely paid prayerful attention to any of it, I wish I had sat through an exhausting church service. Humpf. The adulation made me feel like a crotchety old reactionary. Look, I know Derrida called us out on the whole idea of metaphysics of presence, questioning the possibility of really being somewhere, or of somehow possessing an event in any immediate way by…
Read More…immediately gave away more than 35% of it to my other siblings, and to her partner. I paid back the expenses from the funeral and put the rest in savings. Still, it left me no doubt about being able to afford to make hajj. This week I paid the remaining balance on my hajj account and submitted the requested paperwork. But here’s the thing: according to most jurists, I am not allowed to inherit from my sister. My sister had no children and was neve…
Read More…t on record in support of compassionate immigration reform. How has that impacted your work? I get phone calls from LDS people who would identify themselves as politically conservative, but they say, “There’s this guy I know . . . Can you help him? He’s a really good guy.” People need to remember that there are many “really good guys” out there waiting for immigration reform. People coming to the US for work get villainized. “Illegal alien” is o…
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…ions, these people are barely tolerated. They are pointedly not invited to participate in rounds or in patient evaluation sessions. I recall how, as a first-year seminary student doing what is called “supervised ministry” at a New Haven mental health hospital, I was somewhat shocked to see how patients’ behavior was interpreted purely in terms of reactions to their medications, whereas I could see plainly that many of these same patients were resp…
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…itioning from that, and “shedding off that false image,” says Kaggwa, was “painful, painful in the sense that it made me lost in a way, but also painful in terms of social perceptions. I had to explain every day what was happening.” Twenty years later, at age 40, Kaggwa is an advocate for sexual minorities. “When it comes to gay people, I may not be gay,” says Kaggwa, “but I understand very well what it means, the courage and the audacity it takes…
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…d the test of time in another recent video posted on Trump’s account, accompanied by a pathos-laden monologue. The voice seems to be speaking to Donald Trump directly, over images of the former president from childhood to present wannabe-dictator. And the tone seems to fit the violent yet schmaltzy aesthetic of fascist Füher-worship: I’m going to look you in the eyes and I’m gonna tell you the future. It’s an American story, and that’s why America…
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…late events like Qaddafi’s and bin Laden’s deaths into video games is also part of what we might call algorithmic sorting: the cultural attempt to simplify complex historical and social issues into patterns that we can recognize and make sense of. Typically, this is accomplished by vastly reducing the variables and historical contexts involved and effectively transforming lived events into games with predictable rules, defeatable “bad guys,” and t…
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…ysia (Usim) medicine and health science faculty, stepping in to defend the pamphlets. The pamphlet arrives as Malaysian courts have recently ruled on two cases that have a significant impact on the LGBT community. The Putrajaya Court of Appeal ruled last November that a state Sharia (Islamic law) ban on cross-dressing was “degrading, oppressive and inhuman.” Unfortunately, the government has appealed the ruling. The second case involves the recent…
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