Religion Dispatches
…dless of their…profession,” but I somehow doubt that sanitation workers outnumber investment bankers in SoulCycle studios (one of which is across the street from the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Tribeca). Classes with popular instructors sell out in minutes, and patrons can pay upwards of $70 per class in order to get priority booking. “Ultimately, this is what brand religion is all about: stoking emotion with a combination of scarcity and urgenc…
Read More…tion program that works with LGBT youth. The camp organization refused the booking because it said WayOut promotes homosexual activity, which counters its understanding of the Bible. The appeals court upheld a 2010 finding of discrimination from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. According to Australia’s ABC, “The Court of Appeals has found there was no legal error in the tribunal’s decision and exemptions to preserve religious free…
Read More
…beat down of Duanna Johnson, an African American transwoman, in a Memphis booking room that was captured on a surveillance video. “I’d be stupid not to go packing now.” Williams lives in Oakland, just outside of San Francisco, and he’s going to check out the San Francisco chapter of Pink Pistols. As a national organization that encourages lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender to arm themselves to prevent hate crimes the Pink Pistols are also a s…
Read More…nfotainment” makes for disinformation and lousy entertainment. Whereas the freethinker and the comic once shared a tour schedule and booking agent, now they are bifurcated by genre and accessibility. Both are degraded by the absence of the other, as the quest for quick hard laughter and serious statistical proof press Carlin and Jacoby to extremist corners of inflexible insight. Jacoby, a self-described “cultural conservationist,” might be right t…
Read More…y the group Faithful America launched a campaign to pressure MSNBC to stop booking Perkins as a guest on its programs, because of his history of anti-gay bigotry. The group attempted to place an ad on MSNBC that sets out their complaint, but MSNBC rejected it: Faithful America’s petition reads: “The Family Research Council is a hate group, and journalists ought to treat it as such. MSNBC must stop inviting Family Research Council spokespeople on t…
Read More…r her Israel trip, as it has done for other presidential hopefuls, instead booking it through a Christian tour agency. He thinks, perhaps, that Palin is miffed that he and other RJC board members have been critical of her, but that she’s unwise to rebuff them because they could be so helpful to her. But this is characteristically Palin behavior — with or without the criticism. She is, for example, the only GOP aspirant who has never spoken at the…
Read More
…nst Dillard, she defended the letter as divinely inspired—an expression of free speech and freedom of religion. Burkhart had trouble finding doctors for her own clinic, when she started exploring the idea of reopening the practice several years ago. One in-state doctor expressed interest, but after his local hospital learned about it, Burkhart said, they threatened to terminate his contract. An anonymous doctor who will work at the clinic describe…
Read More…exuberance. Sorta like skydiving tandem before following up my lessons for free-fall skydiving. That way I can focus on the details I am trying to learn now and be better prepared. As far as umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, goes; it stands to reason that people can visit the ka’abah any time of the year. And so it is. There are still the same ihram prescriptions. There are still certain rites that should be performed. But unless a journey to Makkah c…
Read More
…ded social resource scarcity for those most in need. What this large-scale flight of social resources left in its wake was not an urban demographic characterized by upward mobility but by severe poverty and social isolation. Between 1970 and 1990, the percentage of persons living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40 percent or higher grew from 7.8 to 15.8 percent for blacks and from 7.0 to 9.5 percent for Hispanics, and by 2010 the proportio…
Read More…ommonwealth both in terms of the ownership of the asset and in terms of the common good of widespread open access. Sometimes free isn’t really free….
Read More