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Exclusive: Columnist Jonathan Merritt on his Sudden Departure From Religion News Service

By Kaya Oakes

…lete Socolovsky from the email chain. When Merritt’s assistant scheduled a phone meeting with Gallagher to discuss the contract in April of this year, Gallagher never informed Socolovsky about it. When Merritt finally reached Gallagher on the phone in April of this year, he says Gallagher was “placing the blame [for the delay] on Jerome” for not reading Merritt’s emails, which “was all very weird and unprofessional, and it made me uncomfortable.”…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ctor of Sexual Minorities Uganda. “It’s very vague.” Inside the bill are a number of provisions that aim to monitor potential “subversive activities” by NGOs, according to a parliamentary committee report. Among those is a stipulation that would allow the Ugandan government to refuse registering any nonprofit organization if it’s “in the public interest to do so.”’ While the term “public interest” is defined in the Ugandan constitution, human righ…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ciety,” he said. CNN traces the start of the backlash to early 2016 when a number of political leaders began making “unprompted attacks on Indonesia’s LGBT community.” It notes that conservative Islam is a growing political force, evident in the arrest and conviction of Jakarta’s Christian governor on blasphemy charges. The report says human rights activists have been disappointed by President Joko Widodo’s “lackluster” defense of LGBT people. Sal…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…lots of other North Carolinians’) values like so much heresy. Every time I buy something with sales tax, I tacitly support that government. So I do feel personally out of place, without recourse, isolated, backward. I offered this concern to Bell when we spoke on the phone. He responded thoughtfully, but cautiously. “Oh yeah. See the thing is: we actually do have real, life-or-death problems going on. And many of us are totally convinced that this…

Mel Gibson’s ‘To-Do’ List

By Becky Garrison

…peat Pope Benedict 1. Order unkosher communion wafers 2. Get a little behind in work 3. Party like it’s 1483 4. Two-four-six-eight, who should I excommunicate? 5. Order Mother Teresa sticky buns 6. Fine vendors selling Pope on a rope Bristol Palin 1. Pray for mom’s soul 2. Buy Revolve 2010 (Biblezine) 3. Get Promise Keepers application for Levi 4. Become a True Woman 5. Baby Making Time! 6. Refill prescription for Prozac Spencer Pratt 1. Get saved…

Healed of the Sin of Religion: At Church with Sara Miles

By Lisa Webster

…y. Or you can’t, if you don’t have the money. But at this table nobody can buy the bread and wine. It’s just given away. And so that is how we run the food pantry. You can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you can’t deserve it. You make the point of not making people sign up, or sign in, the way we do if we need government aid. Right. You don’t have to prove anything. The imitation of God’s gesture in feeding us all is frightening, and difficult, and e…

How the Catholic Church Broke the Health Insurance it Advocated For

By Patricia Miller

…ou’re never going to use.” Now aside from the fact that “forcing” women to buy health insurance policies that cover prostate cancer is, in the bad vacation home analogy, like “buying a bungalow on the Jersey Shore that you are never going to use,” Shimkus is correct. Before the ACA, many individual insurance policies didn’t cover maternity care. Women who wanted that luxury needed to pay for a pregnancy rider that ran about $5,000—in other words,…

New Mormon Anti-Gay Policy Sparks Mass Exodus From Church; Christian AID Workers in Africa Refuse to Help Gay Refugees; Ukraine Rejects, Then Accepts EU-Required Gay Rights Law; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nion: LGBT Rights in progress reports for nations seeking EU membership On Thursday, the European Commission published its annual progress reports on seven countries’ progress toward EU membership: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey. The reports include information on LGBTI issues in those countries, summarized in a statement by the EP’s Intergroup on LGBT Rights: The reports show that LGBTI people c…

Mexico moves toward national marriage equality; Greek govt announces civil partnership legislation; Pope warns against ‘secularism and relativism’; Global LGBT recap

By Peter Montgomery

…be learned through experiences in life. In every society, there is a small number of people with homosexuality tendencies. “The practice needs regulation like any other human behaviour especially to protect the vulnerable. There is need for further studies to address sexuality in the African context.” It was later found that the study claimed no such thing, and the politicians had been deliberately highlighting phrases which already suited their v…