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Istanbul ‘Haven of Sorts’ For LGBT Syrians and Iraqis; Cayman Islands Affirm Marriage Ban with ‘Holy Bible Evidence’; No Room for LGBTs in Malaysia’s ‘Islam-Based’ Human Rights Policy; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nd 6 indicating exclusively homosexual, 72 percent described themselves as completely heterosexual, 4 percent chose completely homosexual and 19 percent placed themselves somewhere else on the scale. Younger people were less likely to place themselves at one end or the other; 43 percent of 18-24 year-olds placed themselves somewhere between 1 and 5, with 46 percent saying they are completely heterosexual and another 6 percent saying they are compl…

Getting Wright Wrong: Preaching is Not Policy

By Anthony B. Pinn

…mmatory—yes, yes, yes, inflammatory. Yet, do we gain a full sense of his 30-plus-year ministry through a few statements taken from his sermons? If one imagines that his sermons probably average thirty minutes in length, what do we learn from a three-minute clip? What of the better than sixty outreach ministries found at Trinity Church? Do they speak to hopelessness, defeatism, “un-American” attitudes? What do they tell us about Rev. Wright’s take…

How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian Worldview”

By Sarah Posner

…erials to start children as early as first grade on a diet of his collision-of-worldviews thesis. That framework forms the basis for his conspiracy-minded theories about American progressives, the Democratic Party, and what Noebel depicts as a fifth column right inside the US Congress led by “hardcore socialist” Nancy Pelosi. Noebel has also looked to Lind, writing in Understanding the Times that Lind “is not bashful in identifying the Marxist inf…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…ducators and schoolchildren in Catholic schools as their messengers.” In an 18-page document disseminated through Catholic schools, the bishops call marriage equality a “serious injustice” according to the Goalburn Post. Titled “Don’t Mess With Marriage,” the document warns against the perceived dangers of same-gender marriages and says it is “unjust, gravely unjust” to allow same-gender couples equal rights to marriage. The bishops say people “wi…

Religious Right to Newsweek: ‘Woe to [You] for Even Printing This’

By Bill Berkowitz

…s who are committed to restoring gay marriage rights in California.” For up-to-date info on campaigns, activities and events, check out the No on H8 Myspace page. Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao: In a surprising turn of events, Anh “Joseph” Cao has become the first Vietnamese American to serve in Congress, having defeated beleaguered Congressman William Jefferson in Louisiana’s 2nd District and becoming the first Republican elected to Congress from t…

Are We Living Through World War III?

By Haroon Moghul

…s to mujahidin fighters to resist and defeat that occupation. In 2003, the United States mustered a coalition of some forty-nine countries, which was strong enough to swiftly topple Iraq’s government, but not strong enough to pacify Iraq, establish a new government, or secure it from foreign fighters. Jihadists poured into Iraq, intent on creating havoc; newly empowered Shi’a forces often allied with Iran. This has long been a global conflict, tho…

In Latest Round of LGBTQ Discrimination Cases Before SCOTUS, Religion Is ‘The Elephant in the Room’

By Patrick Hornbeck

…not have recognized it. (It was Justice Scalia who, in a Title VII case in 1998, observed that “statutory provisions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed.”) On the other side, the employers and their supporters insisted that the Congress that enacted Title VII did not intend for the wor…

What Masterpiece Cakeshop Oral Arguments Suggest About the Future of LGBT Discrimination

By Patrick Hornbeck

…e Court had acknowledged would, and could, disagree on the question of same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage may be settled law, but our post-Obergefell society is clearly continuing to wrestle with an issue on which substantial numbers of Americans continue to differ, usually for religious reasons. Masterpiece Cakeshop gets at a number of disputed questions, but regardless of which way the justices rule, others will likely go unanswered. Beginning…

Mother (Nature) Will Eat You: Lars von Trier’s Antichrist

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…backs and intercuts reminiscent of a Bill Viola video; high-contrast, black-and-white lovemaking; textured, hypnotic, surrealistic scenes of humans intertwined with nature; and extreme close-ups of human eyes, bamboo in a glass vase, and unkempt hair (the camera sporadically zooms in on the backs of heads a la Hitchcock’s Vertigo) all make for a film that is impossible to get out of one’s sensual body. Antichrist’s images and sounds have infiltrat…

Americans Lose Faith, Sinning with Transfats, the Elusive God Particle

By Michael J. Altman

…nn Beck (remember him?) held his rally in Jerusalem on Wednesday. More than 1,000 folks (mostly Christians) showed up. For personal use when the comments section makes you want to swear: litany for the conversion of internet thugs. First it was protesters, then it was rain that complicated the pope’s appearance at World Youth Day. Meanwhile, the Spanish government is asking for help from the Vatican to turn dictator Francisco Franco’s grave into a…