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By the Way: Religious Right Losing its Grip?

By Randall Balmer

…ing about meaningful reform on this issue is to change the terms of the conversation and alter the moral climate. Besides, the only thing that both sides of what currently passes for debate over abortion agree on is that making abortion illegal will not have a significant effect on the number of abortions. The developments at Regent University and the University of Notre Dame suggest that younger evangelicals understand that, as do a growing numbe…

C Street Scandal, the Media, the Future of the Family: An Interview with Jeff Sharlet

By Bill Berkowitz

…everybody wants to be in the news, Coe isn’t seeking publicity. Way back in 1966, when he first began assuming leadership of the organization he’d come to re-brand as the Family, he sent out a memo declaring that the time had come to “submerge” the group’s public profile. In a rare interview, he admits that the National Prayer Breakfast—owned and organized by the Family since its founding in 1953, despite its official appearance—isn’t “one tenth o…

Catholic Bishops End Family Synod With Little To Say To Gays; World Congress of Families Has Plenty To Say, None of it Good; How Same-Sex Marriage Came to a Buddhist Temple in Japan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…d known for its cultural hostility to gay rights: sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1980, the number of Catholics in Africa has grown by 238 percent. Perhaps more important, 70 percent of them attend Sunday Mass regularly, compared with just 29 percent in the Americas. Some countries with the fastest growth — Uganda, Nigeria and Kenya — have or are considering laws that make homosexual acts punishable by long prison terms or, in some cases, execution. But…

Can Faith-Based Organizing for Gun Control Work?

By Sarah Posner

…ail the number of gun deaths in America, the number of mass shootings, the number of accidents, the number of suicides. The movement would have more than these grassroots activists. It would have willing politicians, a legal strategy, and lots of money. All of these components would work in tandem to change people’s minds, to pressure lawmakers, to intimidate politicians running for office, to go to court when necessary. With these political, legi…

Why Do Evangelicals And Dems Want Immigration Reform?

By Daniel Schultz

…5 percent to 9 percent. The number of blacks, however, will grow only from 14 percent to 15 percent of the population, making them only half the size of the Hispanic population by 2050. The foreign-born percentage in the population will also grow, reflecting the growth of nonblack minorities. By 2050, about one in five Americans will be foreign born, up from one in eight today. … Hispanics also have historic ties to the Democrats, if not as stron…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ve that the CIA interrogators really “believed” that waterboarding session number 151 was the one that was going to do the trick, succeeding where 150 previous attempts had failed. Protecting Us from the Worst in Ourselves If we have learned nothing else from the shocking photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, then it is this: torture is not about utilitarian calculation—it is about humiliation. It is forbidden because men and women under the stress of…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ts distributor Teodora Film, was that the film was shunned by the more than 1,100 cinemas which are owned by the Church and make up the bulk of Italy’s network of independent/arthouse theatres. The country’s official film board approved Haigh’s Nottingham-set drama for audiences over 14. “I cannot see any other explanation than a problem of homophobia in the Church,” Teodora’s president, Cesare Petrillo, told AFP. “They decided it was unacceptable…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…lition and the way it carries out its politics has dynamically evolved. “A number of Christian right legal agencies have produced manuals for churches and related institutions, to rewrite such things as job descriptions to extend the legal definition of ‘ministry’ in order to seek exemption from labor standards and civil rights laws, and to inoculate themselves against discrimination lawsuits.” Thus, assumptions most of us have about the nature of…

Liberty University’s In-House Conversion ‘Therapist’ Retires, But Will the Christian School Cease This Discredited Practice?

By Lucas Wilson

…, since almost all students who matriculate to Liberty are above the age of 18, such a protection would not have applied. In truth, those over the age of 18 are protected under consumer fraud laws. But since Emerick always framed his services as “pastoral counseling”—a broad umbrella term that does not require a professional therapy license—and since there was no direct monetary exchange between Emerick and his “thousands of sons,” such laws would…

Who’s Scared of Polygamy? A Restrained Case for the “Slippery Slope” Argument

By William E. Smith

…ding Martin Luther. This case and other developments around polygamy in the 16th and 17th centuries are chronicled by John Cairncross. What Lyndal Roper has said about experimenting with marriage in the Reformation holds true for our time too. We have been busy overhauling our marital system at least as thoroughly as happened in the Protestant Reformation so we must ready ourselves for a debate on polygamy, as they had to. And the Reformation deba…