Search Results for:

VIPREG2024 1xbet new promo code Kenya

Growing Up Gay in 666: Fred Phelps in Retrospect

…h deep within, are rare.” Someone Else’s Fear Far from spreading the “Good News” and attracting new converts, prolonged exposure to Rev. Fred Phelps’ interpretation of scripture turned at least one of his sons into an atheist. Nate Phelps is one of four children to flee their father’s madness; a path four grandchildren, so far, have followed. While growing up hiding my sexuality in Topeka 666 may have made me feel like the Antichrist, the stories…

Read More

Common Ground: Winning the Battle, Losing the Culture War

…policy fronts under special political leadership.” These facts are neither new nor news except, perhaps, inside the Beltway. “White evangelicals are the most likely to have social issue priorities,” Green explains. The way voters concerned about values lean in any specific election after weighing social and economic issues “may simply be differences in values prompted in large measure by campaigns where the GOP stresses morality with success and t…

Read More

The Democrats Got Religion, At Huge Cost

…ntrists” was about a “broader agenda” than the culture wars. They wanted a new president to address poverty, health care reform, and global warming. But it was clear, nonetheless, that these leaders and the constituency they supposedly represented still demanded that Democrats stop being so strident on abortion. By August, then, Democrats agreed to let Rick Warren be the arbiter of the candidates’ faith cred; Obama cringed at abortion questions an…

Read More

The (Mostly Catholic) Anti-Abortion Roe v. Wade Schlep

…. It included Mass followed by Confession, the National Rosary for Life (a new concept), and the observance of the Holy Hours for Life (another theological novelty) led by pro-life seminarians. Perhaps in addition to being a spiritual exercise the Vigil was also a good way to “house” a lot of people without running into fire code violations. I could not find any other religious events advertised. Could it be that people of other faiths simply held…

Read More

Pat Robertson’s Women Warriors Leading Spiritual Warfare In Zimbabwe

…ocess of drafting a new Constitution that will supposedly pave the way for new elections. The African Centre for Law and Justice is aiming to do in Zimbabwe precisely what the religious right seeks to accomplish in the United States: declare the country a “Christian nation” guided by biblical principles, outlaw abortion, and ostracize and criminalize LGBT people. In the ACLJ, Bourland and Mpofu have powerful allies. Sekulow, who has been named one…

Read More

Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church: When Adults are Victims

…n Diego, a pastoral and family care center dedicated to “the formation and promotion of Catholic leaders in the Hispanic community.” In her lawsuit, Birge charges that Hernandez was such an involved participant in Centro San Juan that its Director, Luis Soto, referred to him as an employee. Hernandez, who was trained at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, and the Mexican-American Catholic College in San Antonio, was also the 200…

Read More

Indonesia’s Anti-Porn Bill is Anti-Pluralism

…ated into criminalizing such styles, coming uncomfortably close to a dress code. Many of those against the bill are worried that it threatens national unity; though Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, it has significant minorities from other religions who feel that this bill is pushing a definition of pornography under the guise of “Islamicizing” the entire nation or riding roughshod over Indonesia’s secular pluralism. There are…

Read More

How (Not) to Understand Romney’s Time as an LDS Bishop

…cigarette and a beer (both forbidden according to the LDS Church’s dietary code, “The Word of Wisdom”), more substantial coverage this week is focusing on Romney’s service as bishop of his LDS congregation in Belmont, Massachusetts in the 1980s.  On Monday, the Washington Post offered a revealing account of Bishop Romney’s interactions with Boston’s robust Mormon feminist community during tense years for the movement, when the LDS Church played a…

Read More

Gay Men Detained and Killed in Chechnya, and More in the Global LGBT Recap

…hnya. The disappearances, confirmed by Novaya Gazeta, a Russian opposition newspaper, and reported by the New York Times on Saturday. It began, Novaya Gazeta reported, after a Moscow-based gay rights group, GayRussia.ru, applied for permits to stage gay pride parades in four cities in Russia’s predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, of which Chechnya is a part. The group had not focused on the Muslim areas. It had been applying for permits for…

Read More

It’s the Theology, Stupid: Why the Shocking SBC Report is Anything But Surprising

…ighly doubt that the use of “Letters of Good Standing” and the adoption of new “Codes of Conduct” (why either term is capitalized in the report is a mystery to me) will have much impact. Under the white supremacist patriarchy that still shapes so much of the American experience—not least in the SBC and similar churches—predatory white men will always be able to find people willing to attest to their “good character.” I’m reminded of Supreme Court…

Read More