Religion Dispatches
…es are not there anymore. In this sense, the holoband world is an inferior world, a world in which you die, and nothing is left of you, nor can you reenter it ever again. With Daniel’s realization at the end of the show that Zoe might just be in that MCP, and inside the Cylon body, one wonders if he will embrace his daughter, or if he will just seek to exploit her once again to further his ambitions for his corporation. I hope that the essence of…
Read More…g “QueerFest,” which calls itself one of the largest public LGBT events in Russia, is scheduled to run September 18-27 in St. Petersburg with the theme, “the Art of Being Yourself.” According to organizers, the event “celebrates its sixth year in the context of increasing pressures on civil society and the LGBT community. In view of ever diminishing spaces for freedoms, ‘QueerFest’ becomes an island for safety and self-expression for many. “We exp…
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…instream and is testing Indonesia’s image for moderation. Echoing venomous headlines in conservative newspapers, government officials and leaders in areas from psychiatry to religion also have heaped condemnation on homosexuality. The defense minister even said gays and lesbians were a more serious threat to national security than nuclear war. The AP story quotes a lesbian activist who says she has been receiving late-night phone calls for several…
Read More…e resistance sites like No Shame Movement, a website on which people share stories about breaking up with purity culture, and #LifeAfterIKDG, which tracks critiques of the hallmark purity how-to text, I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. Harris himself suggests he’s rethinking his message, and will do so in a film with an anticipated release date in the fall. As Pure demonstrates, the interconnected messages about sexual abstinence before mar…
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…of evil, and stories about hunting vampires naturally invoke a Manichaean worldview: a struggle between absolute good and evil. A consequence of Grahame-Smith’s historical fiction is that it utterly vilifies the South, portraying them as enemies of humanity itself. Jefferson Davis, as vampire collaborator, explains, “Mr. Lincoln, vampires are superior to man, just as man is superior to the Negro. It’s the natural order of things, you see.” In the…
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…his isn’t productive,” I concluded. And I moved on. There are ways to tell stories from different communities in a manner that both confronts the hard ugly truths and fosters productive and engaging conversation. In this new era, I see how necessary this is, and how it has shaped my approach to stories. It’s shaped my coverage of skinheads deradicalizing from white power movements, and it’s shaped my storytelling in Kaleidoscope, where we unpack s…
Read More…crats and faith. The trope is more played out than The Wise Cab Driver or Trump Voters Still Like Trump tropes. Religion reporters need to be smart enough to understand that the pressures to talk about faith are not symmetrical. Dems do not, nor should they, talk about faith in the same way Republicans do. So maybe instead of creating a narrative that implies they should, they could write a story about why they do things differently? To put things…
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…reby normalizing extremism and eroding the public’s ability to get at the truth. Civil society can’t function without easy access to good information. As I wrote recently here on RD, “Post-truth politics is a powerful tool for authoritarians.” By neutralizing damaging facts with bogus counter-narratives, corrupt individuals who already have power, money, and privilege can more easily exploit those advantages to maintain their ability to oppress th…
Read More…be—a chimp and a bonobo. Worthwhile to remember, lest we fall prey to the crudest affirmations of social structures as if they were simply part of the natural world. Therein lies the madness of pretending that lobster serotonin has anything useful to say about gender justice, as Jordan Peterson has alleged. Other animal studies scholars have tried to reaffirm what’s helpful about a certain kinship with animals, perhaps recalling theologian Martin…
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…who loved them, and I do not intend for his friends and family to read my words,” Kendall told RD. He continued: I am struggling with Nicolosi’s death for the simple reason that he got away with it. All the pain I suffered at his hands, and the harm he caused countless LGBT people because of his work—he gets away with all of it. Nicolosi leaves a legacy built in human suffering. His work leaves behind nothing of merit—only the wreckage of LGBT li…
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