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The Gospel Church and the Ruining of Gay Lives: An Interview with Anthony Heilbut

By Douglas Harrison

…, and then I say, thinking of all the ruined gay lives, this really is the number that no man can number. It’s also interesting to me that “Writing It Out” is followed by the section “War on the Children.” Such an organization suggests that the latter was a reaction against the former—that as these voices emerge, there’s this really virulent reaction culturally against them. And also it’s so very political. As the church has become more right-win…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…pproved 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, that it should be censored and they have used their power to paralyse the distribution. Who knew the Catholic Church was a dominant owner of movie theaters? AFP offers some explanation: The large number of Italian cinemas owned…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ers, a CIA prisoner may be subjected to two 2-hour “sessions” per day. In any given “session,” the detainee may be subjected to as many as six applications of water, each lasting up to 40 seconds. That is eight full minutes of the experience of drowning in a single day. And the technique may be applied on five separate days within a 30-day period. Then comes the final sentence, so bland and understated as to be easily missed. Zubaydah was subjecte…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…residential candidates remain prominent and the movement has increased its numbers in the Congress and in state governments and functions as a major and sometimes the dominant faction in the Republican Party in many states. The Christian Right remains one of the most powerful movements in American history. I should add that the implications of these things are broader than may meet the eye. Donald Trump’s calls for restricting Muslims from traveli…

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

By Lucas Wilson

…ecades-long work as a conversion therapist—nor, for that matter, is there any mention of conversion therapy anywhere on Liberty’s website. As is common with most practitioners of conversion therapy today, despite their belief that sexual orientations and/or gender expressions can be changed, they don’t publicly advertise their ineffective and deeply damaging “therapy.” Another survivor of Emerick’s conversion therapy, a 2017 graduate who asked to…

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

By William E. Smith

…to revisit the old slippery slope argument that some have pushed for so many years. In other words, now that same-sex marriage is legal, what’s next? According to a number of pundits, such as Fredrik DeBoer at Politico, it’s polygamy. I count myself among this group. This question is pressing in light of the fact that support for polygamy has risen rapidly (from 7% to 16%) among Americans over the past few years. Some liberal commentators, unders…

Republicans “Evangelizing” Catholic Voters

By Patricia Miller

…s. The irony is that Bush, an Episcopalian convert to Catholicism, is in many ways the most traditional Catholic of the sizeable number of Catholics jostling for the GOP nod. Bobby Jindal has labeled himself a “Catholic Evangelical” and even hosted “The Response,” a prayer extravaganza that amounts to a full-out paean to Christian nationalism. Rick Santorum has long courted the Christian right with his anti-abortion rhetoric and was once named by…

The Great Secret of Constitutional Law: Why Proposition 8 Will (and perhaps should) Be Upheld

By Bruce Ledewitz

…of same-sex marriage, legislative reform efforts were gaining ground in a number of states. Granted, these were usually modest civil union compromises, but they were not sparking the kind of backlash that led to the Proposition 8 effort in California. Such statutory reform could have laid the foundation for further legal development toward full recognition of the right to marry. In retrospect, the federal courts were probably wise to avoid any su…

Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…xploring their spirituality in different ways.’ I think eventually a large number of those people will re-affiliate in some way, shape, or form—but when they do, the actual institutions of religion will be very different because of the demands those people make on new kinds of churches. I look at that whole arc of people who are leaving church because of the failure of the institution, and I don’t see that as threatening. I see that as a really ex…

5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Overthink the New Pew Data’s Impact on Politics

By Sarah Posner

…e is no other religious group analyzed in the survey that has experienced anything close to that kind of ratio of losses to gains via religious switching,” Smith said. Evangelicals, on the other hand, have seen their share of the adult population drop very slightly (less than a one percent drop, but still around a quarter of the U.S. adult population). But their overall numbers are up because they have experienced net gains from religious switchin…