Religion Dispatches
…o take but two bellwether issues. If the swing voters in the swing states knew about these stances, they’d be less likely to vote for Romney, even though he won the first debate in convincing, alpha-dog style. So it’s obviously in Romney’s interest to leave that stuff for the base and hush it up when it comes to winning over the middle. But that partisan preference doesn’t explain why the president never mentioned social or religious issues, and w…
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…ierarchy of information and affect is so intractable that new information, new ideas, new encounters can’t reshape your affects. And in a lot of ways, I think what we’re seeing right now is a sort of a struggle going on between different affects, different affective strategies for responding to the situation. I do think that people can be confronted with new perspectives that give them an avenue to another affect. The other piece of viral content…
Read More…up of Muslims, including feminist journalist Asra Nomani, is calling for a new movement: “We are Muslims who live in the 21st century. We stand for a respectful, merciful and inclusive interpretation of Islam. We are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal must defeat the ideology of Islamism, or politicized Islam, which seeks to create Islamic states, as well as an Islamic caliphate. We seek to reclaim the progressive spirit wit…
Read More…s, listening to speeches at the League of Women Voters, demonstrating with Code Pink and Le Front Des Lesbiennes Radicales, and generally gathering with other women to no good end. Now, I actually was there when the original plot was hatched, funnily enough: It was back in 1973, at the Women’s Exchange tea room in Eugene, Oregon. (To the public, it was billed as a Missionary Society presentation.) We had just finished singing a song about the weav…
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…ghly a third have to do with LGBT people. “Religious freedom” has become a code-word for those looking to stymie LGBT equality. Any “threat” to marriage always seems to come from those hoping to access the institution, but never from heterosexuals (despite escalating rates of divorce, domestic violence, and infidelity in such unions). Defending “bathroom privacy” is a thinly veiled (and well-documented) scare-tactic used to demonize transgender pe…
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…gaging in religious offense (listed under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code) can face a prison sentence, a hefty fine, or an extra-judicial killing. Whatever the trigger is, and whether or not arrests are made, we see that violence often takes place shortly after. Often, these rumors spread via Facebook or WhatsApp. Soon, a mob will gather. They will destroy homes, shops, and places of worship belonging to the minority community. Law enforceme…
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…ons, such as a Sikh who successfully sued the Army in 2015 over a grooming code that would have required him to shave his beard and remove his turban. Justice, not to mention old wisdom about geese and ganders, demands that our judicial system should treat like cases alike. Either sincere religious conviction should be a defense, or it shouldn’t. There should be a healthy debate about the place and extent of religious exemption in contemporary, pl…
Read More…ana will be on Utah ballots in November). I’m no expert on Utah’s criminal code, but I have a strong suspicion that it might have something to say about Kirby’s actions. In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne argues that in patriarchal cultures, “a woman is regarded as owing her human capacities to particular people… her personhood is held to be owed to others, in the form of service labor, love, and loyalty. ” It seems obvious to me that…
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…n Tarrant, the Australian White nationalist terrorist who killed 51 Muslim New Zealanders in two separate attacks in Christchurch, shared his xenophobic manifesto, The Great Replacement, online before livestreaing his rampage via Facebook. Notably, Tarrant would directly influence Patrick Crusius’ horrific act of terrorism targeting Latinos in El Paso, Texas five months later as well as Cruisus’ manifesto. So that these imbalances can be rectified…
Read More…the only person who thinks this is an insane provision to have in the tax code? Medical science is evidence-based and faith is the “evidence of things not seen,” according to the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. So I guess they’re really the same, right? Let’s fund them both! But no, no, and NO to any federal dollars for abortion, saith the good senator from Salt Lake. Hatch narrowly lost his push to get this prohibition into the Se…
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