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Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…“feudal, homophobic and very much misogynist”. Uganda: Police arrest pride participants; parade cancelled under mob threat from govt official Organizers cancelled Saturday’s pride parade “after a tense meeting between a senior government official and one of Uganda’s top human rights lawyers,” reports BuzzFeed’s Lester Feder. The government’s Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo reportedly threatened to mobilize a mob if the event went forward. Earlier in…

PCUSA’s Nod to “Traditional” Marriage Understandable, but Not Accurate

By William E. Smith

…ng to their conceptions of marriage. Notice that Presbyterians, like Episcopalians, most evangelicals, and nearly every American Protestant (and unlike so many Christians in the past), can marry after the death of a spouse, can marry a third or fourth cousin without it being considered incestuous, and cannot marry Christ. From a broad historical perspective, therefore, the PCUSA’s new position on marriage is less a revolt from tradition than a min…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…s, and, sure, they would like us to be more like them. Even though they’re part of our society, they’re very separate in many ways. Would it be fair to compare their process to evangelical Christian ex-gay therapy? Philosophically speaking, Scientologists, like some evangelical Christians, believe you can be cured of being gay—or at least the gay people I have met who were members of Scientology say that was what they believed and were told when…

Evangelical Pastor Argues for Full LGBT Inclusion: “I Think It’s Inevitable”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…gely positive, but I think that’s because of the subtitle: “An evangelical pastor’s path to embracing people who are gay, lesbian and transgender into the company of Jesus,” signals where it’s going. The people who are reading it then, are fairly open minded on the question or understand it’s an issue that needs to be wrestled with, whereas the entrenched conservatives are just dismissing it. Within Vineyard, our new leadership team has made it cl…

Naked Jihad

By Kate Blanchard

…ke.) In the end, small-f feminism is as diverse as the women (and men) who participate in it. If Tunisians and Ukrainians want to get naked in order to make a statement, more power to them. And if Pakistani or Parisian women want to tell these women off, so be it. Each of them will reap consequences, both predictable and unpredictable. None of us can control the effect our words, actions, and images have on other people, so we do the only thing we…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…offer their own stories so that we can build a larger canon of stories and ideas that demonstrate the value of having more open, challenging, compassionate, and patient conversations about religious differences….

Scottish Episcopal Church Angers Conservative Anglicans With Embrace of Same-Sex Marriage; and more in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…g it was “an assault on Bulgarian values”. Ataka even wants to criminalise participants of the Sofia Pride Parade. So far, not one government official has condemned those scandalous statements. Malaysia: Government drops ‘preventing homosexuality’ from video contest After public criticism, the government dropped from a sex education video competition a category on “preventing” homosexuality. Europe: Governments begin accepting refugees from anti-g…

The Internet Is Not Killing Religion, Religion is Killing Religion

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ier might well have declared, offering data on the correlation between the number of pipers in a village and the number of butts in local church pews. Across the pond in the American colonies, religion was not faring much better. In his masterful reconstruction of American religious history, Awash in a Sea of Faith (from which the previous anecdote is drawn), Jon Butler reports that Christianity was “in crisis” in the New World: Pennsylvania aside…

Was Ghana Anti-Gay Scare Just Politics?

By Warren Throckmorton

…make any homosexual intimacy punishable by life in prison, or death if the participants are HIV positive. In the months prior to the bill’s emergence, Muslim and Christian ministers called on the government to crack down on gays. Very similar rhetoric is now being heard in Ghana, with gays being accused of recruiting in schools and contributing to the rise in disease and moral decay. If the media reports are an indication, Mr. Knight is correct th…

6 Overlooked Takeaways From a Reviewer of Controversial Texas Textbooks

By David R. Brockman

…need a solid grasp of the religions of the world. One thing I learned from participating in the 2014 textbook process is just how important public school textbooks are in shaping attitudes towards religions. Certainly college-level religious studies courses such as those we offer at SMU play a vital role in increasing religious literacy, but attitudes toward religions are formed at an early age. While students today can draw on a vast array of inf…