Religion Dispatches
…to defend “traditional” marriage and defend “religious liberty,” which is code for defending the religious right’s ability to bully gay and lesbian people at will using God as their shield. But, wait, there’s more. Gingrich has hit the conservative Christian trifecta by sitting down with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board to affirm that opposition to marriage equality stating that there is a “big difference between saying that you’re to ha…
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…ot points out, philosophy in the ancient world was not so much a system or code as “a way of being.” Philosophy, in this sense, is enmeshed in a life-world. Writers from Marcus Aurelius to Francis Bacon to Ralph Waldo Emerson have conducted such experiments in living as spiritual exercise, a task that entailed writing as philosophic engagement. Philosophy in this mode, Hadot explains, is a continuous process, to be renewed in each instant—a practi…
Read More…port was released, Monk openly appeared (in possible violation of military code) at the Values Voters Summit for a panel. The Liberty Institute’s Jeff Mateer put his hand on Monk’s shoulder and praised him, saying, “We’ve gotten phone calls from military members who are undergoing discrimination…and with the exception of him, those folks that have called us have all wanted to remain anonymous. Sergeant Monk, to his credit, is willing to stand up.”…
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…ympathetic to the advertising. But we don’t take a position on this except promoting dialogue. At Sojourners, we’ve decided to have a safe place for dialogue and even disagreement on our staff and in our constituency. That’s interesting, since the Believe Out Loud ad could be best interpreted as . . . promoting dialogue. Sojourners, so far, has been silent on the Rev. Robert Chase’s piece we published here. In the court of public opinion Twitter,…
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…sociation in 2002 for violations of six different provisions of its ethics code, including provisions that prohibit counselors from “seek[ing] to meet their personal needs at the expense of clients,” taking advantage of the “trust and dependency of clients,” and deceptive promotion of products. At Wyler’s Arizona retreat, I was introduced to that healing touch therapy: I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leani…
Read More…ed Parenthood in which he promised to deliver, first thing, on getting the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) passed. For the religious right, FOCA is the devil’s bill, one which would codify reproductive freedom and dash their plans to shackle women to maternity wards. Obama started softening his pro-choice position in early 2008, when he was feeling the heat from the right’s virulent Jeremiah Wright smear campaign, and continued to do so throughout th…
Read More…e subject of an investigation about whether he violated his town council’s code of conduct, which includes a clause saying that councilors must treat other people with respect. In the U.S. meanwhile, a congressional candidate who blamed gays for tornadoes and autism won the primary and will be the Republican challenger to Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Taiwan: Church-Sponsored ‘Happy Family’ Rally Draws Pro-Equality Protesters, Including Buddhist Nuns On Su…
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…when applied to homosexuality, unhealthy. For our community, “change” is a code word for repression, distortion, and fear. So LGBT people must either abandon repentance or queer it. If we are not to reject it, we must make it our own, make it more complex, set aside its oversimplifications. The good news is that this is a gift to everybody else. Total surrender to heteronomous ethics is unhealthy, period. It may be prescribed by some, but it is al…
Read More…terpretation will remember that John’s Revelation was written as a kind of code to an audience hard-pressed by persecution and loss. Few believe that its message was intended to be taken literally—much less as a roadmap to events two millennia in the future—but rather to provide comfort and reassurance to a struggling community. It is a bitter irony therefore to see it taken out of context and used to attack a politician offering a platform of hop…
Read More…tions for LGBT people vary so widely by state, city, and locality, whereas freedom of religion (notably not “religious freedom”) is a core value enshrined in the Constitution, it’s safe to assume that those who believe their “traditional values” are under assault will continue to use every weapon at their disposal in an effort to fend off the inevitable. It remains to be seen how successful the American right wing’s understanding of “religious fre…
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