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The Lesser and the Greater Pilgrimage

By Amina Wadud

…icion that I would be more like myself and not so overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. I had stuck with this plan—umrah any time of the year, the further from the three sacred months the better, and then hajj some other year—until my recent stay in Indonesia. I met an Indonesian fashion designer who had one of those life-altering experiences about 15 years ago, after flaunting around in Milan, Italy, where she studied fashion. From that moment on, sh…

“Ex-Gay” is Anti-Gay, Disguised as Compassion

By Tanya Erzen

…day in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, reporters and protesters far outnumbered the ex-gay supporters in attendance. Jerry Falwell was scheduled to address the audience but at the last minute decided to appear via live telecast where his speech was drowned out by heckles and boos. Michael Johnston, an ex-gay who testified to a newfound heterosexuality after years of being homosexual, hurried out the side door after an activist hurled a coconut…

You Had to See This One Coming

By Julie Ingersoll

…s, which raises a further complicating question: who would be appropriate to pat down Barney Frank and Ellen DeGeneres? I wonder if LaBarbera would ask an attending physician in an emergency room if he or she were straight? Wait a minute; he just might. This could get really complicated. On another note in the culture wars over gender and sexuality, I found a new clever T-shirt today from LifeIsLongCo. It says, “Marriage is one man + one woman? No…

Mormon Leader: ‘I’m Sorry’ For Hurtful Legacy of Prop. 8

By Joanna Brooks

…of 2008, when entire congregations were mobilized as precinct-walkers and phonebankers in the service of a political strategy that portrayed gay and lesbian civil marriage rights as a threat to religious freedom and “traditional” families. Still others debated the wisdom of publicizing the apology and the event, worrying aloud that within the highly disciplined LDS Church hierarchy, Jensen—a favorite among liberal Mormons—might suffer some conseq…

O’Donnell At Values Voters Summit

By Sarah Posner

Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is a last-minute addition to the Values Voters Summit schedule, and I can boldly predict she will be a huge hit here. Questions are already being raised—from progressives—about the wisdom of what might be called the masturbation approach to talking about O’Donnell’s candidacy. Mike Tomasky writes, “a nice-looking woman talking about the virtues of chastity, and sharing her special secrets with the…

O’Donnell Disowns Former “Ex-Gay” Associate

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…in. That’s been my experience with the Christian community in general. The minute I was struggling and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know really where I am with this,’ that’s when everyone really turned their back on me.” It’s not a shock really. Once the “ex-gay” industry can’t use these people to make money—I mean, redeem gay people—they have no use for them anymore. Today’s article in the Daily Beast is enlightening on one point: apparently O’D…

Art for Peace: An Interview with Artist Mary Button

By John Shorb

…log was a real priority and so the youth participants were not only from a number of different countries—Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya—they also came from a wide variety of faith backgrounds. One of the things that I became very quickly aware of was how unsure and self-conscious I was about talking about my own faith. I was totally blown away by the openness and ease with which so many of these young people…

Gay-Hating Church Burns “Idols”: A Report

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…ublic, and politicians would “browbeat him and he’ll back down at the last minute.” In preparation for Jones’ capitulation, Westboro Baptist Church announced its own plans to burn the holy book (for the second time, having performed the ritual in 2008) and the American flag, offending Muslims and Americans at home and abroad and reorganizing the counter-protest landscape. After the burning, Shirley Phelps-Roper shared in an interview that half of…

Palin Goes ‘Hopey-Changey,’ But Don’t Call it Political

By Julie Ingersoll

…t (sitting in for Lt Governor Jeff Kottkamp, who had cancelled at the last minute). Heroic Media regional president, Deborah Ortiz, was the only one permitted to ask questions. This session was even more explicitly political as Thrasher, for example, talked about replacing members of Congress in Florida, though not before launching into the night’s familiar refrain: “I don’t want to get too political but we need to change the culture of Congress.”…

Polling Place as Sacred Ground

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…re will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.” While this political season has been filled with selfish jerks of both parties trying to zip up the shoulder to jockey for a better position — such behavior would not have been tolerated at the polling place this morning. There was one man who was heard down the line saying something dispara…