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By the Way: Religious Right Losing its Grip?

By Randall Balmer

…a has staked out the rather sensible position that the way to diminish the number of abortions is not to legislate against the practice, which almost certainly will create a huge backlash and arguably represents an infringement of liberties. The way to diminish the incidence of abortion, he counters, is to diminish demand through sex education and the availability of contraceptives. The only way truly to bring about meaningful reform on this issue…

Catholic Bishops End Family Synod With Little To Say To Gays; World Congress of Families Has Plenty To Say, None of it Good; How Same-Sex Marriage Came to a Buddhist Temple in Japan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…have been fleeing to Europe for years. But experts estimate that a record number of gays and lesbians seeking asylum, as many as 50,000, will arrive this year in Germany, the European nation accepting the largest number of refugees. Rather than leaving their home countries specifically because of anti-gay persecution, many are fleeing violence and war in nations such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Once in Europe, gays and lesbians are herded alo…

Can Faith-Based Organizing for Gun Control Work?

By Sarah Posner

…ail the number of gun deaths in America, the number of mass shootings, the number of accidents, the number of suicides. The movement would have more than these grassroots activists. It would have willing politicians, a legal strategy, and lots of money. All of these components would work in tandem to change people’s minds, to pressure lawmakers, to intimidate politicians running for office, to go to court when necessary. With these political, legi…

Why Do Evangelicals And Dems Want Immigration Reform?

By Daniel Schultz

…immigration reform: Hispanics will drive minority growth above all. Their numbers will triple to 133 million by 2050 from 47 million today, while the number of non-Hispanic whites will remain essentially flat. Hispanics will double as a percentage of the population from 15 percent to 30 percent. The population of Asian Americans will also come close to doubling, going from 5 percent to 9 percent. The number of blacks, however, will grow only from…

Meeting on the Bridge: Fr. James Martin’s Ministry to LGBT Catholics Becomes a Book

By Kaya Oakes

…to get more upset about these things until I realized a couple of things. Number one, not everyone’s going to like you. Number two, engaging with these people in arguments is often fruitless. Number three, a lot of times they refuse to listen. And number four, a very small percentage of them are actually crazy. There’s a great scene in a movie called The Trouble with Angels from the 1960s. It’s about a Catholic girls’ school outside of Philadelph…

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

…-winner “Spotlight” which deals with clerical sex abuse in Boston and was classified as “complex.” Only very rarely does the guidance make it clear the Church does not want a film shown at all with the only other recent example being Chilean director Pablo Larrain’s “El Club”, in which the main characters are all Catholic priests, including one with a history of sexually abusing children. The Church’s lingering influence in Italian public life was…

Is Torture Utilitarian?

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ms. And that leads to some very bizarre moral reasoning. Utilitarianism is number-crunching, but of a very peculiar kind; in its crudest forms, it seems to imply that you can measure pleasure and pain, and that by maximizing the pleasure of the greatest number of people, you may be able to justify the infliction of pain on a select few. We see that strange logic at work in these memoranda. First, the CIA justified waterboarding with the “ticking t…

Why We Must Reclaim “Religious Freedom” from Christian Conservatives

By Bill Berkowitz

…ments against recognition of interracial marriage and relationships in the last century) is that a business discriminating against same-sex couples is exercising a reasonable extension of their religious opposition to marriage equality. State legislation that included the Hobby Lobby principle in this way has been attempted in several states, but has so far only been enacted in Mississippi. A Hobby Lobby-type bill that passed in Indiana was later…

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

By Lucas Wilson

…nd thousands of sons.” This disturbing sentiment hints at the overwhelming number of students who were habitually subjugated to Emerick’s chaotic work. The question, however, remains: While neither he nor Liberty referred to him as a therapist of any kind, how was it legal for Emerick, someone who’s not a licensed therapist, to get away with offering such services? The first part of the answer is that for the majority of the time Emerick was offer…