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The Polite Islamophobia of the Intellectual

…ne about achieving consciousness under a system of oppression.” To achieve freedom she must escape slavery, not only her own but the slavery of all people ‘captivated’ by Islam. Bayoumi’s principal paragraph on Hirsi Ali reveals more about her motivation and quest than the 35-40 pages of uncritical adulation from Berman. Bayoumi writes: Just as the Bible has the power to move the spirit in the slave narrative, so the Atheist Manifesto loaned to he…

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The Man in the Red Dress: My Unlikely Friendship with Cardinal Francis George

…man secure in his mortality, I thought as I craned my neck to look for the flight attendant refilling wine glasses. I recalled that unflinching newspaper when I learned Cardinal George had died last week after a lengthy battle with cancer, a disease he’d beaten twice before in the years since I left Chicago and the newspaper job that often put me in his company—whether I’d been invited or not. Cardinal George (or “Frannie G,” as some of us media c…

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Norwegian Catholic Church May Stop Civil Marriages; Global LGBT Recap

…d creates a space that is very profound and spiritual for me.” France: Gay Flight Attendants Seek Opt Out From Flights to Iran Earlier this month, gay flights attendants for Air France sought the ability to opt out of working flights on a new route to Tehran; female flight attendants were previously given that option after some objected to the requirement that they wear a head scarf when deplaning in Iran. Malaysia: Top Cop Says LGBT People Cannot…

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More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

…artners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homosexual unions are not in themselves recognized.” Vietnam: Couple marries on airplane flight A Vietnamese lesbian couple celebrated a Valentine’s Day wedding on a Vietjet flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok. Pink News notes, “Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in…

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Trump Doesn’t Need to “Pivot” if Evangelicals Do it For Him

…ify for tax-exemption within religious institutions, into a series of fact-free flights about the muzzling of Christian speech: The first thing we have to do is give our churches their voice back. It’s been taken away. The Johnson amendment has blocked our pastors and ministers and others from speaking their minds from their own pulpits. If they want to talk about Christianity, if they want to preach, if they want to talk about politics, they’re u…

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Why Cliven Bundy Wasn’t A Religious Right Hero

…cation of his religious worldview served to insulate him from conservative flight. Bump writes that Robertson’s “comments about black Americans were buried under a rush to defend the right of Christian Americans to express disapproval of gays,” and that, compared to Bundy Robertson “did a much better job leveraging political sentiment in his favor after his controversial remarks.” But Robertson didn’t have to do much leveraging; his comments came…

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Oh Say, Can You See?:  9/11 Flag Displays and the Flag’s Symbolic Power

…is to convey the enormity of the loss of life, to make otherwise abstract numbers visible. In the Oak Brook commemoration, each flag has attached to it a brief biography of the person killed, with color-coded ribbons differentiating civilians and flight crews from first responders. Orlando, Florida, on the logic that far more were injured in both visible and “invisible” ways, has opted to erect 250,000 flags. It is not death that is primary here,…

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The Bleeding Heart of Muslim Europe

…as Yugoslav, and most recently almost destroyed. And today? As I board the flight to Sarajevo, I’m not sure if I should expect a post-Soviet wasteland, an eerily quiet former war zone, or something else. The flight, though, is reassuringly undistinguished. There are lots of Bosnians, white and Western enough to pass for everyday Americans, though the occasional hijabs might throw you off. There are a few Americans, who seem to be intrepid backpack…

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The Pope’s Gay Priests

…this pope. Just how much dancing is required became apparent after the in-flight chat with journalists and Francis’ now-famous statement: “if a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has goodwill, well who am I to judge them?”  When it comes to making trouble in the dioceses, Francis is practicing what he preaches. Many bishops in this country went into containment mode, issuing statements to their local churches about what the pope had said and es…

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Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)

…of learning is being strictly regulated. In reality, there is no religious freedom in Tibet.” It may seem strange to an outsider that the regulation of monastic institutions—for example, the control of the number of monks in monasteries—should be such an important issue for Tibetans. Let me try and explain why monks and nuns risk years of imprisonment, and indeed their own lives, to protest this and other governmental policies aimed at controlling…

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