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Burma’s Spirit Festival, and More in This Week’s Global LGBT Roundup

By Peter Montgomery

…ay village.” An estimated 250,000 visitors descend on Taung Pyone Nat Pwe (Spirit Festival), the largest of its kind in Burma’s calendar. Nats are spirits which have existed alongside Burmese Buddhist culture since the 11th century. Worshipped across the country, there are 37 in total and they have a little more cheek – and more vices – than the Buddhas. Most nats, so tradition goes, have met a violent death, and when they revisit earth, they must…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…he Washington Post reports. “Because, you know, it’s been banned.” Finland: 800+ same-sex couples married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warne…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…ough the region, via Istanbul, I took some pictures to capture some of the spirit of the place for lack of a better term. When you bring that many people together, chasing after money and the chance to strike it big—again, think American Wild West, for better and worse—you get… things that surprise you. Or, at the least, things you do not expect. • • • • • • • • ⬆ Before praying, Muslims perform a ritual ablution known as wudu’, which includes…

Does War Make Sense? Science and Religion on the Battlefield

By Nathan Schneider

…tual community,” linking alienated elements of the Muslim diaspora through cheap communications technology and easy air travel. Islamist military tactics (Web sites as command centers, commercial airplanes as weapons) developed not simply from Hollywood movies, as was so often claimed following the 2001 attacks, but from the experience that constitutes the Muslim sacred community. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is therefore at least partly right in insist…

Orthodox TV Channel Offers Gays One-Way Ticket Out of Russia; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…at’ to Polish identity.” Russia: Orthodox TV channel offers to buy one-way tickets to help gay people leave country Tsargrad TV, a channel affiliated with right-wing Russian Orthodox activists and modeled after Fox News, offered to pay for a one-way ticket overseas for gay people who want to emigrate. The channel was funded by Konstantin Maofeev, a billionaire known as “God’s oligarch” who dreams of Vladimir Putin becoming a Tsar. More from the BB…

Pope Tweeted into Retirement

By Rachel Wagner

…ernet in the early nineties for most people consisted largely of acquiring plane tickets, reading relatively static documents, and emailing acquaintances. By 2004, the year before John Paul died, search engines had become sophisticated and powerful, and the immensely popular online world Second Life was in its third year. MySpace had appeared the year before, and Mark Zuckerberg was feverishly writing the code that would become Facebook. YouTube…

Our Lady of Good Hope and Excellent Behavior: Why this Apparition and Why Now?

By Lisa Bitel

…rimages are much easier now, at least for the middle class that can afford plane tickets to Medjugorje and Civitavecchia. Pilgrims learn from major apparition sites exactly how to watch for the Virgin and what to do when someone spots her. And it’s much easier for the news of an apparition to reach reporters, now that visionaries and their witnesses use video cameras and the World Wide Web. President Obama made the news last week when he made a pi…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…ounded a website, No Longer Quivering, for women escaping and healing from spiritual abuse. But I didn’t quit going to church right away. Even after admitting that I had become an atheist, I began attending the local Salvation Army church to give my kids some continuity amidst the many changes in our lives. We had friends at the church and I liked having Thursday morning coffee with Lieutenant Heather, the enthusiastic pastor whose response to all…

Behind the Inclusive-Sounding Ads of this $100 Million PR-Blitz-for-Jesus it’s the Same Old Conservative Christian Fantasy

By Chrissy Stroop

…in a way that’s accessible and demonstrable to those of us on this mortal plane—and who is, despite the release of yet another major documentary last year, almost certainly bigger than the Beatles. Despite all that, some conservative Christians are apparently one-hundred million dollars worth of concerned that the enduringly popular Mr. of Nazareth just isn’t doing it for some of the kids these days. Hence, the rebrand to make the ostensible son…