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What Color is Vatican Smoke?

By Marian Ronan

…s Catholic priests—and eventually as cardinals and popes—replicated “pink smoke” demonstrations held in front of US cathedrals during the 2005 conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. And even as these two clashing shades of smoke were rising over the Vatican, reform Catholics in various parts of the U.S. were coming together to view Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, a documentary film about the movement for Catholic women’s ordinat…

What Fidel Castro’s Death Means for LGBT Rights in Cuba and More, in This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…of health, Hamisi Kigwangalla, accused HIV treatment organizations of “promoting homosexuality.” Tanzania has been a success story, writes Sieff, with the HIV/AIDS rate dropping from 12 percent to 5 percent since 2002 while the number of people receiving treatment has more than doubled in five years to over 700,000. But the new anti-gay crackdown could frighten people away from receiving treatment. Even though Tanzania’s penal code refers to homo…

Data-Mining Denominations: Same-Sex Marriage Edition

By Daniel Schultz

…people are by intensity, measured with the simple hack of subtracting the number of people Strongly Opposed to same-sex marriage from the number Strongly In Favor. Not surprisingly, since the Unitarian-Universalists only had 6 percent opposed, their position on the chart hardly budged at all. Other groups traveled a little more. Mainline Baptists, for example, strongly disapprove just a little more than they strongly approve. Evangelical Baptists…

Wesolowski Sexual Abuse Case a New Approach or Same Old Same Old?

By Mary E. Hunt

…socks, no matter how frugal Pope Francis may be. So somebody pays a lot of money to keep this genteel charade in motion. That “somebody” is rank and file Catholics who have little if any say about where their weekly contributions go. Spoiler alert: upwards of 5% of the weekly collection basket money goes to the diocese, and from there it’s anyone’s guess how much goes to Rome to finance the likes of these fellows. Third, what are the local people…

The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

By Sarah Posner

…churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for racism and an ideology that condones violence against non-Aryans.” If I were to do some hair-trigger analysis here, I might think Tony Perkins was defending neo-Nazis, Aryan Nation, and the Kl…

Jonestown at 40: The Real Conspiracy Is More Disturbing Than the Theories

By Rebecca Moore

…heroin into the United States. I catalogued these and other theories about motive in a 2002 article. Most of these explanations have been debunked. Matthew Thomas Farrell painstakingly assessed the mind-control account offered by John Judge, who wrote what has become the ur-text on conspiracy memes about Jonestown. An analysis of Dr. Leslie Mootoo, the Guyana pathologist who investigated the Jonestown deaths, reveals numerous discrepancies in his…

The Plot to Turn the Synod into a “Plot”

By Patricia Miller

…ffered no proof of any “rigging” beyond a change in procedures to give the more progressive proposals and bishops who back them a chance to be heard in a synod where they’re still vastly outnumbered by conservatives. Douthat likewise ignores Pope Paul VI’s apostolic letter Apostolica Sollicitudo, which established the Synod of Bishops and the procedures for their meetings which states that the responsibilities of the pontiff regarding synods are:…

Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?

By Daniel Martin Varisco

…at led to a boycott of Danish products, attacks on Danish embassies, and a number of deaths. Last month in the New York Times, however, Reza Aslan countered that the controversy over the cartoons has died out and that in any case, there never was any violence over them in the United States. I agree with Aslan that the novelty of the cartoon depictions, which were intended to irritate Muslims, has worn thin by now—the Saudis, to take just one examp…

As Gaza Burns, Jews Disagree, Protest & Pray

By Sam Kestenbaum

…our political enemies. This is the least we can do to honor these boys’ memory.” There is more applause. The final speaker, the president of the temple admits he doesn’t know what to say. Words fail. “Justice must be carried out.” He stumbles through his sentences. “Either diplomatically or otherwise. Either at the negotiating table or by other means.” There is applause, the cantor leads a prayer, and the crowd files out onto the hot, New York st…

Dutch Treat: Betsy DeVos and the Christian Schools Movement

By Peter Laarman

…hard for anyone not to admire the grit and determination of people with no more money than the rest of us—farmers and small business owners—who were willing to tax themselves to support these religious schools while also paying taxes in support of the public system. Today, however they expect all taxpayers to support and subsidize their “choice.” Grit and determination: that’s the Dutch Calvinist way. It’s a small tribe that wants to get big thing…