Religion Dispatches
…bsite from which he claimed to get his information. He pulled out his cell phone: “Freddie!” he said to an unseen interlocutor. “Will you find me what that website for the saucer, the prophecy, for tomorrow night – the 14th?” He paused, then yelled: “THE SAUCER! All I want is access to the information so I can give it to someone else.” He then recited the web address of a YouTube video. It was my own searches, however, that turned up Goodchild’s w…
Read More…that cover abortion. But Marta was outraged by an email that went out from the state’s OFA director, specifically telling volunteers not to mention the Stupak amendment in their phone calls shortly before the House vote. Poor Stupak! So unimportant that he doesn’t even get mentioned by Organizing for America….
Read More
…ion about his bank account, credit cards, home address and social security number—was illegally retrieved, and that he was subjected to surveillance and phone-tapping. The church, meanwhile, countered that Behar’s article was a slanderous, sensationalist attack on a legitimate religious organization and part of a much longer history of misunderstanding and persecution that this religious minority has faced since its inception. In keeping w…
Read More
…am one of the religious leaders in this country who has one of the largest numbers of black gay churches in the U.S. gathered together. I don’t know anybody that has a larger number of black gay churches meeting together. Not gay churches—the MCC definitely has the corner on that. Do you work together? Very closely. In fact I have an MCC credential, an ordination. Were there times in your life when you did question your ability to stay in the chu…
Read More
…T people. Munson sent word out across the Mormon grapevine, through email, phone, and Facebook, inviting fellow churchgoing and believing Mormons to join her at the Pride Parade in Sunday dress. And Mormons responded by the hundreds, arriving at the parade route yesterday morning in their church clothes—dress shirts and ties for men, dresses for women. Some carried scriptures in hand. Others pushed their children in strollers, or carried them on t…
Read More…t Coke and a dozen pink-frosted sugar cookies that there is no anti-Mormon phonebanking script in use by Catholics for Obama. Anywhere. Is anti-Mormonism real? Yes. But even if one poorly-trained rogue phonebanker veered off script into an anti-Mormon ad lib, it does not make for a concerted anti-Mormon effort. (Leave that to orthographically challenged “Heaven is Easy” ministry in Florida.) May cool heads prevail as the race heats up in its fina…
Read More
…eking to dictate coverage to the media surfaced this week in the form of a phone call taped during his presidential campaign that leaked online. In it, Sisi’s office manager, General Abas Kamal, is heard instructing spokesperson Ahmed Ali to give orders to journalists about what to say about Sisi. In another story, Thom Senzee writes for the Advocate: The current government crackdown on LGBT Egyptians has been amplified by hyperbolic media coverag…
Read More
…h for his reformation. Popular Christian piety contributes to the problem. American Protestant Christianity emphasizes a quick and easy forgiveness: tell Jesus you’re sorry, and you’re forgiven. Not only are you forgiven, your sins now stand “as far as the east is from the west.” That’s good news, and I believe it, but it has nothing to do with one’s qualification to hold moral responsibility in an institution. God may forgive a person, and so may…
Read More
…f us know, all too well, that it is “terrorism” when the victims are white Americans—otherwise it’s simply a “hate crime.” But, then again, it can only be a hate crime if the perpetrators are white Americans, otherwise it’s “terrorism.”) Somehow the story is more easily told when we don’t have to talk about race—because no one knows how to talk about when people of color attack other people of color. But when reports refer to an attack on a “gay n…
Read More…ct at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, told me in a phone interview that he had “replied directly to him about how he could get off the list.” Potok pointed out that the main reason Lively is included on the list is because “in our view he consciously lies about, and defames, gay people. His theory of the Holocaust is equivalent to the flat Earth theory. It’s obvious to us that he has to know his allegations are completely f…
Read More