Religion Dispatches
…bout the cover? I love the cover. I took that picture myself (with my cell phone), and the press did a great job with the layout. The picture is of a hallway in Dystopia Haunted House, a big haunted attraction in Denmark. I’m doing some scientific consulting for them and have also done two large-scale quantitative research projects on recreational fear in the haunt, so it seemed only appropriate to use an image of one of their sets. It’s atmospher…
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…akening that will finally mobilize Muslims to forcefully resist the bipartisan establishment. How Muslims and other US minorities will handle the coming damage remains to be seen. What is abundantly clear is that Islamophobia is now validated like never before. While it has long had a place in bipartisan politics and policy, its unprecedented mainstreaming by the Trump campaign now regularizes it as a feeling upon which xenophobes can act without…
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…night dancing with, someone who I had spoken to just a week before on the phone, her laughter weakened but still familiar. When I thought about her ashes being scattered around Boston I felt a momentary panic. Where could I ever go to find her again? Last week, just in time for the Feast of All Soul’s Day, celebrated each year on November 2, the Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released a new Instruction regarding the…
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…s amount to the equivalent of however many billion sightings. I think that number was inflated. But it doesn’t matter much. What’s the difference between ten billion views and, say, one billion views? It’s all bad. It’s just this question of magnitude. It’s a little bit like you’ve seen the tip of the iceberg, and someone tells “You know, 90% of it is underneath.” I had a similar experience when I was working on my first book, Communities of Viole…
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…a used to entrap gay men The Washington Blade interviewed Iraqi activist Ayaz Hassan, who says anti-gay militants are using social networks to identify gay men and kill them. Afghanistan: Activist charges security officials with waging extermination campaign Activist Nemat Sadat writes at Huffington Post that sources tell him Afghan security officials are engaged in a campaign that “exterminates homosexuals one-by-one in a ‘kill and dump’ policy m…
Read More…or celebrity status. The Orlando nightclub shooter reportedly checked his phone for news about the shooting during the actual event; the man who murdered hostages at the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store in Paris last year filmed the attack on a GoPro camera (in that light, the company’s slogan, Be a HERO, seems chilling). It would be wrong to ignore these shooters—their acts have enormous consequences—but you feel complicit, somehow, when you pa…
Read More…Jewish heritage of my wife of 38 years,” he wrote in an email. Later in a phone interview, he said his wife was not a practicing Jew but “ethnically Jewish” because her maternal grandmother was a Jew. Of course, it is possible to express [insert flavor of bigotry here] even if you have friends, relatives, partners, or a spouse who identify as part of [group that is the target of that bigotry]. It’s a close cousin to the “some of my best friends a…
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…ion has a strange way of inspiring reflection on personal property. On the phone, I told my mom, “I love your house. It is so perfect for you.” And I do. I love her house not because I grew up there (I did not) or because I’ve spent much time there (I’ve only visited once) or because of anything to do with the way it looks. I love her house because of what it stands for. It’s a symbol of her freedom. Freedom from every man who raised a hand to her…
Read More…ian Money are given for the same cause, which is anti-LGBT policies,” says Sandu. “That’s just insane.” India: Author urged Hindus to explore pre-colonial history on LGBT relationships Raj Rao, author of “Criminal Love? Queer Theory, Culture, and Politics in India,” writes that he is not optimistic that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding the right to privacy would bring about an end to Section 377, the colonial-era anti-sodomy law that wa…
Read More…o Seek ‘Cure’ Andrew Potts of Gay Star News reports, “Kuwaiti MP Hamdan Al Azimi, who earlier this month called for the police to raid gay people in their homes has said he is willing to meet with homosexuals who want ‘solutions for their issues.’” Kuwaiti MP Hamdan Al Azimi has called for homosexuals to come forward to have their ‘physiological and psychological issues’ ‘treated’ by health professionals just days after he called for police to rai…
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