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Is it Fair to Question Rand Paul’s Religiosity?

By Sarah Posner

…ristianity.” (I actually think Chait’s wrong about that; more on that in a minute.) He goes on, “The trouble with Conway’s ad is that it comes perilously close to saying that non-belief in Christianity is a disqualification for public office. That’s a pretty sickening premise for a Democratic campaign.” I didn’t see Conway’s ad that way; I thought it questioned whether Paul had demonstrated disrespect for religion, as opposed to demanding that Pau…

Getting Back into Blogging

By Amina Wadud

…ated to the hajj and something I thought about on this trip. I made a last-minute effort to at least buy presents for my grandsons, who already have a quite a collection of T-shirts from various places, if not from the airports on the way out of those places. It’s one of those “thought that counts” kind of things: a way of sharing something from my time away with them. In the dream, one of the members of my tour group lands in the holy city with a…

Hajj Journal: Part of the Process

By Amina Wadud

…ny, then, like hijabi and niqabi girls trying to be less nerdy (stereotype number one) and go off to an important college sports event (stereotype two) in search of a place to pray at halftime which they were reasonably confident was not wet with vomit, pee, or the rain. No, it really did have some funny parts. But it was just that all the college girls were too squeaky-clean—all advanced-placement honor students from middle class suburban familie…

“Ex-Gay” is Anti-Gay, Disguised as Compassion

By Tanya Erzen

…day in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, reporters and protesters far outnumbered the ex-gay supporters in attendance. Jerry Falwell was scheduled to address the audience but at the last minute decided to appear via live telecast where his speech was drowned out by heckles and boos. Michael Johnston, an ex-gay who testified to a newfound heterosexuality after years of being homosexual, hurried out the side door after an activist hurled a coconut…

Mormon Leader: ‘I’m Sorry’ For Hurtful Legacy of Prop. 8

By Joanna Brooks

…of 2008, when entire congregations were mobilized as precinct-walkers and phonebankers in the service of a political strategy that portrayed gay and lesbian civil marriage rights as a threat to religious freedom and “traditional” families. Still others debated the wisdom of publicizing the apology and the event, worrying aloud that within the highly disciplined LDS Church hierarchy, Jensen—a favorite among liberal Mormons—might suffer some conseq…

O’Donnell At Values Voters Summit

By Sarah Posner

Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is a last-minute addition to the Values Voters Summit schedule, and I can boldly predict she will be a huge hit here. Questions are already being raised—from progressives—about the wisdom of what might be called the masturbation approach to talking about O’Donnell’s candidacy. Mike Tomasky writes, “a nice-looking woman talking about the virtues of chastity, and sharing her special secrets with the…

O’Donnell Disowns Former “Ex-Gay” Associate

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…in. That’s been my experience with the Christian community in general. The minute I was struggling and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know really where I am with this,’ that’s when everyone really turned their back on me.” It’s not a shock really. Once the “ex-gay” industry can’t use these people to make money—I mean, redeem gay people—they have no use for them anymore. Today’s article in the Daily Beast is enlightening on one point: apparently O’D…

Art for Peace: An Interview with Artist Mary Button

By John Shorb

…log was a real priority and so the youth participants were not only from a number of different countries—Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya—they also came from a wide variety of faith backgrounds. One of the things that I became very quickly aware of was how unsure and self-conscious I was about talking about my own faith. I was totally blown away by the openness and ease with which so many of these young people…

Gay-Hating Church Burns “Idols”: A Report

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…ublic, and politicians would “browbeat him and he’ll back down at the last minute.” In preparation for Jones’ capitulation, Westboro Baptist Church announced its own plans to burn the holy book (for the second time, having performed the ritual in 2008) and the American flag, offending Muslims and Americans at home and abroad and reorganizing the counter-protest landscape. After the burning, Shirley Phelps-Roper shared in an interview that half of…

You Had to See This One Coming

By Julie Ingersoll

…s, which raises a further complicating question: who would be appropriate to pat down Barney Frank and Ellen DeGeneres? I wonder if LaBarbera would ask an attending physician in an emergency room if he or she were straight? Wait a minute; he just might. This could get really complicated. On another note in the culture wars over gender and sexuality, I found a new clever T-shirt today from LifeIsLongCo. It says, “Marriage is one man + one woman? No…