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Exclusive: Christian Right Bill Mill, Project Blitz, Hasn’t Gone Away, It’s Just Gotten More Secretive

By Frederick Clarkson

…me as the old playbooks, advises legislators to engage in political sleight-of-hand in the framing of legislation, the CPCF’s about page remains unambiguous about their intentions. Their mission, they say, is to unite “government leaders at local, state and federal levels, as well as everyday citizens” to restore “Judeo-Christian* principles to their rightful place.” To carry this out, they say, “We support legislators who promote policies that up…

The Resurgence of Right-Wing Anti-Semitic Conspiracism Endangers All Justice Movements

By Ben Lorber

…manifesto published on a far-right message board by the alleged shooter, 19-year-old John T. Earnest, makes it clear that the white nationalist ideology that inspired him is also implicated in a number of other recent attacks, including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in October, the killing of 49 Muslim worshippers last month in New Zealand, and the 2015 murder of nine African-American Christian worshippers in Charleston, South Carolina. In Ear…

Global Anti-Gay Forces Plot Against ‘Satanic’ Equality Movement

By Peter Montgomery

…to acknowledge whether Strache had attended. Also reportedly present was 24-year-old Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a French politician for the far-right National Front party. Marechal-Le Pen is also the granddaughter of the party’s founder and niece of its current leader Marine Le Pen. Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch notes: As it happens, the Russian oligarch who convened the meeting is Konstantin Malofeev, who is also heavily involved with the Illinoi…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…hurch of America. In photos, she sports her priest’s collar, but in her day-to-day work at a transitional housing program for transgender sex workers, she’s all jeans, T-shirts, and blond hair pushed back. She says she doesn’t push her religion on anybody. Just like she doesn’t mention her transgendered status unless she wants to. Walker looks at it this way. Being transgender is not a sin or a pathology; it’s about variety. “Based on science, thi…

A Jewish Perspective on Reparations

By Moriel Rothman-Zecher

…to murder its Negroes systematically instead of little by little and catch-as-catch-can. If Coates is right that reparations at least partially correlated with German societal and cultural reckoning, then one can see their fruits in Germany today. Last month, following a number of horrid, hateful slogans chanted at Jews (in the context of otherwise legitimate protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza), and a number of violent incidents, there was…

Contrary to Claims of Anti-Trans Muslims, LGBTQ+ Acceptance is Widespread in the History of Islam

By Ali Olomi

…erance of gender ambiguity and non-conformity in Islamic cultures went hand-in-hand with broader acceptance of homoeroticism. Texts like Ali ibn Nasir al-Katib’s Jawami al-Ladhdha, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s Kitab al-Aghani, and the Tunisian, Ahmad al-Tifashi’s Nuz’ha al-‘Albab attest to the widespread acceptance of same-sex desire as natural. Homoeroticism is a common element in much of Persian and Arabic poetry where youthful males are often the…

Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

By Anthea Butler

…y, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however. Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prague, everyone except the Pope can see the…

The Religious Case Against Religious Discrimination in Cakeshop Case

By Patrick Hornbeck

…accommodations law.” The Supreme Court has long held, going back to a late-nineteenth-century suit by a Mormon believer who argued that Utah’s prohibition against bigamy threatened his right to practice his faith, that when a law is “generally applicable”—that is, when it doesn’t single out any particular religious group—it is constitutional for such a law to burden some individuals’ religious practices when the government has a compelling intere…

Debunking the Myth That Democracy Is “Incompatible” With Islam

By Asma Afsaruddin

…g no disjunction between religious beliefs and democratic principles. In a number of Muslim-majority countries, the preference was even stronger. In Jordan, for example, 54% of men and 55% of women want Sharia to be the only source of legislation. Interestingly, from a comparative perspective, a 2006 Gallup poll indicated that 46% of Americans say that they want the Bible to be a source of legislation. These findings corroborate earlier studies co…

Black Churches are Burning: Is It the 1990s All Over Again?

By Katie Day

…But both, or similar efforts, still could happen. This ripple-that-might-be-a-wave of church burnings comes at a time when nerves once again are raw: this time, the outrageous murder of innocent church folk in the familiar activity of gathering for a bible study. Once again, this racist act shocked and offended all Americans, of whatever political, religious or ethnic stripe. Presidential leadership has again helped frame the public’s response: in…