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Suicide Leads to Calls for Improved Treatment of LGBT Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…erence talk shaming homosexuality. “I have a brother who said to me on the phone last Christmas, ‘Elder Packer says God does not make gays. This is your choice.’ And then he used some very hurtful language with me,” Jahn relates. “I had to hang up on him. But he feels he has been given permission to speak this way by the prophet.” “Even a simple phrase uttered by a General Authority can give Church members broad permission to look down on, discrim…

White House Unveils Contraception Accommodation Plan [UPDATED]

By Sarah Posner

…anufacturers decide to start handing out free contraceptives, the money to buy them will have to come from somewhere. Where will it come from, since neither employers nor employees will be paying for these contraceptives? That leaves the insurers, whose revenues come from the premiums that subscribers pay them. It’s difficult to see how insurance companies would avoid using premiums to cover the costs of contraceptives. They could, perhaps, use pr…

Does the President Need Churching?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…), and frighteningly a full 10 percent of mainline Protestants continue to buy the lie about Obama’s religion. Seeing President Obama go to a Christian church each week could put some minds at ease about his true religious preference, or, knowing the right wing, could actually pour more gas on the fire and leave Obama open to charges of “faking it” to fool us into believing he’s a Christian and not a secret Muslim plotting the overthrow of democra…

“I’d Be Stupid Not To Go Packing Now.”

By Rev. Irene Monroe

…22:36, Jesus said: “Let him who hath no sword, let him sell his tunic and buy one.” We feel most vulnerable when we have no means to defend ourselves from attacks. Organizations like the Pink Pistols offer a seemingly viable tool to stem gay violence. Of course guns will never be the great equalizer for an embattled group. They may for a fleeting moment deter our enemies, but they will never permanently protect us from them. What guns do, perhaps…

Journalistic Blind Spots and the “Centrist-to-Liberal” Christian

By Mark Hulsether

…hird of them have been relatively centrist “Carter-types” all along. These numbers are neither static nor crystal clear—they probably inched upward along generational lines and shifted by a few percentage points from time to time, depending on how we measure evangelical status and centrism. (Many evangelicals take more progressive stances toward poverty, militarism, and the environment than feminist and LGBT issues.) Meanwhile, the media spotlight…

The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

By Ira Chernus

…would undermine the stability of “the American way.” Too few voters would buy that. Nor can the Dems cast the many “seekers” under their big tent as a threat, lest they fracture their growing but still fragile coalition. That leaves them with two options. They can continue to muddle through as they are doing, hoping that economic distress is indeed, as Obama suggests, deep and wide enough to outweigh all the cultural factors working against them….

Tinkering with Creation: Intelligent Design 2.0

By Lauri Lebo

…and across the nation. During a discussion about why the board refused to buy a ninth grade biology textbook which included a section on evolutionary theory, Bill Buckingham set the stage for the first constitutional test of intelligent design—the concept that life’s complexity demands a guiding hand. “Two thousand years ago, someone died on the cross. Won’t somebody stand up for him?” Buckingham told the head of his science department before a c…

The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…ut for the real thing, stop by your local geek palace comic book store and buy Mignola’s three-book Hellboy series “The Crooked Man,” (Dark Horse Comics) with art by Richard Corben. Set in an Appalachian hollow in 1958, it’s a riff on an old folktale about a satanic emissary called the Crooked Man. Our hero, Hellboy, is there to help a man who’s sold his soul bury his father in sacred ground. That summary does it no justice—it’s one of the scaries…

You Gotta Have Faith-Based Politics

By Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

…nd his love of the narratives and worship style of the black churches. He is also very cheerful; he is not mad at anyone. We just all need to love one another and buy into the administration’s agenda. The law on faith-based hiring will likely assist that effort….

The Nation of Islam at the End of the Apocalyptic Age?

By Anna Clark

…beyond its membership base. “What people don’t understand is that how many numbers of people in the Nation is beside the point in terms of the Nation’s influence,” said Walters. Walters remembers Farrakhan speaking at a Washington DC convention center to a packed house. A Washington Post reporter was taken aback that Farrakhan had come to town without the newspaper knowing about it, and that without any mainstream media coverage, the speech attrac…