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Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…d consciousness-raising) but to intervene in the bodily practices that are part and parcel of how social power works. In reading that I remembered a documentary film I had seen on the ex-gay movement, One Nation Under God. The film documents the movement and tells the story of two early leaders of that movement who renounced it after they fell in love. Knowing very little about the ex-gay movement at the time and remembering the scenes of butch wo…

Morality and Marriage Vigilantes and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…civil code to make it legal for same-sex couples to get legally married. Japan: Sapporo preparing to register gay couples The city of Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, is reportedly beginning a process that will lead to legal certification of gay couples by the end of March 2018. Taiwan: Police plan road closures for pro- and anti-marriage rallies Police announced that roads around the legislature will be closed on Monday for completing rallied by sup…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…ple attend Friday prayer services every week, most of them Indian. But the number of Panamanian converts is rapidly growing. Bhattay said about two or three new converts come to Jama Mosque every week. Six months ago, the mosque began offering classes in Spanish — instead of just in Urdu — to accommodate the growing demand. There is no discrimination in the Muslim community in Panama City, Bhattay said. “Maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, there…

Rick Warren Busts a Gut Over Cultural Revolution

By Rob Shryock

…ng funny without offending someone these days in our PC society etc.” The number of supportive and sometimes racist posts outnumber those who advice caution. I can’t suspect such hideous posts are all from Saddleback membership. I’m sure quite a number are. It’s as disturbing as it is disgusting. Warren commented on Tsang’s article, “Thanks so much for teaching us! It was removed instantly.” However, Warren did not get around to posting a form…

Hajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque

By Amina Wadud

…ble escalators from each floor rose up to the third floor. There is also a partial 4th floor; more of a balcony over the deepest part of the mosque. Not a full circumabulation, so you cannot do tawaf from there, but you can do saiy. Fortunately for me, this toilet visit was from a place just next to the green line. The green line marks a distance in saiy where the pilgrim is supposed to run, because this is what Hajar did.* That way, when I return…

Leper Messiah: A Jesus Freak’s Search for the Meaning of Bowie—A Critical Novella

By Mark Dery

…Moonage Daydream,” he boasts that he’s “a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch,” a “mama-papa coming for you”; in “Lady Stardust,” he slip-slides between genders, morphing into the ladyboy of the title. Ziggy’s twofold nature—gender-bending ladyboy, switch-hitting bisexual, “mama-papa” (an image recalling the freakshow hermaphrodite known as a half-and-half)—aligns him with the intersexed or androgynous deities of pre-Christian myth. This archetype, which the h…

Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

By Jason Josephson Storm

…ists, and artists travelling from Europe, Mexico, and the United States to participate in “shamanic” trance workshops under her leadership. My grandmother inspired me to become a scholar, but I was always skeptical of spirits, and moreover I was doubly skeptical of the notion that the modern Western world had lost its magic. I found myself shifting gears and looking at America and Europe through the eyes of an outsider—with the same sort of gaze o…

Transgender and Christian: Finding Identity

By Jori Lewis

…on fell asleep. At the end, they all seemed satisfied, though. I asked one participant, a tall transwoman about why she comes to the group. She said, “I finally found a place where I can talk about my spirituality—as a transgender person.” Because, here at Gender People, their transgender identity isn’t something to apologize for or something they need to justify; it is, according to Moses, a gift, a blessing, and its own salvation. A Biblical Mag…

Blood and Politics — Christian White Nationalism in the Age of Obama

By Bill Berkowitz

…movement? Although I loathe predicting the future, I will say that in the past, hard economic times have not automatically translated into an expansion for White nationalists. There was a growth surge during the Clinton years, for example, which were generally considered better economic conditions for middle class people. In the past, the politics of race and nation mattered more than economic hard times. White nationalists will support protectio…

Why We Won’t Let Jonestown (Or 9/11 or Sandy Hook) Die

By Kelsey Osgood

…e Internet is how we communicate with each other about current events, and partly because we don’t have a lot of space in our world for such public displays of mourning. (In contrast, recall the brutal murder of Leiby Kletzky, in 2010, and the fact that thousands of Hasidic Jews, who have a ritualized response to grief, descended upon Borough Park for his funeral.) The process sometimes dredges up uneasy feelings—a rubbernecker’s shame reflex, a p…