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Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

…om but at the same time religion should not have the right to attempt to influence governments in an effort to restrict civil rights. Clearly stated and often overlooked is Doctrine & Covenants 134:9. ‘We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.’ The same Con…

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The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

…ty, and Mass Media” students to watch one hour of television, to count the number of dead bodies they saw, and to keep track of who those bodies belonged to. On television, the dead bodies were women’s; on the evening news, they were the bodies of people from other countries, and usually they weren’t white. Judith Butler argues in Precarious Life that whose dead bodies we are allowed to see, and whose remain hidden, tell us something about which l…

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Feeding on the Faithful: How Supernatural Thinking Empowered the Third Reich

…about the Third Reich has already been written. Because of the vast and influential nature of Germany both before and during the Third Reich; because of the sheer scale of the Second World War; and because of the unprecedented number of documents preserved in hundreds of archives and libraries across dozens of countries, this is obviously not the case. The second is that there’s little to no reality behind popular cultural representations of the…

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Punks vs. Monks: Rockers Speak Out Against Genocide in Myanmar

…violence appears to have been incited by Buddhist monks. The Rohingya, who number almost one million, have been denied citizenship since 1982 and subjected to denials of the rights to travel, marry and have children. The discrimination appears rooted in the ethnic group’s Muslim faith, which makes them a tiny minority in the majority-Buddhist nation.  The most notable participants in the violence are a movement of Buddhist monks called “969”. The…

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The Suppression of Sin in Evangelical Abolitionism: The Wilberforce Problem

…56 percent of which are women and girls. A smaller, but still considerable number are victims of sex trafficking—essentially, forced prostitution. With increasing frequency, reports of sex trafficking rings in major U.S. cities appear in the media. In major hubs like Houston and New York City, stories about charges and convictions of homegrown trafficking cells shed light on just how widespread domestic trafficking is. Just this week, the website…

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How a Ruling for Masterpiece Cakeshop Could Embolden White Nationalists

…or even federal—protections aimed at combatting discrimination against any number of marginalized populations. “The cultural and political prominence of religious freedom as an American ideal draws people to it,” Wenger said. “The reason people appeal to it for all sorts of purposes is because it’s so culturally, politically, and legally powerful.” Indeed, as Wenger’s book documents in deep historical detail, the bedrock American principle has alr…

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Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…

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Will the Pope’s Woman Problem Alienate Young Catholics?

…has called women theologians “the strawberries on the cake,” along with a number of other comments insulting to women more broadly, which hasn’t helped minimize doubts on the part of many women about Francis’ ability to see them as full persons. Gina Messina-Dysert, author of the forthcoming Faithfully Feminist, noted that: Francis has made some important, positive comments about women and said it is time to reexamine the role of women in the chu…

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Trump is a Nightmare, Sure, But Can He Actually Do Anything?

…olina’s House Bill 2, Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and any number of ill-fated attempts to block the forward march of marriage equality. But my professional pedigree also breeds skepticism. And although it’s long been clear that the current administration is hell-bent on turning back the clock on basic civil rights for anyone who’s not a straight white evangelical Christian man, I often wonder whether the near-constant panic that c…

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Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

…other. ISIS propaganda calls the US an unsafe place for Muslims. Refugees fleeing from ISIS need somewhere to flee to. By banning refugees, Donald Trump vilifies the victims, deliberately conflating them with the perpetrators. ISIS is achieving its aims: a nationless population it can absorb into its nascent and brutal state, with an America that has given proof to their propaganda. Donald Trump’s words have already been featured in ISIS recruitm…

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