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Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…

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What a Turn-of-the-Century Anti-Abortion and Contraception Crusader Reveals About GOP Efforts to Ban Abortion Pills by Mail

…items within their borders (as is already the case federally with lottery tickets). A Republican-controlled Congress could then impose a nationwide ban on the mailing of abortion pills or certain contraceptives. (Republican-controlled state legislatures have already demonstrated a willingness to enact questionable legislation for nothing more than its intimidation factor.) Which brings us back to Anthony Comstock. In 1878, the Supreme Court uphel…

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5 Key Moments From the Year of the ‘Exvangelicals’

…tation, with our perspectives being considered in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New Republic, Salon, and other outlets. Exvangelicals were even featured in Newsweek twice, including in the cover article of the print edition for December 21. The biggest exvangelical media breakthrough thus far, however, is surely the CBS special “Deconstructing My Religion,” written and produced by Liz Kineke, and which began…

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Mitt Romney’s Best-Known Mormon Critic Tells it All. One Last Time.

…omen who admire me?” I told him, “I always give them five or six names and numbers, and the press says, ‘we’ve gone to them, and they won’t talk.’” I said to reporters, “I can only tell you my experience, and my experience is that he’s not accepting of people who are different, particularly women who are single who he has to deal with one-on-one.” Lots of women told me, “Don’t give the press my name anymore,” some because they had negative things…

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Religious Right Dream of Privatized Public Education Gets Boost

…joined by other conservative leaders in an eleven-city (Detroit, Phoenix, Los Angeles Cleveland, Tampa, Orlando, Chicago, Indianapolis, Pewaukee, WI; Sacramento and Newark), “Education Revolution Tour,” the goal of which is to renew “American Exceptionalism.” The result of these reforms is likely to be a fractured educational system incapable of serving the very purpose of public education: to ensure an educated citizenry capable of participating…

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Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

…I shared what I learned with those standing around me or who didn’t have a phone, compared notes with others about what they knew, and tried to calm some who were scared and close to panic. As far as I could tell, the TSA personnel and other security officials seemed know about as much as the passengers about what was happening—all around me, I sensed a complete failure of nerve. A black woman wearing a security vest crouched outside on the tarmac…

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An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

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Invited by Allah

…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…

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Mormon-Born Daya Mata Typifies American Yoga

…diately that she wanted to follow him as her spiritual guide. She moved to Los Angeles and joined his Self-Realization Fellowship, took vows of renunciation and became one of the first nuns in its monastic order. Having been renamed Daya Mata (Mother of Compassion), she would be one of Yogananda’s closest disciples until his death in 1952. As the spiritual leader of the Self-Realization Fellowship, Daya Mata provided guidance and training for lay…

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“My Scientology Movie” Pokes the Hornet’s Nest

…willing to explain what people get out of it. During my own half-decade in Los Angeles, it was often difficult to avoid people wanting to talk about the joys of Scientology. Another puzzling elision is any mention of the fact that Scientology, at this point, is pretty well traveled ground. Despite the frequency with which Theroux refers to himself as a journalist, I found it strange that in My Scientology Movie there’s no mention of Janet Reitman’…

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