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Conservative Republican Muslim Condemns Fox Report on Congressional Staffers as “Anti-Muslim Bigotry”

By Sarah Posner

…Americans getting involved in public policy. They compile that into a guilt-by-association Powerpoint and then shop it to reporters.” These individuals include, said Khan, Frank Gaffney, who issues baseless warnings to members of Congress about “creeping shari’ah;” Paul Sperry, co-author of the book Muslim Mafia, which claimed that the Council on American Islamic Relations had infiltrated Capitol Hill by placing interns as spies; Kenneth Timmerman…

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…suing disaffiliation isn’t necessarily about the abuse, but about the cover-up. Clohessy reports a drop-off in younger people contacting SNAP, but says that’s “largely attributable to an enormous backlog of survivors who told no one for decades.” He notes that church officials may report that abuse cases are declining, but that it must also be taken into account that given the history of secrecy in the Catholic hierarchy, it can be difficult to tr…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…tory. One teacher’s treatment of Genesis focused on ways to reconcile young-earth and old-earth theories by suggesting that each of the six days was unusually long, or that a lengthy gap elapsed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2-3. Another teacher’s resource materials included a religious tract claiming that NASA had discovered a missing day in time that proved Joshua 10’s story of the sun standing still. One district’s slideshow on archaeology’s verifi…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…lack genocide,” and gay marriage. If the 2010 election is a preliminary tea-leaf-reading to 2012, then President Obama has a lot to think about in terms of re-mobilizing the strong African- American voter base that he enjoyed in 2008. Part of that base — the old guard “black church” coalition — is not as strong as it could be. Republicans have learned to mobilize their “affinity groups” but black churches do not have the same strong community and…

Single, But Married To Jesus

By Anthea Butler

…lvo by Steve Harvey, “Act Like a Lady, Think like A Man.” The spate of over-the-top weddings like those of Star Jones and Juanita Bynum, both whom claimed God gave them their spouses, surely played a role. But both are divorced, one spectacularly. Bad theology is also to blame. The “waiting on the Lord” theme, being told to be like Ruth and wait until your Boaz finds you, and my favorite, “Let the Lord be your husband” are just trite pacifiers des…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…shing what the writers perceive as sexual deviancy—still stands. Its editor-in-chief, Ulf Poschardt, a right-leaning libertarian, published an op-ed in which he claimed the anti-trans op-ed was wrong, but still frames the debate over trans rights as legitimate political discourse. He calls it a “prelude to a debate that we will conduct broadly and openly.” Meanwhile, he adopts the anti-trans talking points of the original article on his LinkedIn p…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…pokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Cent…

Union Busting for God: Catholic Colleges Invoke “Religious Freedom” to Violate Catholic Teaching

By Kaya Oakes

…has a “special duty in this area” due to its “historic connection to first-generation and working-class students.” Sister Aaron Winkleman, who teaches at Dominican University—founded by Dominican women religious in 1890—says that adjuncts at Dominican ratified their first collective bargaining agreement with the university last year. She adds that “an institution’s being Catholic doesn’t in any way preclude that institution from unionizing. On th…

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

By Mark Dery

…seemed truly Not of This World, especially to teenagers trapped in the have-a-nice-daymare of ’70s suburbia. He was a spiked cocktail of ladyboy vulnerability and George Grosz grotesque, the Frankensteinian spookiness of his shaved eyebrows and morgue-slab pallor clashing with his androgynous physique and feline grace. Even his weirdly mismatched eyes—the result of a boyhood fistfight that left one pupil permanently dilated and different-colored—m…

Raelians’ “Clitoraid” Met With Suspicion in Burkina Faso

By Joseph Laycock

…rci Bowers has worked with the program extensively. Clitoraid engaged in a number of fund raising projects, including an “Adopt a Clitoris” campaign and a number of partnerships with companies that make vibrators. This funding was used to recruit and fund a team of surgeons (who are not Raelians) and to establish a “pleasure hospital” in Burkina Faso. There is some controversy as to what percentage of women who undergo the surgery will be able to…