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UNESCO on Religion, Culture and SOGI in Asia; Orthodox Family Sues to Stop Cremation of Israeli Trans Woman; Struggles of Iraqi Queer Activists; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s, and particularly in China, including Taiwan province and Hong Kong SAR, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Viet Nam. The predominant religions vary greatly in their attitude towards sexual and gender diversity, although even within a faith the approach is often not uniform and can change based on interpretations of religious texts or between religious leaders. In some countries, a resurgence of conservative interpretation of religion has been ass…

Can You Make a Comedy About UFO Cult Mass Suicide?

By Joseph Laycock

The Austin Chronicle recently reported that a local filmmaker is raising funds for a comedy inspired by the mass suicides of the Heaven’s Gate group. When 39 members of this group killed themselves—claiming that their consciousnesses would be transported to a spaceship, which they believe may have been hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet—the media hyped this incident as “the worst mass suicide in U.S. history” (not counting Jonestown, which occurre…

Scolding Those Who Choose Pets But No Children Pope Misses the Rainforest for the Trees

By Sarah A. Bowen

…ghlighted the irony of a childless man scolding those without children. My phone went wild with calls from animal lovers, queer friends and childless Catholic couples as well. An estimated 1.1 billion people belong to the Roman Catholic church. But even many of those who aren’t Catholic consider the pope’s words influential or have concerns about how his words can affect cultures, laws, and policies. I understood why they were dismayed. As an inte…

Suicide Leads to Calls for Improved Treatment of LGBT Mormons

By Joanna Brooks

…protections for same-sex couples constitute a threat to our religious freedom. But do any of these serve the thousands upon thousands of young Mormons who are coming to terms with their attraction to people of the same sex? Do any of these prepare non-gay Mormons to respond to gay sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, or fellow Latter-day Saints? How does it feel to be the LDS parents of a gay child in a culture where unthi…

Refusing Religion, Claiming the Future: A Roundtable Discussion on “The Nones Are Alright”

By Peter Laarman

…mber of his novice class, but as long as there are enough people attracted to that life and they can afford to keep the lights on, the lights will stay on. And the art, literature and architecture that came out of times when religion dominated people’s lives is not going to go away. If we can have the freedom my Sister friends were talking about coupled with the beauty, what might that mean? That the edifice will survive but the internal workings…

“Even the Rich Suffer”: An Interview with Google’s Jolly Good Fellow Chade-Meng Tan

By Max Zahn

…A software engineer from Singapore, Tan joined Google in 2000 as employee number 107. He later founded the company’s in-house meditation program and became one of corporate mindfulness’ most visible advocates. Though Tan left Google six months ago, his final official job title at the company still doubles as his nickname: Jolly Good Fellow. Over the course of two phone conversations, RD asked Tan—who was, in fact, quite jolly—if mindfulness is a…

Mitt, the Marriotts, and Porn

By Joanna Brooks

…have tanked because the porn industry has moved on-line. But it’s being reported that the move is actually an effort to protect Romney against another round of flak from socially conservative and evangelical voters in Iowa, where the Marriott-porn issue flared up for a brief moment in July 2007. (Back then, Romney even came in for criticism from the LDS Church-owned Deseret News, in an editorial with the unfortunate title “The nasty taint of po…

Departure of the Queen

By Amina Wadud

…tch ride outside the gates of the estate where I can have bars for my cell phone and get in touch with them later today. Before the shaykh arrives, I continue with my Qur’an reading. I don’t use the tiny mp3 player anymore because this last juz’ includes most of the Qur’an that I have memorized myself, and this is more a review than a simple reflective read. Coming to the end of the Qur’an reading is also melancholy, and I forget why I felt I shou…

This Narrative of Death that is So Powerful Among Us

By Daniel Schultz

…ces of sexual relationships are also about power. So the drive to regulate reproduction and women’s use of reproduction is really a way to fight those battles about women’s place in society. So from a progressive perspective, what this script indicates to us is that we should not be fighting issues of power by trying to control medical procedures. How would you apply that therapeutic script to the case of abortion? Walter: That’s a new question to…

What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It?

By Haroon Moghul

…abia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, but the rogue state we call the United Kingdom. Surely the stuff nightmares are made of. Yugoslavia started to fall apart in the early ’90s. First Slovenia broke off and then Croatia, leaving Bosnia, only 44% Muslim and nearly 30% Serbian, attached to a federation demographically dominated by Serbia. Izetbegovic moved for independence, and here is the logic of the Islamophobe, revealed in all its ugliness. Becaus…