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The Exorcist Files, Getting Mad at God, The Obama Prayer…

By Michael J. Altman

…n atheists. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found a war memorial cross in San Diego unconstitutional because it was a government endorsement of religion. The Army’s “spiritual fitness” test is coming under fire from church-state organizations who claim it is unconstitutional. Despite the new Republican majority in the House, the religious makeup of the 112th Congress is about the same as the previous one. Like the rest of the country, Congress ha…

Yo, Gays, Stop Bogarting that Rainbow!

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…sbians give up their grip on the rainbow. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the San Diego-based Ruth Institute [a project of the National Organization for Marriage] rightly argues that the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with man, and she says proponents of Proposition 8—California’s measure that passed in 2008 to define marriage as between a man and a woman—are the original “rainbow coalition.” “Proposition 8 was passed by a great grassroots coali…

LGBT Mormons Ask in Historic Temple: “If they could just see us, don’t you think they would change their minds?”

By Joanna Brooks

…Tears flowed freely when the Affirmation choir of gay and lesbian Mormons sang the stirring Mormon classic “The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning”—the very hymn our ancestors sang to dedicate the Kirtland temple 175 years ago, in 1836, on a day when, as the folklore goes, neighboring villages reported seeing a cloud of fire hovering over Kirtland. Standing in the sunlit white interiors of the temple, Liam, a young gay LDS man who had travelled…

Same-Sex Marriage: The Cure for Unemployment (Worries)

By Joanna Brooks

…alifornia, a lightly-populated, largely agricultural desert county east of San Diego, appeared as the only governmental entity in the state of California to seek standing as a proponent in the case to overturn Proposition 8. Whether or not the County has the standing to participate in the appeal is up to the panel of judges to determine. (Attorney Robert Tyler, appearing on behalf of Imperial County deputy clerk Isabel Vargas, proved himself embar…

Catholics Talk About Sex

By Kate Ott

…lues to provide comprehensive sexual health information. The University of San Francisco Health Promotion Services and Loyola University Chicago provide information about contraception and STI prevention. Georgetown University allows H*yas for Choice to provide information and condoms to students in Red Square, a “free speech zone” on campus. These institutions are in the minority. In a survey of Catholic Universities, only 12% of colleges say the…

Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…churches. We can add him to the line with W. E. B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, and Gayraud Wilmore. His essay, as I read the ending, is just as much a proclamation of the black church’s death as it is a call for its resurrection, but in a more progressive form. This echoes Du Bois, Frazier, and Wilmore. To Professor Glaude… I feel encouraged by you. Eddie S. Glaude Jr. Responds: When sound bites and spin too often define the substance of our…

“Liberal Nazis”: The Republican Crusade Against NPR

By Paul Harvey

…iberal Nazis at NPR. Leaving aside the historical malapropism of “liberal Nazis,” what moved me was Raz’s short oral essay reflecting on Ailes’ grotesque comments. Raz began by reflecting on his great-grandfather Abraham Reiss, who didn’t make it out of Europe before the real Nazis got to him. He considered further what it meant for him to hear “Nazi” used in reference to his network. That word, Nazi, means something. We are all free to use it as…

Plant Porn and Physics Prayers

By Meera Subramanian

…ld also be said of academia, not to mention the world of art. One man from San Francisco is taking on all three institutions; targeting priest, scientist, and artist in a playful rally against authority. Jonathon Keats calls himself an experimental philosopher—though novelist, journalist, performance artist, and mad scientist would all fit as well. In his latest work lies an invitation for not just cloistered specialists, but anyone and everyone,…

Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground

By Jay Michaelson

…e to Ann Coulter’s desire for well-endowed macho men like George W. Bush; “San Francisco Values” threaten the front lines of the regulation of human desire, and the subservience to authority that conservatism demands. No wonder one Orthodox rabbi recently said that it would be a mitzvah for gay kids to kill themselves. But if liberated sexuality is world-destroying from the mythic, fundamentalist point of view, it is world-creating from a pluralis…

A Life After Death Double-Feature: Eastwood’s Hereafter and Noe’s Enter the Void

By Jay Michaelson

…hereas the characters in Hereafter live in upper-class Paris, middle-class San Francisco, and the most caring and engaged child welfare system the world has ever known. But the differences are more than skin-deep, especially when it comes to religion. Hereafter goes out of its way to demean traditional religion (and esoteric nonsense) en route to its reluctant affirmation of the afterlife—if the film were a person, she’d be “spiritual, not religio…