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Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…ans would be attracted to, appreciate and consider careers in science (the number is decreasing annually). I bet we’d have more productive conversation among students and leaders of science and religion around the many profound issues in our nation that engage both: abortion, medical care, stem cells, homosexuality, and genomic research. The battle rhetoric would fade and, more than likely, movies like Expelled wouldn’t be made in the first place….

Swift-Boat Veterans of American Jewry Charge Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall Street

By Jay Michaelson

…semitic slogans. For good measure, they’ve thrown in Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Eliot Spitzer endorsing the sentiments behind the Occupy movement; ergo, the three of them must hate the Jews too. This, of course, is ridiculous. As everybody should know by now, Occupy is a leaderless, open-source movement. That means, unfortunately, that the nuts have free rein. When I last visited Occupy Wall Street, there was indeed a concatenation of weirdo…

Mitt Romney’s Prosperity Gospel

By Peter Laarman

…I fervently wish that Mr. Obama would say a bit more about the problem of cheap grace. Reminding us that people who work very hard for very little are not the abusers of cheap grace, but that others in well-feathered nests who are preaching sacrifice might be in real trouble on the cheap grace front. Obama cannot and should not condemn those in the electorate who buy into Romney’s “there will be showers of blessing” message, but he probably does …

‘Enchanted New York’ Offers a Journey Through the City’s Magical History — With Some Mystifying Oversights

By Gordon Haber

…orthodox religions—mesmerism, spiritualism and the like. Because New York City has long been a magnet for those seeking access to hidden forces, or to reveal them. Whether we believe in it or not, there’s no denying that magic runs through the history of New York City like one of those freshwater springs beneath the Manhattan asphalt. Kevin Dann’s new book, Enchanted New York: A Journey Along Broadway Though Manhattan’s Magical Past, looks to bri…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…lectorate than it is with straight voters. LePen’s Party, which includes a number of openly gay officials, still pledges to roll back the marriage equality law in favor of civil unions. As AP notes, LePen is not the only nationalist leader who uses fear of radical Islamist violence to attract LGBT support: In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, shou…

Heterosexual Martyrs and Gay Saints: Did AIDS Coverage Clear the Way for LGBT Equality?

By Diane Winston

…(CDC) reported an outbreak of a rare cancer among a handful of gay men in Los Angeles. Soon after, mainstream news outlets briefly reported the findings but despite its rapid spread, the cancer, which would be identified as AIDS, did not receive ongoing or thorough coverage. By 1982, nearly 800 AIDS cases had been diagnosed. According to one study, infants and children were increasingly infected. Although a threat to the general population was qu…

Repurposing the Gospel Aura: Eminem’s Chrysler Ad Borrows Some Spirit

By Douglas Harrison

…California Community Choir at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles, the album remains Franklin’s most popular. And as Franklin and other artists from this era went out of their way to foreground their musical roots after achieving enormous secular fame and success, the black gospel choir became synonymous in the mainstream American imagination with the sound of overcoming historical injustice. The Warm Glow of the Gospel Aura E…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…ough former Catholic strongholds like New York and Philadelphia that have closed churches by the dozen. And the numbers make it clear that the Catholic rate of disaffiliation isn’t an artifact of the general trend toward non-affiliation; in fact, it’s the other way around: the unprecedented number of Catholics leaving the church is a major driver of the increase in “nones.” A recent Pew Poll, which provides one of the most detailed looks to date a…

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

By Steven K. Green

…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…

“Tell Me What You Believe About Ferguson, and I’ll Tell You What You Believe About God”: A Missouri Pilgrimage

By Anita Little

…ler of Hands Up United, who said she wouldn’t even give her dog unfiltered city water, feels it’s yet another form of violence inflicted upon the city’s black and brown residents. “When I think of the murder of Mike Brown, I also think of the high rates of black people around Ferguson who are getting cancer, who are born with deformities, who are getting asthma, who are experiencing all these health problems. They’re being murdered too.” “I see yo…