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Politics in a Fallen World: Lying, Fact-Checkers, and the Future of Civilization

By Michael Schulson

…reed. What Mandeville seems to want people to know is that the moral high ground is to understand that you don’t really have any moral high ground. You realize that you’re a selfish, awful person, but still pretend you’re not, and then at least you have true self-knowledge, but you will still do the things necessary for civil society to flourish. In the current political moment, though, our anxiety seems different. There’s a lingering sense that w…

Hebrew Bible as Lord of the Rings

By Paul Harvey

…d gates of our heroes. The portentuous music, rapid-cut pacing, and nearly nonstop action sequences also resemble the parallel epic tale as told in the recent movie. So does the exclusion of women, who in this miniseries are mostly there as villains (Hagar, Bathsheba, and of course the infamous Delilah) or as virginal princesses awaiting their turn to be given to the hero. At least Lord of the Rings had some female heroes. The Bible does, of cours…

Gimme Shelter: Queer Space Is Sanctuary

By Kaya Oakes

…ssible, in those days, to live in the Bay Area on the wages you made as a stripper, a cook, a house cleaner. It was possible to be two brown queers, a white queer, and a white straight girl and play improvised noise music in face paint and leggings in aluminum-walled clubs on the waterfront. Later I joined another band led by a trans Nico impersonator and played cabaret nights at Klubstitute, where we were eighth or ninth in a lineup of drag spoke…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…osition parties said they would consider legalizing marriage equality at a roundtable that was snubbed by the ruling Cambodia’s People Party. Forty civil society organizations have called on Cambodia to legalize marriage for same-sex couples after a court ruling in Taiwan in favor of marriage equality. More from Khmer Times: “Taiwan becomes a trailblazer in respect of LGBT rights in Asia, building momentum for marriage equality across the continen…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…nt Families, Same Love” have been sent to every school in Ireland, show “a number of families from different backgrounds – from same-sex parents to single parents, from grandparents raising a child to a childless couple with a dog.” The poster is meant to help teachers create inclusive classrooms and deter bullying. But the conservative Catholic Iona Institute, which led opposition to the marriage equality referendum, is arguing that religious sch…

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s

By John Wigger

…d. One cast member threw up in the dog costume he was wearing as they spun round and round, all on live television. At the time it all seemed fresh and, for many, exciting. The sex and financial shenanigans were only interesting because of the size of PTL’s cultural footprint. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I have written dense academic works, but this is aimed at a broader audience. It’s a story full of human drama. Many o…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. Where Pigpen called up the trusty telephone operator, I did my pining alone, with only the camaraderie of a searc…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…

Milquetoast Liberal Religion Won’t Challenge Conservative Values: A History Lesson

By Sheila D. Collins

…llion miles of roads and 200,000 public facilities—including schools, playgrounds, courthouses, parks and athletic fields, swimming pools, dams, bridges, and airports—drained malarial swamps, eradicated malaria, and exterminated rats in slums. They planted over 3 billion trees, essentially reforesting a country whose original forest cover had been decimated, taught farmers how to conserve soil after nearly one-sixth of the nation’s topsoil had blo…