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Swiss Priest Sacked for Blessing Lesbian Couple; Mormon Equality Advocate Excommunicated; Pope-Backed Anti-Gay Referendum Fails; Global LGBT Recap

…s parenthood. Nepal: Government committee recommends marriage equality The Washington Blade reports, “Nepal could become the first Asian country to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples if its government accepts the recommendations of a committee that studied the issue.” A translated copy of the recommendations the Washington Blade obtained from gay Nepalese Parliamentarian Sunil Babu Pant, who founded the Blue Diamond Society, the country’s…

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Discovering “Little Syria”—New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood

…that also included the much-more-famous Kahlil Gibran. For Fine, the Save Washington Street project is part of the same effort. “We are persistent,” he told me by phone, “because these stories have a real impact on people.” Telling stories grounded in real Arab-American history is the only way to reach understanding. And understanding is still sorely needed. One imagines what the Islamophobic activists who conjured the “Ground Zero Mosque” debacl…

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Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife

…houris, dark-eyed women. We all know that Mohammad Atta, who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the Twin Towers on 9/11, was inspired by this promise. But among progressives, the sex promised to the righteous in the Qur’an isn’t sex as we know it, but something mysterious and sublime for which sex is a poetic stand-in. Second, what happens to our bodies in heaven? This is my favorite part of the heaven conversation. For if you believe in heaven…

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Too Late for Apologies: Three Steps the U.S. Bishops Should Take to Prevent Another Sexual Abuse Scandal

…be live-streamed, starting Wednesday, June 15). The bishops will take up a number of issues, from the revised liturgy to assisted suicide, but their conversations are sure to be dominated by an issue that has been dogging them since the mid-1980s: sexually abusive priests and the bishops who enabled them. Ten years after Cardinal Bernard Law became the poster bishop for failed religious leadership, new revelations of episcopal misfeasance threaten…

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An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?)   The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

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Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

…a member of the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” Washington advocacy group that arrived on the scene less than a decade ago, billing itself as a pro-Israel alternative to the long-dominant American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Despite Stutman’s optimism about synagogues as the locus for difficult conversations about American Judaism’s most contentious topic, few rabbis believe they are able to create a space where con…

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Marriage Equality in WA Already Under Attack

…to repeal the new law. “NOM is joining with the Family Policy Institute of Washington, Stand for Marriage Washington, Concerned Women for America and hundreds of other groups, pastors and individuals to take this issue directly to the people in November via a referendum,” the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown breathlessly proclaimed in an email to supporters. It’s breathtaking to comprehend just how much money those organizations to…

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Death With Dignity: Combatting Religious Opposition to Physician-Assisted Suicide

…. “Before he died in 2006, he asked me to make sure the same law passed in Washington.” By Living Longer, You Suffer Longer In 2008, Randy Niedzielski’s wish came true. Washington State voters approved the Death with Dignity law, and it became effective early in March. For him, Nancy Niedzielski said, it was two years too late. She blames religious leaders for her husband’s painful death. Theological traditionalists are stuck in a time warp that h…

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Finding the Missing Airliner with Coconuts

…at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and attempted to locate Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using a magical ritual that combined Islamic elements with shamanic practices. On Thursday Ibrahim Mat Zin, also known as Rajah Bomoh Sedunia Nujum, delivered a press conference (in which he demonstrated a squint that bore an uncanny resemblance to Pat Robertson.) He initially stated that he had been invited to perform his ritual by one of Malaysia’s “…

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The Sex Scandal Following Whole Foods’ Guru

…ned with authentic caring.” Examples include Whole Foods Market, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and, somewhat mysteriously, Amazon.com, which is known for using underpaid temp-style labor in its warehouses and allegedly mistreating employees at its home offices. You don’t have to be a Marxist to question whether these institutions are “fulfilling every major value of the great spiritual traditions.” At the very least, that sentiment might seem ali…

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