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Reconsidering “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin”: An Interview with Ethicist Eric Reitan

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…It’s hard for LGBT people to trust anti-LGBT people. You say that it’s not about winning the argument. Instead you’re trying to get to the point of dialogue, not just debate. I’ve been in many face-to-face (and internet) battles with anti-LGBT people and we often feel that the other side isn’t there for the dialogue, but to “win” the argument. What I’m talking about is a path forward if the circumstances are right. But there needs to be a measure…

Is the Satanist Behind 10 Commandments Challenge Sincere?

By Joseph Laycock

…s writings. Asked whether compassion isn’t out of sync with Satanist ideas about social Darwinism, Greaves suggested that Anton LaVey’s rhetoric about social Darwinism was meant to appear “evil yet justifiable.” In practice, brutal social Darwinism cannot be reconciled with Satanism’s commitment to reason because it is based on a flawed understanding of human social evolution. Greaves explained, “As a species, altruism has enabled us to survive. W…

Pope Francis Walks With LGBTQ People, One Step Forward, Big Steps Back

By Kaya Oakes

…it, it’s no wonder that the pope often follows broader sweeping statements about gender and sexuality with pastoral stories. Vatican journalists have come to expect surprise statements from the pope when he speaks off the cuff, often on airplane press conferences. His oft-quoted statement about gay priests—“Who am I to judge?”—occurred on a flight back to Italy from Brazil. Most recently in Tblisi, Georgia, the pope referred to the “theory of gend…

Sharing Many of the Same Flaws as its Subject ‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill’ Podcast Puts Blame Anywhere But Where It Belongs

By Jessica Johnson

…tioned throughout the podcast’s narrative. While the anti-woke crowd crows about “anti-white racism,” there’s no discussion of race or racism at all. Men’s voices predominate too, except of course in episodes that cover gender and sex, when women’s voices are given more airtime because those are topics that “concern women,” and yet survivors of abuse are not centered in these discussions. Episode Six—”The Brand”—directly follows the episode that t…

Crossing the Rubicon? Mar-a-Lago Raid Enflames Right Wing Fantasies of Christian Caesarism

By Annika Brockschmidt & Thomas Lecaque

…Cawthorn and the rest of the right-wing pundits and politicians don’t care about what actually happened in the past. For the American Right, the rhetoric about the fall of Rome, the crumbling of an empire, a Republic which was over-stretched and battled with corruption, is all about creating an intellectual permission structure for what they see as America’s future: An authoritarian government, led by a strongman, to enshrine White Christian rule….

For Trump Admin, Immigration is About Race and Identity

By Aryeh Cohen

…unded up, and not undocumented Canadian immigrants. In part this debate is about religion. Bannon and his team at the White House (Stephen Miller, Gorka) have made clear that they do not consider Islam a religion worthy of the name, and that Muslims are under suspicion by default. Bannon, you will recall, is allied with a conservative wing of the Catholic Church situated in the Vatican. However, this is also an internal debate within religions, al…

Mormon Leader Affirms Doctrine on Marriage; and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…inst calling this a matter of personal freedom!” he told viewers. “This is about religions! This is about morals!” … The crackdown has primarily targeted gay men and transgender women, groups that the Egyptian state and mass media do not consider distinct from each other. Hundreds of them have been arrested since 2013 as part of a broad crackdown on social freedoms by the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, which has killed hundreds of p…

Al-Qur’an and Me

By Amina Wadud

…y own door was kind of accidental. I went to a mosque for more information about this Islam, I had read a little about in books. Because I had my hair covered and was wearing a long skirt, I think the brothers assumed I was already there, and I ended up taking my shahadah, declaration of faith or witness. It was Thanksgiving day 1972. From there, I returned to my university equipped with a small “how to pray” booklet, and a lot of library books. I…

RD News Round-Up: October 27, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…Affiliations Just when you thought that there was nothing else to discover about Sarah Palin’s religious affiliations, along comes Talk2Action’s Bruce Wilson with another video exposé. Wilson and Ruth, his co-researcher and co-documentarian, have done an extraordinary job trying to bring information about the realities of Sarah Palin’s religious relationships to the spotlight. And while the mainstream media hasn’t picked up on the Palin videos—as…

How to Talk to a Trump Evangelical at Christmas

By Stephen Mucher

…Voters cast ballots for a wide variety of reasons, including frustrations about economic fairness and national belonging that deserve compassion. You should concede this point too and move on. 5. Do discuss Jesus. What you believe about Jesus is not the point. You aren’t on trial. But a group of people charged by their holy book to share the good news of Christ is now the most potent voting bloc for the most dominant, powerful political majority…