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Religious Freedom Battle Is Far From Over: Here’s What to Look for in 2019

By Patrick Hornbeck

…ti-gay religious beliefs and LGBTQ rights much more clearly. Two cases are about to be heard by state supreme courts: one concerning wedding flowers in Washington and another about custom wedding invitations in Arizona. Is a cross always a cross? And other Establishment Clause matters If the logistics of same-sex weddings have created a steady flow of cases invoking religious freedom claims, so have religious monuments on government land. In 2019,…

Modern Vampires: Your Neighbors and Spouses

By Joseph Laycock

…just inform readers? Give them pleasure? Piss them off? The “basic facts” about the vampire community are readily available on the Internet. There are also numerous books that have been written by journalists for a popular audience. My hope is to challenge the reader’s assumptions about self-identified vampires. I think most people are very comfortable regarding vampires as a fringe group. The idea that vampires could be their neighbors or have r…

The New “Values Voters” Mantra

By Sarah Posner

…y it has not before. The “values voters” stalwarts of 2004 are now talking about government as a dude stealing your money, rather than talking about two dudes getting married. Gun Owners of America, which considers the NRA too moderate, and which has endorsed hard right (and tea party-supported) candidates like Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, and Rand Paul, has called the pro-gun rights Democrats endorsed by the NRA the “deceptive blue dogs.”…

As US Reaches a 1940s Fork in the Road — Which Path Will We Choose?

By John Stoehr

…need economic stability to stay viable long-term. But fascists don’t care about the long term. They care about feeding grievance addictions. They build policy around that. Perhaps this ties into your observation about “civil war.” It would take sacrifice of an order that most people would reject. Exactly. I think the potential for violence and destruction is great. But I don’t see that as lasting long term, because people won’t tolerate a consume…

Ross Douthat: Trump Is Women’s Fault for Not Having More Babies

By Patricia Miller

…” to rebuild the manufacturing base. In 1940, the city had a population of about 20,000 people; in 1990, it was about 13,000. Today, the population stands about 7,000 and shrinking. The city itself looks like something out of a “Walking Dead” set—and that’s not just because the only viable concern in the city is a special effects monster-make-up school. The city itself is literally rotting. Small trees sprout from crumbling brick buildings that li…

The Women’s March, Anti-Semitism, and ‘The Jewish Farrakhan’

By Shaul Magid

…once that happens, that’s all you are. I personally think Sarsour is wrong about some of the things she says about American Jews and Israel. Accusing someone of being mistaken invites conversation and exchange. But the label antisemite makes such engagement forbidden, or at least futile, because it’s not an error in judgment but a state of being. You cannot repudiate an antisemite’s antisemitism and still hold that s/he has done good things for an…

Religious Belief Or Mental Illness?

By Jay Michaelson

…his film explores whether its protagonist is crazy, or a prophet, or both. About three-quarters of the way through, it appears to resolve this tension. Curtis, played by Michael Shannon, has inherited his mother’s paranoid schizophrenia. The massive storm he predicts (and ruins his life to prepare for) does not come to pass. He is about to be medicated, and possibly institutionalized. But then, in literally the last scene in the movie, Curtis and…

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

By Diane Winston

…d AIDS predispose other news consumers to rethink their own opinions? What about gays? Did the crisis affect their feelings about “straight” institutions such as religion and marriage, inadvertently fueling a desire to normalize? If so, did coverage of supportive congregations and loving families make a difference? And what about reporting that perpetuated racist tropes? The news media repeatedly called out black churches as detached from the cris…

The Other Mormon Candidate

By Anthea Butler

…ersation. Some on the campaign trail have told Henrichsen to “stop talking about being Mormon.” He also gets a lot of questions about California’s Proposition 8. For him, it is easier to talk about these subjects as a political candidate than as a person of faith. His rationale is that by telling something about being LDS, it helps him on the campaign trail because it is very much a part of the Western story, especially in Wyoming, where Mormons t…

Touched by a Michael Landon: America’s Jewish Angel

By Peter Manseau

…ready stage name from the Los Angeles telephone directory. “He was serious about who he was, about being Jewish,” Wolff remembers of the impression Landon made during that first meeting. “He had been looking for a way to announce it to the world.” According to Wolff, “The Craftsman” became that way. Singerman was a Jew dropped into the mythology of the American West, much as Landon himself had been as a star of Bonanza. Notes Wolff, who went on to…