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Bangladesh’s Atheist Blogger Still Wants to Talk

By Austin Dacey

…ide his office building when he arrived for the night shift on the 14th of January 2013. Without a word, they had come from behind with knives and machetes, attempted to slit his throat and rained down lacerating blows on his back and neck, one of which missed his spinal column by half an inch. “The 19-year-old boy’s name was Kamal,” Asif explained to me in English over a Skype chat. “I talked to him very politely, trying to understand what they w…

Global LGBT Recap: Adventists Talk About, Not To, LGBT People; British Muslim Group Welcomes Gay-Rights Activist; Homophobia Exports Continue

By Peter Montgomery

…is one of the largest protestant denominations in Uganda and has a growing number of new converts in East Africa. In 2010, in the heat of the “Kill the Gays Bill” media frenzy, the Vice President of the Seventh-day Adventist African Conference vocally supported the law in Uganda while it still included death for those convicted of “homosexuality” (he later said in a classic non-apology apology that he had been misquoted).The Seventh-day Adventist…

Holy Hipster Mark Driscoll Continues to Fall

By Becky Garrison

…0 in religion in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. In January 2012, he became a #1 New York Times bestselling author heavily promoted by his publisher, until Mars Hill removed this designation from his bio following revelations that he had paid ResultSource, a marketing firm that “creates”bestsellers. At present, Driscoll seems to have been dropped by his agent, and his relationship with his current publisher Tyndale remains u…

‘Slender Man’ Murder Attempt Wasn’t Media or Madness

By Joseph Laycock

…ting out the very thing that they fear. Sometime between December 2013 and January 2014, Geyser came upon the idea of becoming “proxies” for Slender Man—that is, living extensions of the legend complex. The game of becoming “proxies” was a form of ostension, proving the legend is real. One girl explained, “Many people do not believe Slender Man is real. [We] wanted to prove the skeptics wrong.” Ikuya Sato argued that senseless youth crimes often o…

Catholic Bishops Vote to Double Down on Culture War

By Patricia Miller

…pus Dei priest Father C. John McCloskey, who is credited with converting a number of influential Republicans to Catholicism, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Sam Brownback, Robert Bork and Larry Kudlow, has advocated just such a solution: McCloskey told columnist Terry Mattingly in July 2013 that “the United States is no longer a Christian country.” Because this is so, he explained, traditionalists will need to…

The Holocaust and 9/11 Museums: A Tale of Two Controversial Films

By Todd Fine

…day. Judith Miller of The New York Times wrote a story about the letter in January 1998, and she quoted Rabbi Michael Berenbaum, a key founder of the Holocaust Museum, as suggesting that the authors sent it consciously “to show the evangelical right how credible they are.” Interestingly, several of the original signers would soon visibly anchor the so-called “neoconservative” Republican wing that influenced the military actions after the September…

Egypt’s ’Secular’ Gov Uses Religion as Tool of Repression

By Mohamad Elmasry

…dence of government manipulation of religion to believe otherwise. In late January it was announced that Egypt’s government would begin to dictate the topics of Friday Mosque Sermons, while the military has solicited the help of famous Islamic religious figures in a propaganda campaign designed to cement the regime’s religious legitimacy. Popular television preacher Amr Khaled was asked to address military conscripts, and tells them in a video rec…

Trans Protections in India and Malta; Death-by-Stoning Law in Brunei; Church-State Divides on Marriage

By Peter Montgomery

…ake place before the parliamentary year ended in March. As we reported in January, American religious conservatives like Peter LaBarbera and Brian Camenker attended a conference in Jamaica at the end of last year to rally opposition to changes in the “buggery law.” Hungary: Neo-Nazi Jobbik Party Gains in Parliament The Jobbik Party won more than 20 percent of the vote in Hugary’s April 6 parliamentary elections. The Jobbiks, which operate a para…

Global LGBT Recap: Homogeopolitics; Dalai Lama Says Gay is OK; Pope Says Civil Unions May Be

By Peter Montgomery

…s worldwide still criminalize homosexuality, and it seems likely that this number will grow. There already are efforts to duplicate Russia’s anti-LGBT “propaganda” laws in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and there are attempts to emulate Nigeria and Uganda’s new laws in other African countries. With a single decision by the Indian Supreme Court in December, homosexuality was recriminalized in a nation home to 1.23 billion people. Dominoes are goi…

Russian Politician Wants to Ban Apple CEO Who Says Being Gay is God’s Gift; Violence After Preachers Blame Liberian Gays for Ebola; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…that the unseemly, if not deeply pathological, reality that a significant number of these bishops, who cannot decide whether gays and lesbians have gifts to offer to the church, are themselves closeted gay men.” This weekend, the University of Notre Dame is hosting “Gay in Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity,” a colloquium designed to answer the questions, “What would be an appropriate pastoral strategy for Catholic parishes with respect to parishione…