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Global LGBT Recap:Culture War Exports, Mob Violence and Kidnapping as Weapon of Homophobia

By Peter Montgomery

…pean Law Criminalizing Homosexuality Repealed Thirty-three years after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that laws criminalizing homosexuality violate the European Human Rights Convention, lawmakers in Northern Cyprus abolished the last such law in Europe. Lithuania: Push for Ban on Adoption In Lithuania, one of the countries in which American evangelicals have encouraged the adoption of anti-gay legislation, legislator Petras Gražulis draf…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…y 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 going down fast in both directions, and the governments and institutions that haven’t fully engaged on the q…

It’s Theology, Not Baseball: Misunderstanding Iraq’s Sectarian Conflicts

By Amyn B. Sajoo

…any of their recruits are ex-cons and social dropouts. In the diasporas of Europe and North America, the seeming romance of radical ideological causes can appeal to those who are disenchanted, or crave the satisfaction of being part of a larger cause no matter how degenerate it may appear to their fellow citizens. But this is not the whole story — and pretending that we can explain away sectarian clashes as if this were a baseball league will not…

The Two Mythologies Behind True Detective Come Crashing Down in Finale

By Joseph Laycock

…ized population with Margaret Murray’s thesis in The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921) to spin stories of Pagan cults surviving in the backwoods of America conducting sacrifices in secret. Weird tales have a way of coming to life. Chambers’ idea of a forbidden text that renders the reader insane influenced Lovecraft’s imaginary text “The Necronomicon.” Author Kent David Kelly has dubbed this literary device, an “imaginary source of revelation,” …

Finding the Missing Airliner with Coconuts

By Joseph Laycock

…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 “…

Global LGBT Recap: World Vision Caves, World Congress of Families Vamps, God Weeps

By Peter Montgomery

…nizing the civil unions, since Spain itself has adopted marriage equality. European Parliament Video on Lingering LGBT Prejudice The European Parliament released a video presenting the results of a major survey of LGBT people on the continent. “In Europe the dark clouds of prejudice still loom over many of those who dare to display a difference in sexual orientation.” Almost half of LGBT people said they suffered discrimination or harassment on a…

What Robot Theology Can Tell Us About Ourselves

By Michael Schulson

…ording to Riskin, “peopled the landscape of late medieval and early modern Europe,” which was “positively humming with mechanical vitality.” Church-commissioned clockmakers built mechanical angels and demons to decorate altars; “automaton Christs—muttering, grimacing, blinking on the cross—were especially popular.” Some churches even had automatic heretics. A mechanical moor’s head once hung in the cathedral in Barcelona, the expression on its fac…

Brits Get A Dose of Christian Nation Politicking

By Sarah Posner

…ligious conservatives: that the U.S. need only look across the Atlantic to Europe as a harbinger of things to come in an increasingly secular nation. Empty pews. Moral decay. Secular politics with elected officials crouching in fear of talking about their faith. But then came British Prime Minister David Cameron, with a pre-Easter reception during which he “thanked churches for their work in society, including the growth of food banks to help the…

Brits Get A Dose of Christian Nation Politicking

By Sarah Posner

…ligious conservatives: that the U.S. need only look across the Atlantic to Europe as a harbinger of things to come in an increasingly secular nation. Empty pews. Moral decay. Secular politics with elected officials crouching in fear of talking about their faith. But then came British Prime Minister David Cameron, with a pre-Easter reception during which he “thanked churches for their work in society, including the growth of food banks to help the…

What Makes a Human Bomb Tick?

By Gordon Haber

…y is that it is not limited to religiopolitical violence. Lankford cites a number of American suicide terrorists that exhibited “classic suicidal traits.” Like Joseph Stack, a divorced software engineer with tax problems. In 2010, Stack crashed his single-engine plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS manager; “There isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken [with me],” Stack wrote in the…