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‘Imagine Better’: Can Harry Potter Change the World?

By B. Howell Belser

…to date was HPA for the Win in June 2010, during which HPA mobilized huge numbers of online voters from across fandoms and online communities to win a $250,000 grant from the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook. Then there’s the current “Deathly Hallows” campaign, which centers on the release date of a Harry Potter movie—in this case, The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on Nov. 19. The Deathly Hallows campaign will run for nine months—the time bet…

Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…, self-harm, and suicide among LGBT youth and adults. Of course, a growing number of churches and denominations today have rejected such a destructive understanding of human sexuality. Religion Dispatches recently compiled a list of the official positions on LGBT issues currently taught by various Christian denominations. According to this list, mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church claim th…

Contrary to Claims of Anti-Trans Muslims, LGBTQ+ Acceptance is Widespread in the History of Islam

By Ali Olomi

…ive daily prayers. In other words, al-Isfahani, who recorded the life of a number of mukhannathun like Tuways, saw no contradiction between his gender expression and his Muslimness. From al-Isfahani we read of al-Dalal, ibn Surayj, and al-Gharid—all mukhannathun—who lived rich lives in early Muslim societies. Notably absent from al-Isfahani’s records is any state-sanctioned persecution. Instead, the mukhannathun are an accepted part of society. In…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…g up in a doctors office, declaring they’re trans and immediately being operated on. Of course, these are preposterous lies. And while German newspapers have published anti-trans pieces before, this was a telling escalation with its focus on a made-up shadowy trans cabal targeting and re-educating kids. The authors furthermore claim that they’re supported by the “gay and lesbian interest group ‘LGB Alliance,’” which is actually a UK-based anti-tra…

Spinning Ft. Hood

By Hussein Rashid

…trust the military to protect us and we need to trust them that they know best how to preserve order in their ranks. I do not advocate the military being given carte blanche—we are a civilian democracy—but we also need to recognize that military culture is distinct from civilian culture. Language and rhetoric that we use in the political sphere, especially language that is hateful and divisive, is generally not acceptable in a military context. I…

Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…

Dispatches from the Workplace: Postville: Ground Zero for the Intersection of Immigrant and Workers’ Rights

By Kim Bobo

…ptions: They could plead guilty to knowingly using a false Social Security number and the government would withdraw the more serious charge of “aggravated identity theft.” By pleading guilty, the worker would serve five months in jail and be deported without a hearing. If they pleaded not guilty, they could wait in jail for six to eight months for a trial without the right to bail. If the worker won at trial, he or she would be deported. If the wo…

UN Human Rights Council Creates LGBT Watchdog; Orthodox Council Affirms Traditional Teaching on Family; Pope Francis Says Church Should Apologize to Gays; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…entist rhetoric in America is at the very least tinged (and more often saturated) with homophobia and hate?” Indeed, the GC’s statement failed to appreciate that, for many LGBT Adventists, the church’s one-sided disparaging views of homosexuality and same-sex relationships feel like “acts of violence, hatred and discrimination.” From that perspective, the NAD’s response to the Orlando mass shooting stands out not only for its compassionate tone bu…

Show Me the Way of the Hebrews: The Making of an African American Rabbi

By J. Lester Feder

…ieve a larger goal of getting a Jewish education. “Ultimately, it opened a number of doors for me,” he says. After completing his studies and receiving his ordination from Shoulson, Aronoff honored his commitment to his teacher by teaching in his grandmother’s congregation for more than 20 years, while earning his living as an accountant. Bethel member Dave McClam, whose mother was among the congregation’s founders, says that Aronoff was “on the c…

An Extravagant Welcome For All: Believe Out Loud, a Faith-Based LGBT Campaign, Launches

By Peter Laarman

…h is also expected to attract the attention and involvement of significant numbers of Roman Catholics and younger evangelicals. Part of the idea is to remind individual Christians who totally embrace LGBT equality that there are millions more like them—a genuine “cloud of witnesses,” to use the biblical expression. [Full disclosure: I was significantly involved for over two years in the early development of this project; my agency was paid for its…