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Diplomatic Suckerhood: Why Israel Is Fighting Toward its Own Demise

By Ira Chernus

…l won’t be “driven to its knees” because Israelis are not “suckers”— goes far toward explaining the Netanyahu government’s hardline positions. Most voters, having decided that they will always be victims, apparently want their leaders to use force in an endless attempt to prove to the world (but even more to themselves) that they are not powerless victims. Of course that project is doomed to fail. It only perpetuates the conflict, reinforcing the…

Do Space Aliens Need Baptism? The View From Gliese 581g

By Paul Wallace

…religious than the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. But this outward search is, on a certain level, guaranteed to bring us back where we are. To illustrate, let us perform an interesting thought experiment. Let us place ourselves on Gliese 591g and turn those same telescopes around and observe us observing the universe. What a strange, strange sight. What a wonder. Clearly, it is we—not black holes, not dark energy, not quasars—that are…

Sex and the Chosen People: Be Fruitful and Multiply, Etc.

By Mandy Van Deven

…re than that, often what you see in these “arguments” is that one or both parties are experimenting with ways to approach the issue. One sees, in the Talmud and midrashic (homiletic) sources, the rabbis basically riffing, or jamming. You know, “What if we thought about it this way? Hey, what would happen if we thought about it this way?” That’s really the spirit of The Passionate Torah—a playground of sorts, a way of experimenting with the questio…

Mormons Prepare to March in Seven LGBT Parades this Weekend

By Joanna Brooks

…ity which would protect homosexuals in housing and employment. While there are large carve-outs for church-related/owned businesses, the ordinances in SLC inspired a number of other Utah and Idaho towns and cities to follow suit and opened many conservative Mormon’s eyes to some problems they’d never before considered. – There have been no church-sponsored efforts aimed at mobilizing Mormons to fight same-sex marriage at the polls the way Mormons…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…health risks of oral and other hormonal contraceptives, charging that they are carcinogens, ruin women’s fertility and cause miscarriages. And, like the bishops, she suggests that natural family planning, which has the highest failure rate of any contraceptive method, is a suitable alternative: “There are other ways to avoid pregnancy and to space children’s birth if necessary and appropriate, if a family or a woman wants to do that,” Ms. Talento…

The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

By Sarah Sentilles

…e director surely had confidence in Rooney Mara, whom he’d worked with a year earlier on The Social Network. Every frame, every camera angle, every scene in a feature film is intentional, which leads me to wonder what Fincher wanted us to make of these scenes. He knows how to create tension with clothed characters, which is apparent not only in the films already mentioned, but also in Seven, Alien 3, and Panic Room, among others. For example, when…

‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon, and 1/6

By Catherine Wessinger

…e Alternative Reality Game (ARG). It’s been attractive to white people who are secular as well as many evangelical Christians. “Q,” alleging to be a person with a high-level security clearance in the government, is the unseen source of authority that believers have viewed as empowering President Trump to destroy the “Deep State” from within, and eliminate Democrats who are described as a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles who kill children to o…

Two Women and a Mosque: A Convert Community Grows in Panama City

By Aliyya Swaby

…s it goes against religious teachings. “Islamic culture says that when men are around, women should support them.” (Khadijah Jackson counters that this interpretation of Islam is incorrect, that women are required to support their husbands but are encouraged to educate themselves and others.) Malik said constant conflict among Muslims is dangerous for the community. Islam is supposed to transcend ethnic and cultural differences, he said, but indiv…

Morality and Marriage Vigilantes and More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…m for marriage, called “garriage”. While the group’s links to the Liberal Party are well known, the source of the organisation’s funding has been a mystery, until today. Crikey can now reveal that the source of Marriage Alliance’s funding is an investment firm owned by a Sydney couple, Byron and Francine Pirola. Marriage Alliance recently filed its annual report with ASIC, and this document reveals Beronia Investments gave the group a $1.67 millio…

Obama Caves on (Another) Contraception Exemption

By Patricia Miller

…k the contraceptive mandate will be small. But imagine a scenario where a larger number of employers seeks to escape a costly mandate, such as equal access to in vitro fertilization procedures for straight and gay couples, for supposedly religious reasons and hundreds flood HHS with generic opt-out letters that don’t identify a specific insurer. Or a future administration that is less dedicated to contraceptive access. It’s not hard to see how the…