Prophetic Counterterrorism: Avoiding the Insanity of Repeated Failure
The secular world, in confronting evil, has long relied on one solution: the use of coercive power to violently incapacitate those who do evil—often with “collateral damage.” Maybe it’s time to explore other options?
Outrage Outs Closeted Pols Opposed to Gay Rights
Documentarian Kirby Dick maintains that his new film isn’t merely righteous mimicry of tabloid journalism.
Scott Lively, the founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and the author of the the weird book The Pink Swastika, is declaring war against the Southern Poverty Law Center, while taking his anti-gay crusade overseas.
ENDA Times: LGBT Groups, Echoing the Civil Rights Era, Approach Churches
The Human Rights Campaign, while lobbying for the passage of a comprehensive federal nondiscrimination bill, is hoping to “reclaim the moral ground” from the religious right by targeting churches with its new curriculum.
Milk: Hollywood Does Gay History
While Milk does much to revive the history of the gay liberation movement, it misses a few big opportunities.
You Gotta Have Faith-Based Politics
Even as it talks about inclusion and admits nonbelievers into the ranks of upstanding citizenry, the new administration, like the last one, has a plan to use religion to further its political goals.
Obama seems to be backpedaling on the issue of “allowable discrimination.” Appropriating tax dollars to bigoted faith groups is not the change we were looking for.
Newsweek Takes a Bullet On Gay Marriage
A major newsmagazine gets theological, and infuriates conservatives. But the Newsweek story doesn’t even scratch the surface of contemporary religion scholarship on gay marriage.
Teaching Love: Soulforce Takes it to the Quad
Soulforce, an organization dedicated to changing the hearts of those who discriminate against LGBT people based on religious belief, takes the message to conservative colleges and learns, firsthand, the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Trespass on Campus.
A Color-Blind America? Don't Fall For The Okey-Doke
Barack Obama tried to run a color-blind campaign, and he won. But don't believe the hype: an Obama victory doesn't mean an end to racism in our culture, or that we should blithely forget the history of racial injustice.
Op-Ed: Why is My Life Still Up for a Vote?
Gay and Lesbian people are weary of being used as a political and spiritual football, tired of being kicked around. This election brought history-making moments for progressives, but some crucial setbacks for the rights of gay citizens.
For a good feminist “lesbian” must always trump “gay” in the alphabet soup of acceptance and tolerance.
The Very Idea of “Gay Church”
The impulse to minister to the homosexual community of L.A. led to a new kind of Christian church—the MCC—committed to inclusivity and undoing the old divisions incised across Christian history.
Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church
In which our columnist suggests that the Church adopt a scheme of numbering to refer to its various arguments against homosexuality. It would be more efficient, certainly, given that these arguments are continually invoked. But why the incessant repetition?
“I’d Be Stupid Not To Go Packing Now.”
In the spirit of the Black Panthers or the Jewish Defense League, The Pink Pistols advocate guns for gays, shouting “Armed gays don’t get bashed” and “Pick on someone your own caliber.”
Wendy Gonaver’s lessons on the American Constitution may soon include her own story: the refusal to sign a loyalty oath designed to root out communists in public jobs whose effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Kremlin and the Church: Russia’s Holy Alliance
In the new Russia, where Putin attends Easter services in the capital’s main cathedral, it seems the era of religious repression is over—except if you are a Protestant.
Women should not be excluded from the benefits of global sisterhood because of a shalwar kameez, or a business suit, or a kaffiyeh... Or because of Islam.
Mormons and Idiosyncrasy
A retrospective on the Mormon-hate that blighted the air waves while Romney remained in the race.
Heck yes...