Conservative favorite challenging John McCain for his Senate seat pulls a Santorum.
From Mexico to Washington, DC, anti-equality activists are trying to block happy families.
Should Faith-Based Orgs Be Allowed to Discriminate in Hiring? Introducing: A New Collaboration with Bloggingheads
In this first installment, RD Contributing Editor Peter Laarman debates evangelical professor David Gushee over the Obama administration’s decision to effectively continue to allow recipients of federal faith-based funding to discriminate in hiring. In other clips, the two tangle on gay marriage, whether the Christian Right is dead, and more.
Church groups fund gay marriage opposition in D.C.
New Report: More Sex in the Pulpit
While religious conservatives are vocal on issues of sexuality—from pre-marital sex to masturbation to abortion—progressive religious leaders have largely ‘abstained’ from discussing these matters in the pulpit. A new report urges more clergy education and openness on sexuality issues.
When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort ‘Outed’?
New documents introduced in the challenge to Prop. 8 reveal that the LDS Church sought to create “plausible deniability” in its role in supporting the Yes on 8 campaign. Why would the LDS hierarchy want to deny Mormon involvement?
Without the Bible as support, anti-gay marriage attorneys resorted to a smattering of flimsy arguments, half truths, and discredited studies.
The Orthodox Jews of Lakewood, New Jersey, are worried about supporting the rights of gays and lesbians to marry because it might reflect badly on the community. Rabbi Justus N. Baird offers a corrective.
When Conservatives celebrate votes to oppose same-sex marriage, they’re overlooking the financial bonanza that same-sex marriage can bring to a state.
Conservative 'Cafeteria Catholics' Favor Opposition to Gay Marriage Over Health Care
As the debate over gay marriage is reignited in New Jersey, the local Roman Catholic bishops threw themselves in with a zeal they have yet to display in the fight for universal health care, despite theological requirements that they fight for it. Are they acting like “cafeteria Catholics,” picking and choosing which parts of the Church’s mandates to follow?
No matter what Welton Gaddy might hope, anti-gay religious groups are not interested in finding common ground on marriage equality—they need the conflict to fill their coffers.
Episcopal Church Walks with American Clergy on Gay and Lesbian Equality
Despite worldwide calls from conservative Anglicans that the American church is choosing to “walk apart” from the wider community, the numbers don't agree—at least not in America.
Fact Check: Are Gay-Friendly Churches in Decline?
A recent US News & World Report piece claims that “the churches most open to homosexuality are shrinking fastest.” A closer look at the numbers reveals a different picture.
Bishop Harry Jackson, pleading for the president to maintain the ban on same-sex marriage, calls it the number one domestic issue. But what about, say, the unemployment rate? Will the ban help those without jobs?
How sad and ironic that the revocation of citizen’s rights via Constitutional bans, is not on the SCLC’s radar. Is it a Movement or Museum?
RDPulpit: Is Barack Obama a “Fierce Advocate” For Gays or Just Pragmatist-in-Chief?
The Obama administration has gone from indifference to actively promoting religious opposition to the civil rights of gay Americans, comparing same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia. Only when “pink dollars” were pulled did the president approach the LGBT community. A former priest suggests how to make Obama listen.
Sacred&Profane: On Sexual Diversity, Perversity, and Ecstasy
Can a man have multiple wives? Do different positions bear spiritual fruit? What is the meaning of orgasm? Religious traditions thrive on intimacy with and access to the body, its experience of suffering, sorrow, and sickness, as well as rapture, delight, and bliss. A romp through America’s favorite, most taboo subject.
Obama Threaded the Moral Needle of Latino Evangelicals in ’08
Obama won, in part, by flipping the vote of Latino evangelicals back from their support of Republicans in ’00 and ’04. This switch, argues Prof. Gastón Espinosa, is due to a combination of targeted and aggressive outreach to evangelicals, the candidate’s ability to talk about his faith, and a compromise on the abortion and gay rights issues.
Respectability and Its Discontents: Missing the Louche, Loud, and Lovely World of Sexual Outlawry
In this meditation on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots an ordained minister, while eulogizing his own outlawry, notes that God’s goodness is evident in the way in which new and seriously maladjusted queer youth are still rising up to bring new energy and edge to the movement.
Stonewall, 40 Years Later, What Has Been Achieved?
Over the past few decades a form of “tolerance” has been achieved in many parts of American life. What sort of achievement is this?
Distortions Aside, Clergy Support Gay Rights in Surprising Numbers
Recently released results from a survey of mainline clergy reveals that, when policies are portrayed honestly, the number of clergy who support same-sex marriage, adoption, etc., nearly doubles.
Carrie Prejean, God’s Prophet or Porn Star?
Miss California and her supporters seem oblivious to the possibility that theological consistency might lead to a conclusion that a god who prohibits gay marriage would not look favorably upon her breast augmentation surgery.
When we judge people by their past mistakes we lose our own moral ground; we are all in need of repentance and grace.
A recent article in Time quoting conservative Christians decrying the split in the church makes it sound as if this isn't the normal state of things.
Response: Gay or Black, It’s Still Church-Sanctioned Discrimination
To deny the parallels between the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for LGBTQ civil rights obscures the fact that the forces opposing both used the Bible and Christianity to do their dirty work.