Turns out it doesn’t take much to spook Democratic party leadership.
I would hope that as thousands of my fellow GLBTQ citizens celebrate this day for which they have so long worked, and so hard, that they not lose sight of the cost which has come with it.
Here’s hoping the president will do the right thing in the wake of this week’s promises to LGBT Americans.
In this video Rachel Maddow suggests a way to honor the prize while holding the president accountable.
Burying the Future: Youth Violence in Chicago
The problem of children slain in urban America is usually considered an inner-city crisis, isolated from the larger social sphere. But once you know about it, or see it up close, you see it everywhere.
The Olympics don’t always leave their host cities better off than before. So why does Chicago want the games?
The fact is that we are already committed to war in Afghanistan; we are already in. And while many of us may want to get out, the question is how?
“I Want My Country Back!”: The Demography of Discontent
It’s more than white republican conservative Christians who are losing confidence in Obama. A survey taken back in April reveals the roots of this season’s protests—the results are surprising.
It's not as if churchgoing has been a reliable indicator of a president's goodness, but still, it might be politically useful for Obama to sit in a pew from time to time.
Fear of a Black President
The president reminds Glenn Beck, and those who identify with his neo-white nationalism, of the lie of their own professed superiority. The pride with which this segment of society has rallied the troops around its shared sense of whiteness reveals that their skin color is the one true object of pledged allegiance and determinant of professed patriotism.
Over at Salon.com, Frances Kissling has fighting words for self-proclaimed “religious progressives” who are pressing to bypass compromises and including even greater restrictions on abortion.
And for that matter, why is an influential blogger writing straight from dubious press releases?
Does Rep. Wilson’s outburst before the president signal something deeper about the state of our national rituals?
Presidential Pep Talks and the Religion of Fear: How did an Uncontroversial Speech Become a National Controversy?
The conservatives who were frightened by Obama’s speech to schoolchildren weren’t afraid he’d say something radical—quite the contrary—they were afraid that the president would sound moderate and human. The real question, why did they buy the fear? is impossible to answer without considering religion.
Is Obama pulling a Dukakis, allowing all that anger and anxiety that could’ve been used for good to just slip away?
“[I] Pray For Barack Obama To Die And Go To Hell”: The Story The Media Missed
When an Arizona man brought guns to an Obama speech the story went unnoticed by a media prone to seeing such people as lone nuts. A look at the sermons of his virulently anti-gay pastor who’s been praying for Obama’s death, however, reveals similarities to a far right theology associated with militias, radical prolifers, and proponents of theocracy.
Mobilizing Religious Progressives on Health Care
The President is reaching out to faith leaders to help reframe the health care debates in moral terms, and religious progressives are heeding the call(s).
Health Care as Moral Drama
Myths of good versus evil have long sustained conservatism, but these narratives, with their shining heroes, and dastardly evildoers, are irrelevant to the civil debates at hand, and threaten to undermine the reforms that would help us all the most.
The debate about health has turned into a debate about death. Why has our heath care debate shifted so easily and so quickly into a fright-fest concerned with the care we owe to the dead and dying?
In the Church of Lincoln
We’ve made Abraham Lincoln into a secular saint, as a visit to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois—complete with relics and incense—easily confirms. But what of his cutthroat skill in the political arena? Contemporary politicians can’t compete.
What We Really Talk About When We Talk About Health Care
What looks like discussion about deductibles and co-pays, preventative treatment, and end-of-life care, is really about something else entirely. And then there’s all the yelling.
Shouldn’t a professed “health and wealth” preacher be concerned with health care? Apparently, politics get in the way...
When a coalition of religious progressives stands firmly in support of the president’s health care reform, why insist that it’s not a partisan move? How about “God’s Partisanship”?
Deep, rich, wingnuttery abounds as everyone from Pat Buchanan to Fred Thompson falls over one another to try to terrify us about government-sponsored eugenics.
Far-Right Evangelicals And The Campaign Against Obama
From the media influence of the “birthers” to suggestions that the president wants to euthanize the elderly, a propaganda campaign against Obama is in full swing. Who, exactly, is behind it?