Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s always interesting to see the demographic connections between religious worldviews (or lack thereof) and politics. One often assumes that the more politically liberal one is, the higher the chance that they will be nonreligious. Pew Research Center has found that 53% of “nones”—religiously unaffiliated—are or lean Democrat, with only 23% favoring the Republican Party. […]
LGBT
Posted inLeaving Religion
The core reason homosexuality and Christian belief are incompatible
Reading Time: 8 minutes In 2021, an Ipsos poll of participants from 27 countries found that 80% of people recorded themselves as heterosexual, with 3% gay, 4% bisexual, 1% asexual, 1% other (non-binary, trans, fluid etc.), and 11% didn’t know or wouldn’t say. In the whole scheme of things, that’s a lot. For example, if you were designing the […]
Posted inWar and Peace
A horrific ‘gay purge’ in Chechnya shows the limits of our moral attention
Reading Time: 4 minutes In 2019, a brutal ‘gay purge’ took place in the Russian republic of Chechnya. It was not the first. Since 2017, gay men have been hunted, abducted, and tortured by the Chechen authorities. Some have been murdered. The story was briefly covered by Western media. Thinking that the return (yet again) of concentration camps to […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Uganda: ‘Kill the Gays’ Law Imposing Death Penalty on Homosexuals
Reading Time: 4 minutes Uganda is one of those countries that has had the unfortunate “privilege” of receiving money and missionaries from the United States. And those missionaries and that money isn’t about making the country a nicer, more cohesive country. It’s not about pulling those communities together. And this has been a long-term strategy. Just imagine going to […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Gay Conversion Therapy Group Founder Comes Out as Gay
Reading Time: 3 minutes These sorts of stories always leave us going, “Well, I saw that one coming…” In this case, the irony/hypocrisy meter is turned up to 11, in true Spinal Tapishness. Gay conversion therapy has long been the purview of the right-wing, and the Christian right-wing in particular. This story ticks all of those boxes, as People […]
Posted inSex & Gender
Link Between LGBT, Religion & Homelessness, Suicide
Reading Time: 4 minutes Being gay or in any way sexually different can be a real challenge for people who live in religious communities, and it appears that the higher the religiosity, the more challenging this will be. The BBC recently reported on the phenomenon of homelessness in the context of those who have come out as LGBT: Nearly […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Sex & Gender
Evangelical Group Wants Gays Removed from Anti-Lynching Bill
Reading Time: < 1 minute Wow. The only reason you would want to remove a category of people from an anti-lynching bill is so that you have legal permission to lynch them. This group of people want to lynch gays. Let that sink in. This is modern America. A federal anti-lynching bill has aroused the intents of Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat […]
Posted inPolitics, The Secular
The Religious Right & Project Blitz
Reading Time: 5 minutes I have written before about how the religious right is raising their game to capitalise on the chaos and distraction caused by Trump in order to pass laws concerning abortion. This move to force their pious views and hardline Christian values upon American society is part of an organised and strategic policy known as Project […]
Posted inNews, Religion
And Now the Methodists…
Reading Time: 5 minutes Yesterday the United Methodist Church decided to revert back to a hardline stance against same-sex relationships, and many of my friends are heartbroken by this move by the second largest Protestant denomination (trailing only my own family’s Southern Baptist Convention, which has never accepted gay marriage). Backtracking like this almost certainly means a major split […]
Posted inLGBTQ News, Sex & Gender
The Bible and the Art of Blameshifting
Reading Time: 9 minutes This past Sunday at church, my daughters heard a sermon (they still attend with their mother) by Owen Strachan, a visiting preacher who until recently headed up the Biblical Council on Manhood and Womanhood, a conservative evangelical think tank created to preserve and defend the traditional American family structure. The CBMW would argue their rigid family […]