Watching U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) skedaddle as fast as he could out of the U.S. Capitol — as the insurrectionists he had previously inspired with his famous raised fist (displayed while safe behind the lines of protection that Capitol police provided him) began destroying
The Bible is laced with stories of murder. Christianity is laced with stories of murder. Conservative evangelicalism is laced with stories of murder. Fact, fact, fact. Everywhere you turn, it’s here, there, and everywhere; past, present, and future. Whether intended or not, spiritual, emotional, and
The U.S. Supreme Court, in laying down its unanimous 9-0 decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, loudly proclaimed that the basic human and civil rights of LGBTQ people are superseded and trumped by the “deeply held” religious beliefs of bigoted groups and individuals. The
There are several reasons why Republican “culture wars” today are targeting transgender people (along with people of color in general). The right-wing, egged on by its radical right Christian adherents, is showing us how it’s fixated on transgender people as it struggles to hold onto
This past month we’ve seen that while the Democrats debate policies, how they reflect their inclusive values, and how best to enact them, the Republican Party is discussing Dr. Seuss, Pepe LePue, the Potato Heads, discrimination against transgender people, preventing people who disagree with them
Let’s review what we’ve learned as we face 2021. The moveable middle is shrinking. This is both good and bad news. It means that more people are sympathetic with causes for equality, while it also means that others are stuck in the extremist right-wing and
We’re seeing symptoms of the fears among leaders of the Christian right-wing and their followers as they sense that they’re losing the power they’ve craved since the beginnings of the Christian Coalition in the 1960s and have placed their faith in for generations. Their reactions
Can you be gay-vangelical? Being both LGBTQ+ and fundamentalist… is that possible? Of course it is. The great diversity present among fundamentalist and literalist Christians, relative to the small number of Bible passages that actually mention homosexual activity, leaves a lot of room for someone
We can’t deny that we were warned in 2006 during the height of the anti-LGBTQ+ crusades: “Consciously or unconsciously, fundamentalist Christians are using their anti-homosexual campaign to test how much intolerance the American people will tolerate.” Since that time, just as insider Mel White predicted
There’s a real comfort in being fundamentalist. And disturbing that comfort invokes a protective response that tells us that the depth of the appeal of whatever fundamentalism is involved serves a purpose that has little to do with the kind of doctrines to which a