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I call this campaign “theocratic” as a Baptist minister who holds all human life to be sacred. But issues around human life are not as simple as the “personhood” proponents believe.

The desire to translate events like Qaddafi’s death into video games is an attempt to simplify complex issues into patterns that we can recognize and make sense of, with predictable rules, defeatable “bad guys,” and the hopeful celebration of an “epic win.”

In a move not widely reported outside of Michigan, the Michigan State Senate passed the country’s first pro-bullying bill on November 2. At first, it was an anti-bullying measure not unlike the laws passed in many other states. But under the perverse influence of a few far-right opportunists, legislators led by State Senator Rick Jones (R, of course) became convinced that the law would somehow persecute those noble enforcers of Christian—I’m sorry, “Judeo-Christian”—values in our nation’s high schools: bullies.

Russell is continually, even post-mortem, called “ provocative,” “ controversial,” and “ iconoclastic.” And at least a few of these obits have noted his conversion to Roman Catholicism all those years ago, though he was never quite settled in his faith. Certainly there was religious content in his films—the nuns and priests in a sexual standoff in The Devils (1971), Anthony Perkins’ creepy street preacher in Crimes of Passion (1984)—but it was the human experience that Russell so strangely charted that leaves me thinking of his “religious” nature. He portrayed the depths of human depravity and desire, of lust and liking.

Those who denigrate the service of Muslims in the US military only compound the tragedy.

Should the Family Research Council president be banned?

Mormon moms organize to beat back controversial bill.

A nun and a Catholic OB/GYN talk to RD.

Our homosexuality (or bisexuality or transgenderism) is, for them, simply a symptom of sin—something we can change, like underwear.

Public Religion Research Institute asks the right question.