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From “God Hates Fags” to Desmond Tutu’s calls for compassion, religion has been deeply intertwined with the struggle for AIDS justice. Fully two decades after activists first challenged church authority on HIV/AIDS religion’s report card is mixed.

What we are witnessing in Iran is a coup against elements of the establishment deemed insufficiently committed to a radical reading of Islam. Unable to handle the messy outcome of democracy is the regime in serious trouble?

I deeply regret that some people took, or claimed to take, my use of this metaphor as a reference to Sarah Palin. Let me say categorically that I do not see Governor Palin as a pig…

When an American TV show borrows from Eastern philosophy, it leaves the ethical dimension behind while offering a healthy dose of materialism. Even so, it might have something to teach us.

This Halloween, apart from your garden-variety ghouls, skeletons, monsters, witches, vampires and zombies, Americans will be visited by the ghosts of past presidents, the spirits of dead soldiers, and by the souls of those who endured slavery. It is a season of reckoning, both social and political. The election, on the other hand, is about life, today, now. Or is it?

World-weary cynicism vies with optimism on this day after the presidential election. Optimism wins out.

Instead of looking to earthly things and earthly power to bless us, we are to be a blessing in the world. Instead of caring so much that we become overwhelmed by the wicked ways of the world, we are to live our lives as a blessing to others. It is up to us to create a secure world.

Evolution has given us the complex, nuanced ability to wrestle with complex issues. If God did drive the process, then surely God wants us to think hard about an issue like abortion…

Once the camps are built and the trains are running—once the machetes have been distributed and the hate radio is broadcasting—it’s too late to respond. A Thanksgiving report on the state of our (un)ethical response to genocide.

The main difference between the enactment of the heroic archetype in myth and in popular culture is our contemporary squeamishness about the homoerotic vibe that usually hums just beneath the surface of the drama. We try to banish that gayness, or at least keep it at bay, but the pesky thing about archetypes is that they’re not very easily controlled.