Search

I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people say, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For these teens and the myriad other LGBT youth lost to suicide, the waiting game hasn’t worked so well.

“Whoever has done an atom’s weight of good, shall see it; and whoever has done an atom’s weight of sin, shall see it.”

The political types, both right and left, have managed to create the idea that the sixties were a time of leftist, collectivist politics. But this was actually an era of mad individualism, not collectivism, of romantic essentialism, not social construction. The old lefties failed in their every effort to organize… and a lot of old hippies are Ron Paul types today.

How does one believe in the unconditional presence of God and at the same time make it a special sacred occasion to perform hajj?

This week’s global LGBT recap

Skepticism means having the courage to suspend one’s set of beliefs long enough to take another set of beliefs really seriously. That is, real skepticism means disbelieving. So be as skeptical as possible but as open as possible, and remember that if one refuses to investigate religion in this way, then that is known as contempt prior to investigation—and is the death of the life of the mind.

Blessing the tools of the Digital Reformation, or playing with its toys, without acknowledging the spiritual authority of believers as they use them in the world misunderstands the radically participatory, dialogical, and collaborative nature of the culture and inadvertently reinforces a line between “faith” and “life” that believers no longer accept.

I have some experience with Boyd K. Packer. I attended a BYU devotional in the early ’90s where he spoke at length about how homosexuality was “unnatural.” I was disturbed by Elder Packer’s ignorance on this issue twenty years ago—and I was disturbed by his ignorance on the same topic on Sunday morning.

Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, wasn’t exactly Hell—not for me anyway. Then again, I spent most of my 18 formative years there hiding from Topeka’s foremost biblical authority, the infamous anti-gay funeral picketer, Rev. Fred Phelps. As a child I had a secret buried deep within…

The origin of Islam in America is through Muslim slaves brought over hundreds of years ago from Africa.