Now that the Boy Scouts of America have accepted homosexuality, veterans of the scouting movement have announced the forming of an alternative organization: Trail Life USA. [Read more…]
“So what’s your name and preferred gender pronoun?”
September 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to a new code of etiquette, it’s not enough to ask someone’s name. You also need to ask, “what’s your PGP?” That is, your “preferred gender pronoun.” The choices may be “he” or “she” or “they” or the newly-coined “ze.” [Read more…]
So how do contraceptives work?
September 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Pro-lifers are told not to worry about the morning after pill, as mandated by Obamacare. It doesn’t work by preventing the fertilized egg from being implanted in the womb, though that was how it used to be described. It simply prevents ovulation, just like a regular birth control pill. (Though how it prevents pregnancy the morning after ovulation has occurred is not clear.) See the facts cited and the links given in our discussion of the Morning After pill on this blog here and here.
But when pro-lifers promote measures defining “personhood” as existing from the moment of conception, we are told that this would outlaw contraception, including the birth control pill, which–though we were always told it prevents ovulation–prevents the fertilized egg from being implanted in the womb. (Example after the jump.) If that’s true, many women would not want to take the things. But that’s not what they have been told about how they work.
Is this dishonesty, rhetorical manipulation, or ignorance? And what should we conclude about contraception from this controversy? [Read more…]
It’s looking bad for Obama’s war vote
September 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Pretty much what I predicted is unfolding in Congress. The growing consensus among both conservatives and liberals that attacking Syria is a bad idea should be celebrated as an instance of bi-partisanship, of once polarized factions coming together over foreign policy, a sign of national unity. Too bad the President and the Democratic and Republican leadership aren’t part of it. [Read more…]
The contemporary theologian we need?
September 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Oswald Bayer, emeritus professor of theology at the University of Tübingen, is a widely-respected thinker who engages with contemporary thought on a very sophisticated level. As we’ve blogged, he is sometimes associated with the Radical Orthodox movement and he is considered a rather cutting-edged theologian. But his emphasis is the Gospel and the Word of God. [Read more…]
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