Keep Hope Alive!

I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night and he had the most succinct commentary about why a constitutional amendment banning gay-marriage is a flawed proposition. They only other time we’ve had an amendment dealing with individual morality was prohibition. We all know how well that one went. What would we do without independent news outlets?

Joseph Ward III: A Living Hell: LGBT Iranians and the Islamic State. Like many gay Iranians, Hamid was pressured by his parents to marry a woman based on prevailing traditions in Iran. But knowing he was a gay man, he and his wife divorced, and he was soon kidnapped by local authorities because of his appearance and beaten half to death in his home. “A man with long hair is not a man,” he was told by an officer of the basij, the Iranian security force. “…Of course [your wife] would divorce you.”

Arab and American revolutions in history « The Immanent Frame. Let me try to explain further, in the hope of minimizing the risk of miscommunication, which is particularly serious when we deal with profound transformations that challenge our deeply held assumptions and prejudices. I personally am opposed to the Muslim Brothers and have struggled to challenge their views of Islam and politics since the 1960s. Their ideological confusion and devious politics have caused horrendous loss and pain in my home country, Sudan. I therefore have no illusions about the serious costs of their coming to power anywhere, especially in a…