Rap Sheet
Links on R&P from around the web
A Religious Response to Jerry Sandusky: Compassion, Victims, and Monsters
posted on June 25, 2012Religion New Service’s Omid Safi writes that all the spontaneous celebration, which broke out in response to the guilty verdict of former Penn State assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, on multiple charges of child sex abuse, is understandable. “As a parent, I … relate to the very primal urge to protect every last of our children from this monster.” But condemning Sandusky to “the lowest bowels of hell,” writes Safi, takes our attention away from “the many kids who have been hurt, scarred, and violated. That anger, while justified, ultimately proves poisonous to our own hearts.”
A Rabbi, a Mormon and a Black Christian Mayor Walk into a Room
posted on June 25, 2012At CNN, Jessica Ravitz describes the unlikely bond between Cory Booker, Shmuley Boteach, and Michael Benson. “If the friendship between these men–a black Christian mayor, a rabbi running for Congress and a Mormon university president–wasn’t so real, this would sound like a bad joke,” writes Ravitz. “Instead, it’s a reflection of how three men from profoundly different backgrounds met 20 years ago, connected and changed one another.”
I’m a White Republican Raising a Black Child: Deal with It
posted on June 25, 2012At Patheos, Nancy French, who with her husband, David, co-founded “Evangelicals for Mitt,” writes about the couple’s experience raising their adopted, Ethiopian-born daughter, Naomi. French writes that she’s recieived “hate mail from liberals who are deeply offended that a white family would raise a black child.” French explains that she and her husband “didn’t adopt to save the world, or to politically clone ourselves, or to annoy Democrats. We did it because children need loving parents, a warm bed, and good food.”
Bully Pulpit
posted on June 22, 2012The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer chronicles the impact Bryan Fischer has had recently on the Republican Party. According to Mayer, Fischer, an evangelical radio talk-show host, is “one of the country’s most vocal opponents of what he calls ‘the homosexual-rights movement.’” When Mitt Romney hired Richard Grenell, an openly gay man, as his national-security spokesman, Fischer went on the attack. Mayer writes, “After other conservative pundits took up Fischer’s cause, Grenell resigned from the Romney campaign,” and the resulting controversy helped make gay rights a defining social issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.
Bias against a Mormon Presidential Candidate Same as in 1967
posted on June 22, 2012Frank Newport reports for Gallup on that organization’s new poll, which finds that 18 percent of Americans would not vote for a Mormon presidential candidate. According to the poll, the two groups most reluctant to vote for a Mormon for president are “the least educated and Democrats.” “The stability of resistance to a Mormon presidential candidate over the past 45 years is an anomaly,” writes Newport, “given that resistance to a candidate who is black, a woman, or Jewish has declined substantially over the same period of time.”
Sexual Healing: Evangelicals Update Their Message to Gays
posted on June 22, 2012At The Atlantic, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz interviews Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, a Christian organization whose mission is to help gay Christians resist “same-sex attraction.” Gritz writes that Chambers recently “publicly rejected reparative therapy–a school of counseling that aims to make gay people straight.” Chambers explains the change of approach to his ministry this way: “We’re here to support people who are in conflict at the place where their attractions meet their faith.”
Lady and the Lama
posted on June 22, 2012On Tuesday, The Dalai Lama and Myanmar opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, met in London. The Economist reports that the “Dalai Lama, who had previously called for Miss Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, is reported to have told her ‘I have real admiration for your courage.’” But the meeting of the two Nobel peace prize laureates may strain relations between Myanmar’s opposition party, the National League for Democracy, and China. “It would surely hurt [Suu Kyi’s] movement if she were to join the Dalai Lama in China’s official view as a ‘jackal in monk’s clothing,’” writes The Economist.
Reform Female Rabbis Are Paid Less than Male Counterparts
posted on June 22, 2012A study by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) found that senior Reform female rabbis are paid less than their male counterparts, JTA reports. However, the study also found that, for associate rabbis, “the base salaries of female rabbis are slightly higher than for the men.” Rabbi Steven Fox, CCAR’s chief executive, explains that “[t]he results were troubling but not surprising; it quantified that which we knew anecdotally.”
Read at Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Baltimore Archbishop: ‘Let Us Be Catholics’
posted on June 22, 2012Archbishop William Lori is “at the helm of the Catholic bishops’ nationwide ‘Fortnight of Freedom’ campaign, two weeks of events focused on religious freedom,” which began on on Thursday, reports Michelle Boorstein for The Washington Post. According to Boorstein, the bishops hope to “convince Catholics that religious freedom is under attack in the United States.” For his part, Archbishop Lori explains the motivation behind the campaign by asking, “Don’t we provide more health care, more social services, than any other non-governmental organization? Why are we always in the crosshairs?”
In the Jewish Museum’s Closet
posted on June 22, 2012Tablet’s Maya Benton reports that in May, the Jewish Museum in New York removed a photo exhibition, titled Stelen (Columns). The collection consisted of 50 portraits gathered from the gay dating site, GayRomeo.com, all of which had been taken at the 2005 “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” in Berlin. The museum took the action, which, Benton believes “sets a dangerous precedent,” after a man, whose profile image was used in the exhibition, threatened legal action if his picture was not taken down.