MILAN - While other little girls in her hometown of Nissoria, Sicily, were dressing up and playing house, Maria Vittoria Longhitano would pretend to say Mass, dispensing cookies and chips to her toys for communion. Sometimes, she would even baptize her dolls ( Read more... )

I have started reading on topics such as the role of Islam in Europe in recent weeks, and this review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book touches on some of it. I'm going to write much more on Hirsi Ali herself later on, I hope, but my thoughts mature at their own rate.

The bits that I'm taking out of the oven of my brain right now have to do with ( Read more... )

Joumana Haddad, the editor of an erotic Arabic-language magazine and author of a new book that challenges sexual taboos in the Arab world, is drawing praise and death threats alike ( Read more... )

After his colossal "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., Glenn Beck took aim at one of his favorite targets, Barack Obama, but in a novel way. Beck regrets saying a few months ago that President Obama was a "racist." What he should have said, he now realizes, was that he didn't agree with Obama's "theology." And what is Obama's theology, ( Read more... )

It is in the next chapter that we see the words “help meet” (please note that these are two words, not one ( Read more... )

In a radio interview with Bill Manders on Jan. 25, Sharron Angle - the GOP candidate and Tea Party darling challenging Harry Reid for Nevada’s U.S. Senate seat - came out firmly against abortion. She even took the extreme position that women should not have control over their reproductive rights in cases of rape or incest, because it would ( Read more... )

Sensus, a Swedish church-backed study association, has adopted a new policy to allow prospective employees to classify their gender in three ways: Female, Male or Other.
The study association, which runs courses in a range of disciplines for more than 350,000 Swedes, has decided to introduce a third alternative in its standard online application ( Read more... )

How girls reluctantly endure the hookup culture By Caitlin Flanagan

In case you haven’t noticed, millions of girls are in the midst of a cultural insurrection. Armed with the pocket money that has made them a powerful consumer force since the 1920s, girls have set their communal sights on a particular kind of entertainment, and when they find it ( Read more... )

Fourth-grade teacher Jarretta Hamilton was newly married and expecting a baby when she went to speak with her supervisors in April of last year. But the administrators at Southland Christian School in St. Cloud parried her query about maternity leave with a query of their own: When did she conceive? After Hamilton admitted that her child had been ( Read more... )

The classes I enjoyed most during seminary were ethics courses. We would debate particular questions about morality addressing issues of good and evil; right and wrong; justice and injustice ( Read more... )