SAJAforum: Muslim conference prompts gay-evangelical love, peace, harmony

Ahmad-EtheridgePresident-elect Barack Obama‘s selection of conservative fundamentalist minister Rick Warren, who supported California’s Proposition 8 in last month’s elections, to deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration has caused many of Obama’s progressive supporters to feel a sense of “betrayal,” as Neil Buchanan has written at Dorf on Law. Singer, songwriter, and Prop 8 opponent Melissa Etheridge, who is openly lesbian and has been a longtime activist for gay rights and other progressive causes, had much the same initial reaction. While she had never previously heard of Warren, she wondered whether Warren was a “hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others,” and whether she should boycott the inauguration on account of his selection.

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SAJAforum: Valuing Different People’s Lives

We’ve previously noted the Guardian‘s observation of a disconnect in coverage of last month’s terrorist attacks in Bombay, between “headlines of wealthy westerners fleeing Mumbai’s terror frontline” and “ordinary Indians who bore the brunt of the bloody attack[s].” This week, a handful of articles explore similar themes, this time concerning media and public responses to the attacks within India itself.

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