Nine-year-old Bhintuna sat smiling in jewelry and a red and gold brocade bridal dress as she held a tray of offerings, waiting for her turn to take part in the ritual that would wed her to a god.
The schoolgirl is just one of hundreds of Nepali girls set to take part in the rite that weds them to the god Vishnu over the coming month, a symbolic time of weddings according to tradition in this deeply religious, majority Hindu nation. Read more…
L’chaim! Another one joins the tribe! Drew Barrymore is reportedly converting to Judaism before she marries fiance Will Kopelman, because being a shiksa won’t fly. It’s time to start brushing up on the Torah and boot up that old episode of “Sex and the City” where Charlotte converts for Harry Goldblatt. [New York Observer]
Drew Barrymore isn’t the only blushing bride making the move to matzo. Many celebrities have made the spiritual switch for love.
Imagine, if you will, a world in which Cosmopolitan magazine is covered in a non-transparent wrapper and only available to readers ages 18 and over. If you want to read a “Sexy Vs. Skanky” charticles about how purple nipples are out but purple nail polish is in, you need to show some ID.
This is the world model Nicole Weider is trying to inhabit with her crusade, Project Anti-Cosmo. The ex-model, who became disillusioned with the world of modeling, now seeks to rid the world of “pornographic” content one drugstore magazine at a time. “As a former reader of the magazine, I happened to pick up an issue [of Cosmo] and was reading it and was completely shocked at how pornographic and explicit the content had become,” Weider huffed to Fox News. “I immediately thought of my young teenage brothers and it horrified me to think that they and their friends could be reading this material, and the damage it would do to them if they did. So I decided to do something about it.” Her young brothers are reading Cosmo, what what what? Also, HAHAHAHAHA.
I once spent a 4th of July weekend with about 15 hardcore evangelical Christians. (Ex-Mr. Jessica’s sister was a born-again.) Explaining to some of the women what kind of website I write for proved to be awkward. But when I told one woman that The Frisky was similar to Cosmopolitan magazine, she exclaimed, “Oh, I read that!”
“Really?” I asked. “Isn’t it a little … uh … raunchy?”
She laughed. “Oh, I just flip past all the shirtless guys and stuff about sex.”
Then what part of the magazine do you actually read? I thought to myself.
That conversation popped into my head again when I saw this article on The Daily Beast about religious websites selling sex toys and the horrifying — not being hyperbolic here — opening story about a Christian woman who was married for 25 years before she finally bought a vibrator and had her first orgasm. Praise be! Keep reading »
Today in facepalms: a chain of Christian bookstore called LifeWay are pulling copies of the Here’s Hope Breast Cancer Bible from their shelves after it learned that one of the organizations benefiting from the sales is Planned Parenthood. The bible is produced by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and $1 from each sale is donated to non-profit organizations that provide help breast cancer sufferers. Of course, Planned Parenthood is one of them. In fact, to assume that Planned Parenthood — the most well known non-profit sexual health clinics in the country — would not be among them was naive. Keep reading »
I consider myself a Christian and nothing pisses me off more than when people are bigoted a**holes and couch it in “Christianity.” Yes, I’m talking about you, Victoria Childress, baker in Iowa. Victoria was courted by a lesbian couple, Trina Vodraska and Janelle Sievers, to prepare a wedding cake for their June nuptials. But during a taste-testing session on Thursday afternoon, Victoria realized these two gals weren’t sisters or friends but [stage whisper] lesbians! That’s when Victoria said, as she told local news station KCCI, “‘I’ll tell you I’m a Christian, and I do have convictions.’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but I’m not going to be able to do your cake.’” Just like what Jesus would do. Keep reading »
“Masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.”
— This is Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s fundamentalist Mars Hill Church in his no-doubt enlightening brochure “Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography & Masturbation for God’s Men.” Anything other than heterosexual sex is “bordering on homosexual activity” because you’re fooling around with someone of the same sex, duh. The logic, it is flawless! Also, I am as gay as a picnic basket on “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy” being filmed in the Castro District during a Judy Garland Convention. [Queerty] Keep reading »
Recently, while sitting in the kitchen as a friend helped me dye my hair, the topic turned to death. We had both experienced close friends dying in our early twenties, and we were discussing how we dealt with it. I sat facing away from her, as she checked the foils on my hair. “I just have to think that they are in a better place, in heaven,” she said.
I thought about those words for a minute. Then I replied, “For me, it soothes me to know there is no after-life. Like, there is completion in it. They are gone, that was their life, and it’s okay. I don’t have to worry about seeing them again. It’s been helpful to really process their death and know they are gone.”
My friend was intrigued. “I’d never thought about it that way,” she said.
The truth was I hadn’t always either. I identify as an atheist now. But I haven’t always. Keep reading »
Abortion is a big no-no in the Catholic church — but not from Tuesday until this Sunday. The Vatican is offering forgiveness to women who’ve had abortions during a six day-long World Youth Day prayer event in Madrid, which will bring 1.5 million pilgrims from all over the world. Catholic women who have had an abortion (and in the U.S., that will be four in 10 of us in our lifetime —UPDATE: to clarify, four out of 10 unintended pregnancies end in abortion while two in ten of all pregnancies end in abortion. Thanks to commenter @MrsG for pointing this out. I apologize for the error.) can confess and supposedly be spared excommunication; women who’ve been excommunicated for the sin of abortion will be welcomed back into the church. Keep reading »
Full disclosure: before I was hired to conceptualize and edit The Frisky, I spent 10 months working on a book about Scientology, written by journalist Janet Reitman. (I transcribed the vast majority of the interviews Reitman conducted with current and former Scientologists and organized the exhaustive collection of research she did.) As a result, I became pretty familiar with the material and extremely eager to see the book in its final form. Well, that day has arrived as Reitman’s book, Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, hits shelves this week. While the last few years has seen numerous scandalous allegations against the church flood the interwebs, Reitman’s book is full of new information you haven’t heard elsewhere. It’s also an impeccable investigation into the church’s early development under founder L. Ron Hubbard and the downward spiral it’s seen in the last 25 years under current leader, David Miscavige. Inside Scientology is a fascinating read, one that never resorts to criticizing the faith of its members, but does reveal the disturbing control exerted over them by the church and its leaders.
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