culture
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Uganda Passes Law Mandating Life in Prison for ‘Aggravated Homosexuality’
“I am officially illegal,” gay activist Frank Mugisha told Agence France-Presse. Mugisha was responding to the passage of a harsh anti-gay bill by the Ugandan Parliament on Friday. The law punishes “aggravated homosexuality” with life in prison. Similar to Russia’s own “gay propaganda” law, it criminalizes support of homosexuality, including even advocacy groups’ discussion of…
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George Zimmerman Gets Back 5 Guns Confiscated During Domestic-Assault Case
George Zimmerman is back—personal arsenal and all. After being cleared of all charges in a domestic-assault incident, in which his girlfriend insisted that she was misinterpreted by the police, Zimmerman was free to pick up his confiscated guns, which he did on Wednesday from the Seminole County sheriff’s office. He then accompanied his girlfriend, Samantha…
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Billboard in India Mistakes Morgan Freeman for Nelson Mandela
Morgan Freeman must have done a brilliant job as Nelson Mandela in the 2009 film Invictus—maybe a little too brilliant. That’s because the makers of a billboard in India actually believed the actor to be the former South African president and mistakenly used a photo of Freeman, the New York Daily News reports. Below Freeman’s…
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Brain-Dead Teen’s Family Hoping for a Holiday Miracle
The family of a 13-year-old girl who was declared brain-dead after having surgery to remove her tonsils is asking that doctors not take her off life support until after the holidays, CBS News reports. The family’s attorney, Christopher Dolan, said Thursday that Jahi McMath’s family will meet with officials at Oakland Children’s Hospital to make…
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Renisha McBride’s Killer to Stand Trial
The 45-year-old man who shot and killed Renisha McBride, an unarmed teen who was seeking help after a car accident, will stand trial on second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, a Michigan judge decided on Thursday, MSNBC reports. Judge David Turfe said Thursday that based on the evidence, Theodore Wafer made a poor decision in shooting McBride.…
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You’re 25 and Think You’re Immune From Racism? You’re Not Alone
What does it mean if you believe that sexism and racism are real, but you don’t feel that they have an impact on your day-to-day life? Does it mean that you’re like the Grand Old Party and think we all overcame by virtue of Rosa Parks’ sitting where she wasn’t supposed to sit oh so…
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How to Survive a Winter Without Flowers
The Garden in Winter Here is what I do when I look out the window and see my garden buried under three feet of snow: I think of the gardens and the plants I saw in them, or the plants I saw in the wild. In August I was in Daniel J. Hinkley’s garden, where…
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A Crack in ‘Affluenza’ Justice
President Obama announced on Thursday that he will be commuting the sentences of eight crack-cocaine offenders who were given extremely lengthy prison terms basically for being black and possessing a drug whose users are incorrectly perceived to be majority black. We can stammer around the issue, but ever since crack cocaine entered urban cities during…
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Jazz Vocalist Connects Christmas Album to Loss of Her Family
Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by vocalist Nnenna Freelon and John Brown to talk about their seasonal jazz collaboration, entitled Christmas, and how the death of Freelon’s parents motivated her album. Watch the interview here:
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Sorry, Duck Dynasty, That’s How Capitalism Works
It’s not exactly a shock that Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson is embracing his inner homophobe. After all, he’s a self-proclaimed “Bible-thumper” who sees his hit reality-TV series as a vehicle for delivering “the good news about Jesus” to folks, “whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists.” So when he emptied both his barrels in the pages of…