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YANGON—“Try not to do more than one thing a day in Myanmar,” Kay sighed one night, as we waited in vain for a good connection to g-mail at a local Internet shop. “You might be disappointed.” Our main Burmese contact—and new best friend—was noting how a simple procedure that takes only minutes in North America can drag on for hours in Myanmar, depending on the day. In this case, we ...

YANGON—Well, it took a quarter of a century, but I’m finally here. Finally seeing a country that, ever since that certain famous uprising in 1988, has captured my imagination, altered my thinking about things like freedom and dissent, and even gifted me my life partner—all without the benefit of once having visited. Myanmar is a country whose history, politics and ethnic makeup I knew more about—with the exception of the ...

An item circulating on Facebook this week tells the unfortunate story of a drunken American tourist in Thailand who, after insisting on singing with a bar band and refusing to get off the stage, was stabbed to death by one of the band’s musicians. The whole pathetic episode resonates for a number of reasons—not least of which were the three years I spent in Bangkok as a sub editor at ...

Following my last post about Pope Francis’s surprising outreach to gay Catholics, a couple of friends weighed in on Facebook to argue in defense of a group whose victimization by the Church has been inestimably worse: women. Although the blog—inspired by comments Francis had made during his press conference on the way home from Brazil—was focused exclusively on the gay issue, I might have taken a moment to mention the most ...

The announcement that Pope Francis has extended an olive branch to gay priests and the LGBT community in general should be seen as a major development in the Roman Catholic Church—although how much change it will actually lead to remains very much in doubt. The comments by Francis occurred during an 82-minute press conference aboard Vatican Air, following the pope’s visit to Brazil for World Youth Day. His Holiness addressed ...

Now that the National Hockey League has finally confirmed it is sending its players to the Sochi Winter Olympics—and just weeks after Russian president Vladimir Putin unveiled some of the most homophobic laws on the planet —the obvious question for many is: so what will happen to the “You Can Play” project, and the NHL players who have endorsed it, some of whom will presumably crack the line-ups of Team Canada ...

There’s something more than a little odd about the latest news out of the Vatican, that good Catholics can win “indulgences” by following Pope Francis’s Tweets during World Youth Day, a week-long event starting on July 22. Of course, Jorge Bergoglio isn’t the first pontiff to take advantage of social media. Pope Benedict got the Twitter ball rolling when he opened the first @Pontifex account not long before deciding he’d ...

VANCOUVER—About seventy-five friends, colleagues, Gawthrop family members, fellow writers, and other readers showed up at Pat’s Pub on June 25 to celebrate the launch of The Trial of Pope Benedict. The place was packed. There were lots of happy reunions, there was a fabulous introduction from Carellin Brooks, and there was a reading. There was also a long line-up of people with copies to sign: legendary queer rights activist Janine ...

Some people think my book on Joseph Ratzinger, being launched this week, was quick off the draw—arriving in stores only four months after its subject surrendered the papacy. But The Trial of Pope Benedict has nothing on the “instant book” phenomenon surrounding his successor. Within weeks of Jorge Bergoglio becoming Pope Francis, at least half a dozen books about and a few by the former archbishop of Buenos Aires had ...

The forces of anti-gay religious bigotry and knuckle-dragging stupidity in the United States have suffered yet another blow this week, thanks to the news that Exodus International is closing its doors after 37 years of homophobic bullying through biblically-inspired behaviour modification techniques. Exodus, you’ll recall, is the evangelical Christian organization that began the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which claimed that homosexuality could be “cured” (based on the assumption, of course, that it ought to be) ...

The Happy Atheist One of the perils of being a writer who is not easily categorized is that you tend to be easily misunderstood—even when you’ve taken pains to be clear enough for a twelve-year-old to understand. Take, for example, my decision to be out of the closet—not only as gay, but as an atheist—in promoting my new book, The Trial of Pope Benedict: Joseph Ratzinger and the Vatican’s Assault ...

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So, just how “progressive” is Pope Francis, really? So progressive, apparently, that he has been compared to the ill-fated John Paul I: he of the long forgotten, 33-day papacy in 1978 and the mysterious, did-they-or-didn’t-they-poison-him demise. “If I was Pope Francis,” wrote one blogger on June 3, “I’d be hiring a food tester right about now.” That was in reference to the pope’s comment that atheists who do good ...