Construction site at the Mufreesboro mosque

What’s worse, Tennessee officialdom and national political figurues had flirted with some of the bigoted arguments against the construction. Tennessee’s Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey (R) suggested Islam might be “cult,” and the country sheriff brought in Islamophobic speakers on the topic. Then-GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain declared that “this isn’t an innocent mosque,” arguing with his usual befuddling logic that the construction was “an infringement and an abuse of our freedom of religion,” and that Americans “have a right” to deny other people the right to build places of worship.

But with the groundbreaking in September, the controversy seemed to have passed. Until yesterday, that is. That’s when further construction was thrown into question by a ruling from a local judge that the mosque’s building permits were not valid because notifications about a public hearing on the construction did not reach a wide enough audience. That, wrote the judge, Chancellor Robert Corlew, violated a state law requiring “adequate public notice.” He wrote in his ruling:

Without publication of the issues of business to be discussed at an otherwise routine meeting, citizens may be lulled into the mind set that only routine matters will be raised at a meeting, when suddenly a matter which is to them of earthshaking importance suddenly comes forth.

But county attorney Josh McCreary, who is defending the building permit, contended that the “earthshaking importance” of the building permit was only raised after the lawsuit against the permit. “In this instance, everything they are relying on to prove this is a matter of pervasive public importance came after the lawsuit was filed,” he said.

Opponents of the mosque have already declared victory. “Justice is served,” the lead plaintiff, Kevin Fisher, wrote to the AP in an e-mail. But it’s not clear that’s the case. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) already asked that, should new permits not be forthcoming, the Justice Department step in and “intervene in this case to support the religious rights of Tennessee Muslims.”

Furthermore, the Tennessean newspaper reported today that construction on the mosque expansion might not be ground to a halt by the judicial ruling. Noting that the judge did not order that construction stop, the Tennessean reported that the county that houses the mosque does not plan on revoking the permits:

Rutherford County has no immediate plans revoke the building permit for an embattled Murfreesboro mosque.

“The county is going to look at all the possibilities,” said Jim Cope, attorney for Rutherford County. “This could take weeks.”

Despite the Bible’s message of love, compassion, and respect, there are an unknown number of conservative congregation heads using their pulpits to push animosity and hate — aimed mostly at the political hot topics of the day.

In the fallout from President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality, video and audio has cropped up of several right-wing pastors in different states advocating physical violence toward gay people and generally disparaging the LGBT community. Here are some of the worst religious messages being shared at church:

–North Carolina Pastor argues for a gay concentration camp. Charles Worley told his congregation, “Have that fence electrified so [the homosexuals] can’t get out. Feed ‘em, and– And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.”

– Kansas Pastor says gays should be put to death. Curtis Knapp tells his church, “Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them? No, I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should.” Listen:

– Indiana Pastor says gay marriage leads to abuse of children. “A decision to allow same-sex marriages today lays the foundation for the definition of marriage to become Silly Putty tomorrow capable of endless reshaping in the future,” says Pastor Paul Brewster. “That, in turn, is a recipe for children to be made victims of all sorts of abuse and the welfare of our society to receive a fatal blow.”

– Maryland Pastor says his ‘flesh’ likes the idea of killing gays. Dennis Leatherman shouts, “Kill them all. Right? I will be very honest with you. My flesh kind of likes that idea. But it grieves the Holy Spirit. It violates Scripture.” Listen:

– Pastor advocates child abuse on gay children. Sean Harris says if a son shows what is perceived as effeminate behavior, a parent should “squash that like a cockroach,” and if they see their son “dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch.”

– At church, a child sings “ain’t no homo gonna make it to heaven” — in the same town where a fifteen year old killed himself after being bullied for being perceived of as gay by his classmates. Pastor Jeff Sangl of the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle cheers on.Watch it:

These incidents were caught on video or audio, but there are likely many, many more sermons where hate speech goes unrecorded and unrecognized. These pastors, of course, do not represent Christians broadly, but where this hatefulness goes unchecked, it discredits religious institutions as a whole and harms every neighborhood that it infiltrates.

A Biola Queer Underground flier that was distributed around the university's campus

Biola’s student handbook states that “sexual relationships are designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between husband and wife,” and students are required to sign a contract affirming their agreement with this stance. However, members of Biola Queer Underground take issue with the conservative theological stance that LGBT sexual orientations are incompatible with Christian belief. A statement on their website reads:

We want to bring to light the presence of the LGBTQ community at Biola. Despite what some may assume, there are Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Queers at Biola. We are Biola’s students, alumni, employees, and fellow followers of Christ. We want to be treated with equality and respected as another facet of Biola’s diversity.

Although Biola University removed the group’s fliers, the underground group’s emergence did prompt the university president to release a new, detailed policy on “human sexuality” that university officials say has been in the works for the past year and a half. The new policy denies that Biola needs to “modernize” its biblical approach to the LGBT community and calls same-sex relationships “illegitimate moral options for the confessing Christian.” Members of Biola Queer Underground expressed disappointment in the administration’s response:

Biola claims to want a dialogue. However, unless LGBTQ students who don’t view homosexuality or transgender identity as sinful are allowed to speak openly without threat, this conversation will continue to be one–sided. Without inviting Christians speakers who have a different view of homosexuality, fruitful dialogue will not happen.In the past, your monologues on homosexuality have not been good or fair to us. We understand your interpretation of scripture; please hear ours.

In light of last month’s study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions — which found that pro-LGBT people of faith are the “missing voices” from the mainstream media, leading to an entirely one-sided view of religion as inherently anti-gay — the students at Biola University are modeling an important way forward. When members of traditionally socially conservative environments speak out on these issues, it helps to shift the conversation in the right direction.

With respect to sexual orientation and behavior, one student’s call for legalization of same-sex marriage may be perceived by another student as a challenge to his or her deeply held religious beliefs. Conversely, one  student’s expression of his or her religious convictions concerning what he or she  regards as sinful sexual behavior will be perceived by another student as suggesting that gay and lesbian students have no place in the school. A student may wear a T-shirt proclaiming “Straight Pride” to counter another student’s “Gay Pride” T-shirt, or vice versa.[...]

When confronting one student’s claim that another student’s speech conveying an idea is harassment and bullying, school officials should consider, time and circumstances permitting, explaining on an age appropriate basis, that disagreement about an idea is not necessarily a personal attack; that some students’ faiths may require them to express their views publicly; that students have a right to disagree with the view of other students or the school and to express that disagreement; and that the most effective response to an idea one disagrees with is often to express a contrary idea, not censorship. Suppression of speech should be the last, not first, resort.

The rhetoric in this document is troubling, because it ignores the current context for how prevalent anti-gay bullying currently is in schools, and how particularly damaging research has shown it to be. Rather, these guidelines suggest that “disagreements” are a two-way street — that a religious condemnation of homosexuality is equivalent in effect to a student’s opposing position defending gay people. This is absurd and completely ignores how vulnerable young people in the throws of coming out can be to such anti-gay viewpoints.

As documented in The Good News Club, conservative Christians are proactively encouraging anti-gay evangelism within schools. It’s unsurprising that among the endorsers of these guidelines are Christian Educators Association International, the Christian Legal Society, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Noticeably absent was GLSEN or any group that advocates for the LGBT community. These organizations are within their right to defend religious expression, but to minimize the impact of anti-gay bullying by conflating “condemnation” with “disagreement” is dangerously disingenuous. The key to reducing anti-gay bullying is training about LGBT issues, not openly humoring religious reproach while ignoring the harm it causes.

At a press conference today, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey explained how the materials taught in the class were brought to his attention and expressed a harsh criticism of them. He said:

DEMPSEY: As you know, I’ve made an inquiry into a particular course that was brought to my attention by one of the students because he was concerned that it was objectionable and that it was counter to our values — you know, our appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness. And the young man who brought it to my attention was absolutely right. It’s totally objectionable.

And so we are looking at how that course was approved, what motivated the individual to adopt that — it was an elective, but what motivated that elective for being part of the curriculum. And we are looking across the institutions that provide our professional military education to make sure there’s nothing like that out there.

It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound. This wasn’t about pushing back on liberal thought; this was objectionable, academically irresponsible.

Watch the video:

As Dempsey mentioned, he ordered an investigation of the class upon recognizing just how “objectionable” the material therein was. The examination of other teaching materials might find a good place to start by looking into Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, who facilitated the class, remains, for the moment, in his position at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

The debate on the floor of the convention showcased the church’s passionate divide and demographic shifts. Several Americans begged delegates to “hear the pain” of gay church members. Moments later, a delegate from Africa said in Swahili that saying that a homosexual person was created by God was like saying “that God created me to live with animals.” The translator apologized while rendering the remarks into English.

The Rev. Troy Plummer, executive director of the Reconciling Ministries Network, which advocates full inclusion of gay people, said in an interview: “I’m tired of being compared to beasts in our church. Even if our world understandings differ, it’s just horrendous. That our perspectives differ is the truth, and we just voted 61 to 39 percent that we can’t tell that truth.”

The votes set off a protest inside the convention. Gay rights supporters gathered around a communion table at the center of the hall, singing. The moderator canceled the remainder of the morning session, making it uncertain whether several other resolutions on homosexuality would come to the floor before the conference ends on Friday.

The vote may have also reflected the changing demographics within the church. While American membership has declined, the church expanded in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is denounced. “This year about 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 delegates to the Methodist general conference are from outside the United States — an increase of more than 10 percent from the last conference, in 2008,” the New York Times notes.

Meanwhile, a growing number of American religious organizations have embraced same-sex couples, including: Evangelical Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians (U.S.A), adherents of the United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalists. Polls also show that a majority of Catholics and non-evangelical white Protestants back marriage rights for gay couples.

[Photo credit: Dave in Northridge]

Dan Savage

Savage made the remarks at the National High School Journalism Conference, causing a group of students to walk out as he began discussing the moral problems contained within the religious document:

SAVAGE: We can learn to ignore the bullshit about gay people in the Bible the same way have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish about slavery, about dinner about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation. We ignore bullshit in the bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waived Bibles over their heads during the civil war and justified it…We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong. …If the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong, slavery. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? 100 percent.

“You can tell the Bible guys in the hall, they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible,” Savage said before moving on to his next topic, “It’s funny as someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-ass some people react when you push back.” Watch it:

Savage has since apologized for describing his detractors as “pansy-ass.” “I wasn’t calling the handful of students who left pansies (2800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walk-out itself,” he said. “But that’s a distinction without a difference—kinda like when religious conservatives tell their gay friends that they ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’… Likewise, my use of ‘pansy-assed’ was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.”

Ironically, this story about Savage’s comments broke on the same day that Joel Osteen — the leader of the nation’s largest Christian Church — told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he believes homosexuality is a “sin” because “my faith is based on what I believe the scripture says and that’s the way I read the scripture.”

by Catherine Woodiwiss

This week, students from four Christian colleges went to the White House for a briefing with officials from the EPA and the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Their message: Climate change and clean air is a driver of their votes.

“We want to tell the White House that creation care is a swing vote for many Evangelicals,” said Chelsea Watkins, a young coordinator of the demonstration from Houston, TX.

At the gathering, students joined young environmental advocates, NGOs, and faith leaders in unveiling a giant quilted topographic map of the United States, sewn together from recycled clothes donated from around the country. Many also donned shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Green the Golden Rule.”

“You can’t remove the topsoil or destroy the watershed and love your neighbor. It doesn’t compute,” said Tyler Amy, coordinator of Renewal, a youth-minded sustainability-focused group that brought students together for the day of advocacy.

“If [Congress] is not listening to the EPA, maybe they’ll listen to us,” said Amy. “That’s the beauty of our democracy. Young people can make a difference.”

Officials agreed. “We all care about stewardship,” said Drew Elons, Director of Outreach and Public Relations for the EPA. “Destructive environmental practices cause massive public health concerns, and health affects education and the economy – for many of us, these things translate into moral issues.”

Students unfurl a giant, quilted topographic map.

But some students also had tough questions for the government. Tess Beckwith, a senior at Eastern College in Philadelphia, pointedly asked EnergySTAR’s National Manager for Small Business and Congregations whether the White House itself met qualifications to be EnergySTAR certified, to which he had no answer. “I just want change to be genuine,” said Beckwith later. “If we’re going to fix things we have to start at home, and [the White House] is a major building in the US.”

The question reflected the sincerity of the group gathered, which collectively voiced support for the EPA and the need to make climate change a campaign issue in 2012.

Deb Fikes, Executive Advisor for the World Evangelical Alliance and a coordinator of the event, expressed regret on behalf of her generation and offered encouragement to the young people gathered. “I am grieved by my generation of Christians,” she said from the podium. “We haven’t been doing what we need to be doing. … What are school textbooks going to say about what we did in our lifetime to make a difference? You here are going to write that chapter.”

From here, Fikes will escort the quilted map to Dallas Baptist University and to colleges around the country. The map is designed to be interactive and will feature energy sources for each new region visited. The creative and unconventional idea, says map creator Hannah Kim, will invite people to connect and start “thinking outside the box.”

The briefing was coordinated as a symbolic action by the World Evangelical Alliance and the religious network Christians for Environmental Stewardship. This was the second of several days of action on environmental issues organized by the faith community during Earth Week.

Catherine Woodiwiss is a Special Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

Related Post:

• Wendell Berry’s Earth Day Speech: ‘People Who Own The World Outright For Profit Will Have To Be Stopped’

One of the things I think the series has done nicely this year is show us the role of women religious in the wider world of Westeros, whether they’re treating the wounded on the battlefield or delivering Ned Stark’s bones to Catelyn as a gesture of respect and care. But I think there are times when a sense of religious awe’s been lost as the show has moved away from point of view perspectives on the events. Melisandre’s monstrous birth this week was one of the few moments the series has that’s conveyed a real sense of wonder and terror. And I’m excited to see more of that as the show progresses.

Speaking at the National Cathedral yesterday, famed environmental writer Wendell Berry delivered a clear message for Earth Day: We have a moral obligation to protect the environment.

Berry, a living legend in the environmental movement, addressed a crowd of nearly 200 faith leaders, community organizers, farmers and environmentalists at the Cathedral yesterday.

“The idea of the intractability of problems is wrong. Don’t get into this with a goal or a schedule. You must do it because it is right – because it is right, or it [your fight] will never last,” said Berry.

Author of over 80 novels, short stories, and essays, and poems, Wendell Berry has been a tireless advocate for localism and environmental stewardship for nearly 50 years.

He famously coined this brilliant twist on the Golden Rule: “Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.”

On Sunday, Berry was honored as a “Steward of God’s Creation” from the National Religious Coalition on Creation Care (NRCCC). Several major players working to elevate the interfaith-energy movements were on hand to help celebrate Berry’s work, including climate activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Earth Day Network board member Gerald Torres.

“To measure the power of [Berry’s] words, look what they have wrought,” said McKibben. “He raised the gospel of things like local food – [how special it must be] to see signs that that world is now taking shape.”

Torres agreed, also tipping his hat to the long tradition of faith-based environmentalism. “We can say that the best way to celebrate faith, and faith in our future, is to protect the Earth.”

Earlier Sunday morning, Dr. Matthew Sleeth, Executive Director of the Christian environmental education organization Blessed Earth, hosted a conversation with Berry in the Cathedral sanctuary. Berry pulled no punches for destructive environmental practices like mountain top removal. “People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped,” he warned. “By influence, by power, by us.”

Sunday’s activities at the National Cathedral were coordinated by NRCCC and Blessed Earth. This was the first of several events on environmental issues organized by the faith community during Earth Week.

Catherine Woodiwiss is a Special Assistant with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam

As the British government prepares to advance marriage equality, an Anglican bishop condemned religious leaders on Saturday who speak out against same-sex marriage, comparing their anti-gay rhetoric to the Church’s support of slavery as “God-given” in the 18th century.

“Experience might lead us to be cautious about the certainty with which moral positions are built with Biblical support,” Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam, the Bishop of Salisbury, said. “Before Wilberforce, Christians in this country saw slavery as having Biblical support for what was the God-given in the ordering of creation”:

“In South Africa, Apartheid was seen in the same way by the Dutch Reformed Church. “Within the churches, Christians conscientiously disagree about the interpretation and significance of the six Biblical passages referring to homosexuality.” [...]

“Most people now see the Church’s avoidance of equality legislation as immoral and it undermines us,” he told the conference, organised by the Cutting Edge Consortium, a coalition of national bodies campaigning for sexual equality in religious organisations.

The bishop added: “It is a disaster that we have allowed the Church to be seen as the opposition to equal marriage.” He argued that by opposing the measure the Church had prompted the Government to create a “very disturbing” distinction between “religious” and “civil” marriage. “Some Christians might like to say there are more important issues than gay marriage but we are not connecting with our society and for the churches this should be a mission priority,” he said.

Holtam made his comments just days after the Archbishop of Wales embraced marriage equality and called on the Church to welcome “all life-long committed relationships.”

(Click on the graph to see it full size.)

A new study from GLAAD and the University of Missoui Center on Religion & the Professions finds that pro-LGBT people of faith are the “Missing Voices” — severely underrepresented in mainstream media. In fact, three out of four religious messages about LGBT issues over the past three years have come from people who identify with anti-gay faith traditions. Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics were by far the most represented in the media, with mostly negative messages to share, while those from Mainline Protestant and Black Church affiliations often shared positive messages but were invited to do so significantly less often.

The study also notes that the proportion of these messages does not reflect the U.S. population. Evangelicals appear more often (34 percent) than their presence in the population should warrant (26 percent), and the frequency of anti-LGBT Catholic messages (over 50 percent) conflicts with the strong LGBT support among American Catholics (over 71 percent). In contrast, about 16 percent of the population identifies as Humanist, atheist, or agnostic, but that group only constituted 1 percent of religious discussions on LGBT issues.

Perhaps the most troubling result of the study was the discovery that the media constructs a conflict between religion and the LGBT community. Those hostile to LGBT people were often identified with their religious identity, while those who were supportive or neutral were not.

ThinkProgress similarly documented that progressive voices of faith were completely absent from the Sunday morning political shows’ conversations about religion. This clip serves as a perfect example for how one-sided the media has become on matters of spirituality:

Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla

The International Federation of Catholic Doctors Associations has issued a statement criticizing the government for failing to curtail sex-trafficking and sex-education, noting that the Bishop was merely offering “a prudent caution against unhealthy practices“:

“Catholic doctors profoundly lament the failure of modern states and of public international institution to combat ‘sexual tourism,’ involving adults or children,” the association said in its statement.

They also joined the bishop in denouncing “the contents of some textbooks,” especially those used in Spain’s recently axed Education for the Citizenry course, which encouraged children “to ‘explore’ all areas of sexuality.” “We are right in every way to consider these lessons perverse,” the doctors said, “And Bishop Reig is right in every way to condemn these and other abuses of the human being.”

Spain is highly progressive when it comes to LGBT rights, allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. Gays people are allowed to serve openly in the military and are protected from discrimination in employment, the provision of goods and services, and other areas.

I’d be curious to know how much the decisions to diverge from characterization—or to bring a character who doesn’t have a point of view perspective to the fore as is the case with Margaery—are driven by the simple demands of narrative economy, and how much they’re driven by the capacities of the actors involved?

In a few cases, there’s a kind of energy a certain actor possesses that inevitably informs how we write the character. For example, John Bradley’s Samwell Tarly is arguably funnier and maybe a bit more self-assured (at least amongst Jon and his friends) than his book counterpart. Or there’s Theon Greyjoy—his storyline has remained more or less the same but the characterization is quite different as a result of us de-aging the character when Alfie Allen was cast. This immediately changed the dynamic between him and Robb—they became contemporaries—and a more brotherly relationship developed between them over the course of Season One. This makes his decision to betray the Starks in Season Two markedly different than it was in the books.

In the case of Margaery Tyrell, this is an example of us taking advantage of the fact that we don’t have to adhere to the book’s strict POV structure. Margaery is pivotal to the plot of the novels, but she doesn’t really come front and center until the fourth book and, even then, you don’t know a whole lot about her. That’s fun in its own way but we decided when plotting out the current season that it would serve the show better to give the character a stronger presence earlier on. It gave us the opportunity to examine a key part of the game (the arranged marriage) up close. And once Natalie Dormer was cast, her persona certainly influenced the writing of the character.

Those are just a few examples… but there are plenty of characters on the show that seem like they leaped from the pages of the books onto the screen, unchanged — Gwendoline Christie’s Brienne and Conleth Hill’s Varys are examples of this, I think. So I think we have a healthy mix.

I’m sure you’ve heard the suggestion that Game of Thrones relies on sexposition, scenes where someone lays out an idea while unrelated sex is taking place somewhere in the frame. This week’s scenes between Loras and Renly and Renly and Margaery were the exact opposite of sexposition—the nudity and sexual contact between the characters were absolutely critical to our growing understanding of the characters—but I’m curious how you approached writing that scene given the larger conversation about sex and the series.

I appreciate that you don’t consider the scenes in my episode to be “sexpository”. Frankly, I think the term has been overused when talking about the current season and, in most cases, used incorrectly. From my point of view, there has been exactly one Season Two “sexposition” scene so far, between Theon and the Captain’s Daughter, and that was taken directly from George’s book, thank you very much! Sure, there’s still plenty of sex on the show — but far less “sexposition” than last year.

And I guess I take exception to the idea that we “relied” on sexposition last year. There were several scenes in Season One where backstory and mythology were peppered into dialogue that didn’t involve a sexual act. Robert’s “war story” scene with Ser Barristan and Jaime is one example, Theon’s encounter with Tyrion in my own Season One episode is another. Of course, there were plenty of exposition scenes that did feature sex (hence the term) but I also take exception with the idea that the sex is unrelated to what’s being discussed… but that’s a whole other conversation.

Anyway, back to Season Two. It was an exciting challenge to get to tackle the sexual gamesmanship of the Renly/Loras/Margaery triangle, which doesn’t really exist in the books. And I particularly enjoyed pulling the curtain back on Renly. The strength and swagger on display at the beginning of the episode is nowhere to be found at the end, after he’s gone a couple of rounds with brother and sister Tyrell. But I don’t think I approached the writing of these scenes any differently than I would the others. I’m certainly not thinking about the larger discussion of sex on the show — we can’t let those kind of discussions influence how we tell our story. And, make no mistake, sex is a big part of this world, as it is in George’s books, as it has been throughout history, and as it is in the lives of every human being, whether they admit it to themselves or not. [Note: Bryan emailed me to say he should add that he loved Saturday Night Live's Game of Thrones and sex skit, in which Andy Samberg plays a horny 13-year-old who consults on the episodes]

One thing we see in this episode—and that gives the episode its title—is a baptism, and Jon Snow also gets something of a theology lesson. Given your role as keeper of Game of Thrones mythology, what role do you think religion plays in the franchise? And do you think there are particular challenges in bringing religions where gods are active in the world, and fealty, which is a similar emotion to worship, to a modern audience?

George’s exploration of religion is, without question, one of my favorite aspects of his story. It plays an increasingly significant role as the series goes on, not only in the lives of the various characters but in the “game” itself. Last season, faith was largely depicted in a personal way — Ned’s quiet vigil under the weirwood tree, Cat’s homemade shrine to the Seven, etc. This season, we begin to see how religious faith is used in the pursuit of power, specifically with Stannis and Melisandre. And while the various religions in our story (the Seven, the Lord of Light, the Drowned God) were born out of George’s imagination and are somewhat fantastical, I think modern audiences can definitely relate while watching. I would say that “gods” are very “active” in our own world, especially when it comes to those in the pursuit of power — you need only examine some of the rhetoric from the candidates in the current presidential race to find examples of that.

Brienne of Tarth is a huge fan favorite, so writing her introduction into the series must have been a lot of fun. And it gets at an issue I’ve been wondering about—how do you manage your relationship to Game of Thrones’ fan base? Are there things you keep yourself from reading to stay sane? Things you get out of engaging with fans?

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I realized I was going to get to introduce Brienne on the TV show. She’s one of my favorite characters in the series. I think I’m drawn to the outcasts of the story—Brienne, Samwell, Theon, as well as the more vulnerable characters like Sansa and Bran—I find it easier to write for them than, say, Robb or Dany. Not sure why.

As far as engaging with fans… it’s a tricky thing. I enjoy seeing the feedback on Twitter, etc. It’s probably the actor in me. I come from the theater where the response to your work is immediate and I suppose there’s a part of me that still craves that. As much as I tell myself I’m not going to look at the message boards, I occasionally give in to my curiosity about how the show is being received — especially this past week when my episode aired. That said, it’s probably better for me to scale back on that and focus on the work. Of course I want fans to enjoy the show and I’m gratified by the (mostly) positive feedback I’ve received… but it’s a dangerous game. I never want to get to a place where it’s making me second guess myself as I write — “Oh, so-so on WiC.net won’t like this change”. That’s not helpful. You’re never going to be able to please everybody and, in the end, it’s my job to help D&D execute their vision.

There’s been a very weird strain of criticism that assumes that women don’t watch or read fantasy, but this is an episode where to me, the series begins tilting towards its female characters. Arya’s left to carry Yoren’s teaching forward, Brienne steps up to Renly’s Kingsguard, we get to see Cersei as grieving mother as well as monster, Gilly becomes an anchor for Sam, and Margaery emerges as a high-level strategist. Do you think there ways that fantasy (and science fiction) open up space for new kinds of female characters? And if that’s true, does that say something about the kinds of female characters both men and women are hungry for?

Well, first off, I’m baffled by the suggestion that women don’t watch or read fantasy. That’s just… absurd. As far as my episode goes, yes, I suppose it does highlight some of our strong female characters, but really, this whole season does. And that’s not something I’m conscious of when I’m writing. I just strive to honor George’s creations, be they male or female. That said, of course I’m proud to work on a show that gives so many wonderful female actors such rich characters to sink their teeth into. That is a rare thing, no matter what genre you’re working in.

As for the women in fantasy question… I don’t really know how to answer that because I don’t think about terms like “fantasy” or “science fiction” while writing the show and I think it’s safe to say David, Dan, and Vanessa don’t either. For me, the show (like the books) resonates because it’s an intensely human story that, at its core, could work even if there weren’t any of the fantasy trappings. So my job is help tell that story honestly and entertainingly.