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Fork in the Road - My Faith and my Sexuality

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Heart and Soul: Fork in the Road: Fork in the Road - My faith and my sexuality

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

29/03/2019 GMT

Fork in the Road - My faith and my sexuality

Fork in the Road

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, Fork in the Road, Fork in the Road - My faith and my sexuality

Two writers and their struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexuality

Two writers and their struggle to reconcile their faith and their sexuality.

Can you remain committed to your religion even it it does not accept your sexuality? Jane Little meets two well-known writers who have publicly wrestled with their faiths and been forced to make choices on whether to stay or go.
 
Andrew Sullivan is a political commentator whose writings helped drive the successful campaign for gay marriage in the United States. But the battles along the way, especially during the era of the AIDS epidemic, caused him to question his Catholic faith and he admits he faced some dark moments and prolonged anger at the church. 
 
Irshad Manji is a Canadian Muslim writer who has been an outspoken critic of Islam, not least over attitudes to homosexuality and women's rights; she has received death threats for her work. She tells Jane about her lifelong habit of rebellion; she was kicked out of Islamic school as a child for asking questions, but has eventually found peace - with her version of Islam and in marriage to a woman.   
 
Producer: Jane Little

Heart and Soul: Fork in the Road

Jane Little finds out how similar experiences can affect two people's faith differently.

In this series of three programmes Jane Little meets two people who have been through the same events or similar experiences to talk about how it has affected their lives and their faith.

Starting off by speaking to them separately, she will hear their individual stories, and then bring them together so they can share with Jane and each other how those events, which were so similar, led to one of them losing their faith and the other having their faith strengthened.
 
Jane will explore the role of war, sexuality, abuse within faith community’s, terrorist attacks and gang violence, meeting two fascinating people who have something major in common only for it to lead them down such different paths.

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