Mary Jackson
WORLD
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, United States
Contact Mary
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Past articles by Mary:
States advance the fight for women’s sports
Since President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Jan. 20 promoting transgender participation in single-sex school sports, lawmakers in 16 states have taken action to protect female athletes. → Read More
Unconventional ally
In one of the most pro-abortion cities in the nation, unborn babies have an unlikely defender → Read More
Wrestling with death
The sugar skull, an emblem of Mexican folk holiday Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is this year’s must-have Halloween decor, plastered on succulent vases, wreaths, mugs, and pillowcases. Mattel recently announced its new Day of the Dead Barbie, adorned with a floral dress and a skull-painted face, and Nike released a tennis shoe in honor of the holiday, with colorful → Read More
The business of dying
In the new HBO documentary Alternate Endings, one woman hand mixes her father’s cremated remains with concrete she will have cemented inside an artificial coral reef. “That is the legacy,” a guide tells her. “Not only is it a resting place for your loved one, but it is an active, producing part of the environment. It’s creating new life, and will do so for hundreds of years to → Read More
Leveling the playing field for faith-based HBCUs
Despite comprising only 3 percent of the nation’s four-year colleges, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have produced 80 percent of the country’s African American judges, 50 percent of its African American doctors, and 27 percent of African Americans with STEM degrees, according to the Department of Education. Until last week, the federal government excluded → Read More
A summer to remember
Nostalgia for the iconic summer of 1969 has gripped the entertainment industry in recent months. Events such as the first moon landing, the Woodstock music festival, and the killing spree by devotees of Charles Manson brought momentous highs and lows, and still captivate Americans 50 years later. → Read More
‘Better late than never’
Netflix removed a graphic suicide scene from its popular teen series 13 Reasons Why on Tuesday after two years of warding off denunciations from parents, mental health advocates, and researchers who found the portrayal led to a spike in teens taking their lives. → Read More
Telling the
The pro-life movie Unplanned opened in dozens of theaters in Canada Friday after a long battle to persuade movie theaters to show it. Unplanned, a story about how former Planned Parenthood facility manager Abby Johnson became a pro-life advocate, has grossed more than $18 million since its March 29 release in the United States. It comes out on DVD in August. → Read More
Filtering the filters
VidAngel, a company that filters profanity, sex, and violence from movies and online streaming shows, has incurred the wrath of Hollywood film companies since its inception. → Read More
Fragile faith
Worship leader Marty Sampson of Hillsong Church announced earlier this week he is “losing” his Christian faith in a lengthy and since-deleted Instagram post. The news drew swift and widespread reaction, surprising even Sampson, who posted Thursday, “I could not imagine the response. … I never expected to create any waves.” → Read More
Normalizing child grooming?
An British TV show is sparking backlash for what some viewers see as normalization of child sexual abuse. Britain’s Channel 5 released a promotional video last week for the upcoming season of Age Gap Love with a clip of a couple whose relationship began when the man was 44 and the girl was 16. → Read More
Dramatizing suicide
Television dramas and films are increasingly portraying teen suicide in an empathetic light, revealing shifting cultural attitudes about death and taking a deadly gamble by letting viewers, some of them adolescents, decide whether taking one’s life is sometimes justifiable. → Read More
Off-balance instruction
A Middle Eastern studies program may lose its federal funding for emphasizing cultural content and Islam over language instruction. The federal government gives $235,000 a year to the joint Middle Eastern studies program at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The money, appropriated under Title VI of the Education Act of 1965, → Read More
PBS invites kids to same-sex wedding
Children watching the 22nd season premiere of the PBS Kids program Arthur on Monday witnessed something parents who once consumed the long-running cartoon never did: a same-sex wedding. → Read More
China’s entertainment endgame
Avengers: Endgame didn’t just shatter box office records during its U.S. debut in April—it also made history in China, grossing more than $330 million on opening weekend and becoming the biggest foreign film to premiere there. The movie’s success gives Hollywood more incentive to tap into China’s lucrative entertainment market. But its massive audiences and box office → Read More
Easter at Coachella
On Sunday morning, Kanye West gave the public its first clear picture of what he calls his “Sunday Service,” a weekly invite-only gospel series he has been hosting since January, this time as a grand-scale Easter event at Coachella, pop music’s premier annual event, in Indio, Calif. The two-hour Easter service drew 50,000 festivalgoers and was live-streamed on YouTube through → Read More
Unpromoted, but not unnoticed
Chuck Konzelman, co-writer and co-director of the pro-life movie Unplanned, told a Senate panel Wednesday that Twitter and Google sought to stymie promotion and awareness of the film. Unplanned tells the story of how former Planned Parenthood facility manager Abby Johnson became a pro-life advocate. The film has grossed nearly $14 million since its March 29 release despite an → Read More
Unplanned overcomes
Despite significant marketing hurdles and a suspended Twitter account, the pro-life movie Unplanned has made millions in its first week and opens in 700 additional theaters on Friday. → Read More
K-Love mum on new pro-life movie
The nation’s largest listener-supported Christian radio network has so far refused to promote the pro-life movie Unplanned, which opens at more than 1,000 theaters nationwide Friday. K-Love’s lack of on-air support for the film has drawn criticism from listeners who believed the network would break its silence by now. → Read More
Bob and Larry ride again
Sixteen years had elapsed since Phil Vischer wrote a VeggieTales episode, and he didn’t know how easily he could bring the characters back to life. But Vischer decided to try after the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) approached him last year and asked him to present Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and the rest of his botanic, Bible-teaching creations from the 1990s to a → Read More