Religion Dispatches
…or gay rights, that should be especially true of support for gay rights in Chattanooga. I grew up in Chattanooga, leaving for college in 2008. As a kid, I didn’t know a single adult who was out—although I certainly knew plenty of people who were, to varying degrees, in the closet. As recently as 2006, Chattanooga voters overwhelmingly supported an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as strictly between a man and a woman (only tw…
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…ents kind of picking incrementalism or direct action, and affiliating with Ohio Right to Life or Ohio Pro-Life Action?” Theis doesn’t see the Heartbeat Bill as acting against the interests of incremental approaches. “There’s not one piece of pro-life legislation out there that we wouldn’t support,” she says. “It’s just that this is more aggressive.” Theis does, however, think Gonidakis’ lobbying against the bill is harming anti-abortion activists’…
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…ters of the defense; an old, quickly-refurbished house on the outskirts of Dayton. The house is owned by George Washington Rappleyea, a transplanted New Yorker, who emerges as the architect of the whole trial in large part an effort to revitalize Dayton’s economy. We’re introduced to a panoply of intriguing characters (scientists, moderate religious leaders, theologians, wealthy patrons, and others in addition to the Darrows), who during the trial…
Read More…through the Senate. It would thus appear that in the tactical war between Ohio Right To Life and Ohio Pro Life Action, the Right to Life camp is winning. Bans on women’s ability to make their own health insurance decisions aren’t exactly sneaky, but they do demonstrate that the incremental approach continues to see success in the legislature. (Anti-choice bills signed into Ohio law this session include a late term abortion ban, and further restri…
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…to continue to shrink into the insularity and disorganization that caused the Philadelphia Archdiocese to decline so precipitously? It remains to be seen. Meanwhile, faithful Catholics and others who want to see the Pope may be losing heart. 10,000 tickets for the Pope’s Speech at Independence Mall sold out in two minutes on Tuesday, with 394k people trying their best to get a few. Tickets are already being scalped at $100 and up on craigslist. I…
Read More…uage like “regiment” and “brigade” for its local groups. On the Personhood Ohio website, meanwhile, there are implications that God’s curse resides upon Ohio as long as abortions happen there, and that “sooner or later, judgment will fall on a land that sheds innocent blood.” The director of Personhood Ohio is Dr. Patrick Johnston, who also founded the Association for Pro-Life Physicians and the Alliance to Reform Education Funding (a group of peo…
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…lves as charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (38%).” Pinning down precise numbers for LLDM is almost impossible. The church claims to have more than three million members abroad, and 1.5 million in Mexico, which would make it the country’s largest non-Catholic religious institution. The 2010 Mexican census reported only around 200,000 members, but that number may well be low (the Mormon church in Mexico has argued that the religious count was ina…
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…, not the fourth century … You’re not free to practice your religion in my airline seat.’ ‘This is male entitlement .. the height of male arrogance.’ One comment referred to this as a ‘back of the bus’ issue; as in, women being asked to move in such circumstances was tantamount to assigning them a lesser status as citizens and lower dignity as human beings. Other readers proposed that airlines set aside special seating for men requiring such accom…
Read More…pportive lawmakers decried listening to experts. Andy Sher writing for the Chattanooga Free Press, quoted Rep. Richard Floyd (R-Chattanooga) saying that “since the late ‘50s, early ‘60s when we let the intellectual bullies hijack our education system, we’ve been on a slippery slope.” The legislation would require teachers to be helped “to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.” It also says…
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…notions of “human dignity” and “human flourishing,” Catholic natural law—an 800-year-old tradition dating back to Thomas Aquinas—is a lens that offers utter clarity to conservative Catholic jurists, activists, policymakers, and scholars as they observe, describe, and engage the world. The power and sharpness of this lens allow them to confidently snap every human movement—every human desire and motive and act—into its divinely appointed and proper…
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