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Alabama’s IVF Ruling Reveals Deep Ties to This Increasingly Influential Christian Right Movement

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ey have a clear goal in mind, says Sarah Posner, which is reflected in the Alabama ruling: The Alabama IVF ruling shows us the legal ramifications of the Religious Right’s quest to have it written into law that fertilized eggs are people with civil rights, constitutional rights and human rights. Once you believe that a fertilized egg is a person, then the opposition to IVF follows because you wouldn’t leave a person in a petri dish or in a freezer…

School Voucher SCOTUS Case Isn’t About ‘Choice,’ It’s About Coerced Support for Religion

By Andrew L. Seidel

…ion. Montana’s neo-voucher program violated the religious freedom of every Montana citizen. The Montana Supreme Court righted this wrong and the U.S. Supreme Court should agree. Citizens of every religion and of no religion were coerced into subsidizing religious education with which they fundamentally disagree. This certainly meets Jefferson’s standard of “sinful and tyrannical.” Simply put, religion must support itself. Benjamin Franklin, who al…

Using ‘a Little Bad History’ The Supreme Court Just Gutted Church-State Separation in 38 States

By Steven K. Green

…laine Amendment of the 1870s.” However, each state had its own dynamic; in Montana, for example, at the time the state adopted its no-aid provision Catholic adherents outnumbered Protestants by a 3-to-1 margin, and several of the state’s leading public officials were Catholic. The situations in other states also varied widely. More broadly, the opinions in Espinoza raise questions about the Court’s use of history, particularly when it becomes a ru…

By the Way: “Ten Commandments Judge” To Be Alabama’s Next Gov?

By Randall Balmer

…ly did Moore not run from the controversy, he ran for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000 as the “Ten Commandments Judge.” The voters of Alabama elected him, and shortly thereafter he plunked a two-and-a-half-ton granite monument emblazoned with the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the judicial building. Moore, who claims to be a Baptist, steadfastly refused to place the representations of any other religious group in that space, wh…

Pricey Tickets, Cranky Citizens, and Priests Behind Bars as Philadelphia Prepares For Papal Visit

By Anthea Butler

…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…

Does ‘Criss-Cross Apple Sauce’ Make Yoga Secular? Opponents of Yoga in Public Schools Have a Point

By Candy Gunther Brown

…ersal Society of Hinduism, who urged lawmakers “to wake up to the needs of Alabama pupils.” Zed has been outspoken in a number of yoga controversies in recent years. Notably, he opposed a 2014 tax on D.C. yoga studios as a “religious infringement”—arguing that yoga is “one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy” and “a mental and physical discipline by means of which the human-soul (jivatman) united with the universal-soul (paramatman).”…

The Theology Behind Alabama Official’s Demand to Flout SCOTUS

By Sarah Posner

…timate concerns about the propriety of federal court jurisdiction over the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment.” Moore warned that local clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples will be “in defiance of the laws and Constitution of Alabama.” Johnson’s letter, though, is much more explicit in laying out a detailed theology underlying his call for state and local government officials to refuse to comply with Obergefell. In Johnson’s…

God, Guns, and the Confederate Flag

By Sarah Posner

…o not offended by the Confederate flag.) Moore has elicited comparisons to Alabama’s segregationist governor George Wallace, following his pledge to defy a federal court ruling invalidating Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage earlier this year. Moore ordered probate court clerks, who issue marriage licenses in Alabama, not to issue them to same-sex couples. The BuzzFeed report includes copies of the Council newsletter, which included a letter from…

Alabama Senate Considers Giving Church Its Own Police Force; Irony Reportedly Dead

By Daniel Schultz

…ader survey. If you’re keeping score at home, the story so far is that the Alabama Legislature is trying to allow an individual megachurch to establish its own police force. It was blocked once by a governor who has since been brought down by one of the largest—and weirdest—sex-and-corruption scandals the U.S. has seen in a long time. The bill will almost certainly make its way back to the new governor, who apparently knows no shame, so it might a…

Alabama’s Yoga Ban Is Part of the Christian Right’s War on Pluralism

By Manisha Sunil

…n, and everything to do with its Hindu roots. As one legal adviser for the Alabama Citizens Action Program (ALCAP)—a Christian organization with the mission to push a Biblical standard of ethics within the state—told The New York Times, “Yoga is ‘a very important part of the Hindu religion… As such, it does not need to be taught to small children in public schools.’” And yet, on its website, the organization includes in its mission statement: “An…