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Bishops Reject Proposed Compromise with Obama on Contraception Coverage

By Sarah Posner

…d the bishops’ chief lobbyist on life issues in the nation’s capital. “The Hawaii contraceptive mandate has many of the same features as the new federal mandate.” Like the federal rule, he said, the Hawaii bill “covers all FDA-approved ‘contraceptives’ (including drugs that can cause an abortion); and the religious exemption is very narrow (though it does not include the requirement that the religious organization serve only people of its own fait…

Hawaii Governor Vetoes Civil Unions

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

Hawaii’s Governor Linda Lingle, has denied civil unions to the gay and lesbian citizens of her state. “I have been open and consistent in my opposition to same-gender marriage, and find that House Bill 444 is essentially marriage by another name,” Lingle said at a news conference on the deadline to veto bills for the year. Lingle, in her statement, caved to the vocal religious right and used the old canard of many in the anti-marriage equality ca…

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…

‘Hardwired’ for Hetero Marriage, LDS Tension Mounts Over LGBT Rights

By Joanna Brooks

…sources suggest the second letter reflected stronger influence from local Hawaiian Church leaders. An old Proposition 8-style view of gays as “them” seems to be prevailing this month in Mormon Hawaii, even as Mormon Senators in D.C., both Democrats and Republicans, have acted on the understanding that gays are also “us”: fellow Mormons and fellow citizens deserving of equal protection under the law. Like this story? Your tax-deductible $5 or $10…

Netanyahu’s Speech, Lane’s Trip, and the Impossibility of Boycotts

By Sarah Posner

…sing that the RNC members didn’t care what PFAW or the SPLC think of their trip—or even what the ADL has to say. The trip, organized by Christian Zionists, isn’t intended to make either left-leaning watchdogs or leading American Jewish organizations happy. It’s intended to continue to build a movement of Christians who uncritically support Israel—a movement from which, in the end, right-leaning pro-Israel American Jewish groups have a hard time di…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…od reasons that these identities are favored. Each category includes large groups of people who tend to convene around certain symbols, ideas and issues. But preferring some identities ought not be done in such a manner that other clearly important categories are ignored or marginalized, namely religion. If the fundamental logic of cultural progressivism is that people get to choose the identity that matters to them and assign whatever meaning the…

The Key to Understanding the Federalist Society Isn’t Originalism — It’s This 800-Year Old Tradition

By Peter Schwartz

…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…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Palin’s Israel Trip

By Sarah Posner

…much of the conservative infrastructure. Even if Palin is not viewing her trip through an electoral lens, she is, I suspect, far more comfortable with an evangelical approach to her trip. She’s a Christian Zionist, to be sure, and like many of her co-religionists, the Jews are adorable pawns in God’s plan. Spiritually speaking, she’d be far more at home with a Christian tour. And if she is trying to appeal to Jewish Republicans, I’m guessing she…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…