Search for "cheap airline tickets to maine phone number 1-800-299-7264"

SCOTUS Seems to Think You Should Be Forced to Pay For Religious Education

By John Stoehr

…ed to pay for its activities? I agree. One of the Christian schools in the Maine case teaches that Islam is not a real religion. And it looks likely that the Supreme Court will force Mainers who don’t agree with that to send public money to support it. The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court is remaking free exercise law to force governments to fund Christian religion generally. That’s who’s going to benefit—the majority religion. Let’s close…

Religion, Marriage, and Maine’s Tortured Soul

By Peter Montgomery

…ry exposes several myths promoted by the opponents of marriage equality in Maine, including that it was a Maine-based campaign when California-based Schubert-Flint was clearly calling the shots; and that it wasn’t about homosexuality, when religious objections to homosexuality were clearly a driver for many of the activists and leaders. At one campaign rally, for example, a speaker portrays the campaign as a spiritual battle against the devil hims…

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…

RD News Round-Up—Oct.14, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…Court releases the Roe shackle. Defund the Family Planning Association of Maine. Amend Maine’s Constitution to define Marriage. Eliminate domestic partnerships and ignore pleas to create civil unions. Unleash Maine’s private sector to make Maine energy independent. End discrimination against private religious schools and home schools. ++++++++++ Resurgent Anti-Semitism in Wake of Wall Street Meltdown According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),…

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

By Eboo Patel

…, 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…

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…

The Religious Right and the Tea Party on “Education Choice”

By Julie Ingersoll

…e open to anyone who wishes to attend, though there will be a limit on the number of schools (no more than ten in the next decade) and the number of students enrolled. Opponents see charter schools as quasi-privatized schools (and also fear that this is a first step toward further privatization). They see even these limited charter schools as a threat to funding for public education—especially in these difficult budget years where public education…

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…

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…

Americans Must Stop Thinking of the United States Supreme Court as a Court of Law

By Andrew L. Seidel

…in his prayers at the 50-yard line. Just as the religious freedom of every Maine taxpayer was absent from the case the Court decided last week. Think about this: One of the Christian schools at issue in the Maine case taught a ninth-grade social studies class with objections that include students learning to “refute the teachings of the Islamic religion with the truth of God’s word”; and now Muslims in Maine are going to have to fund that teaching…